[00:00:00] KRISTINA FOREST: What I love particularly about romance, you'll find a book that you really, really like, and you'll be like, "This was amazing." And you'll look up the author, and they've written like 50 other books, and you're like, "Perfect. I'm getting them all."

ANNE BOGEL: 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.

[00:00:46] Readers, today I'm excited to dive into the world of summer reading with Kristina Forest, contemporary romance writer and author of the 2026 MMD Summer Reading Guide title, The Summer Girlfriend, which appeared in our Seaside Stories category and is available on bookstore shelves now as it was just released on June 9th.

I described it in the guide as a sweet summer romance bursting with bookishness and baked goods. The plot hinges on a fake relationship that blossoms out of a bookstore meet-cute. The beach setting was inspired by a handful of real places, some of which surprised me, and Kristina's deep and abiding love for the Jersey Shore.

The family's warm and inviting beach home is a character in its own right, and a Black-owned family business that makes delectable baked goods features prominently in the story. And of course, romance and chemistry feature prominently in these pages.

We are going to get into all of it today, along with some of Kristina's very favorite titles for beach reading season, whether you need a paperback to toss in your beach bag, or you won't be going anywhere near the beach anytime soon and would welcome a vicarious vacation. I can't wait to share this conversation with you. Let's get to it. Kristina, welcome to the show.

[00:01:56] KRISTINA: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

ANNE: Oh, the pleasure's mine. Congrats on your new release.

KRISTINA: Thank you so much. I'm really excited for it.

ANNE: We're talking before the day, but The Summer Girlfriend enters the world on June 9th, so it'll be ready and waiting whenever readers are listening.

KRISTINA: Yes, just in time for summer.

ANNE: Exactly. All right. Well, I'm so excited to talk today. I really enjoyed your book, but I've been reading you for years, and I know many of our listeners as well. And you're probably new to some of our listeners, so I hope you all enjoy listening in and meeting a new-to-you author.

But Kristina, could we start by just giving the readers a glimpse of who you are? Would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

KRISTINA: Yes, sure. So I'm Kristina Forest. I am a romance novelist, contemporary romance particularly, but I started my career writing YA romance in 2019. I am a born and raised Jersey girl. I'm very proud of that, even though I spent about a decade of my life living in New York City, which I also sort of feel like a New York City person still.

[00:02:59] I worked in publishing, children's books publishing, for many years. I love reading romance novels, which is probably not a surprise to a lot of people. My favorite subgenre is historical romance. That is definitely my happy place of reading, of reading, period, is historical romance. But that's what got me into reading romance novels.

I was reading Tessa Dare, and Beverly Jenkins, and Lisa Kleypas, and from there I started reading contemporary. And it was really The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang that made me a bigger contemporary romance reader. I believe that novel published in 2018, I think is when that came out. From there I went to Jasmine Guillory, Nisha Sharma, and Alisha Rai. I was discovering so many contemporary romance authors.

But The Kiss Quotient was the book that I read, and I thought, "Oh, maybe I could do this too." Because at the time I had been writing YA, but I wanted to try and write adult romance. And so romance novels is like what I live and breathe.

[00:04:10] ANNE: I am so curious about the leap from YA to adult. It never occurred to me that... I mean, what do I know, Kristina? But it never occurred to me that reading one specific work would be the impetus. I'd love to hear more.

KRISTINA: Yes, sure. After I graduated from undergrad, I went to undergrad in New Jersey, I took several creative writing classes. And at the time, because I was younger, I was reading a lot of YA, particularly YA romance. I was a huge, and still am, but I was a huge fan of Sarah Dessen when I was in high school.

I took a creative writing class in high school, and my teacher brought in her father, who was an author. His name is David Lubar, and he wrote middle grade and YA. He gave a presentation on his books, and he essentially made a comment that was... he said something to the effect of, "Oh, my books helped put your teacher through college." And it just was like a light bulb in my head because I really loved to read, but it had never occurred to me that it was a career, if that makes any sense.

[00:05:19] You know, I was 17 at the time. I was like, "I really like reading books," but I didn't think of the career of being an author the same way that I thought about being a teacher or being a lawyer or something like that. I was like, "Wow, this is a career where he makes a livable wage, to the extent that he can help put his daughter through college?"

And I thought, again, about Sarah Dessen, I was obsessed with her books, and I was like, "I really want to do that, but I want to write those kinds of stories featuring people who look like me, with Black characters." From there, it was literally that moment at my senior year of high school when I took that creative writing class that I decided that I wanted to be a writing major in college, and thankfully, my parents didn't ask a lot of questions. They did not ask me really... I don't think my dad said anything. He was like, "Okay." My mom was just like, "Okay, fine," you know? I was very lucky that they just-

ANNE: They thought you'd come to your senses on your own.

[00:06:19] KRISTINA: No. It was more just like I was a very determined kid. I was like the kid who would come home from school on Fridays and do my homework right away. That's just a perfect way to sum up the way that I was when I was younger. I think definitely still like that as an adult but I think that my parents just knew that I... I think they just trusted that I knew what I was doing to the extent that a 17-year-old can know what they're doing. But yeah, they didn't ask me any questions.

And so I was a writing arts major, which I think is a major that's particular to my college, which was Rowan University. And so I had to take several creative writing classes while I was there. I had a few professors who read some of my short stories, which were primarily middle grade and YA. They encouraged me to apply to get my Master of Fine Arts, which was great because I had no idea what I was going to do after graduation.

[00:07:13] These few professors encouraged me to apply to grad school, and so I applied to The New School in New York City and I was accepted into the Writing for Children program, so then I moved. While I was studying, I had a few internships because I thought it would be important to learn the inside of the publishing industry if I wanted to be an author. Essentially, I wanted to know how the sausage was made.

My first internship was at Macmillan in their children's publishing department. And I wanted to stay in New York. You know, like a lot of people, I moved there and fell completely in love. It's still my favorite city. And it's very expensive, so I needed a job.

So while I was in grad school, I was interning in publishing, and one of the internships turned into a job. This was at Simon & Schuster. A quick way to sum that up is while I was working at S&S, I graduated from grad school, and my graduate degree, as you can imagine, was not cheap in New York City. And I was like, "I need to make all the loans that I took out to get this degree worth it," and so I became very determined to get an agent and to get a book deal.

[00:08:29] And so what I was working on was my first novel, which was titled I Want to Be Where You Are. This was a YA rom-com about a ballerina who goes on a road trip with the boy next door to a dance audition. At the time, I really was inspired, again, by Sarah Dessen, but also authors like Jenny Han, Stephanie Perkins. I thought that I would spend my career writing YA.

I wrote three YA novels, and I loved the experience. I think that there's something very fulfilling about writing for youth. And I loved meeting librarians and younger readers out at the festivals because they loved the books, and they wanted to see more books like that, particularly young Black readers who are looking for books like that. Because when I was in high school, there weren't a lot of contemporary YA romances featuring young Black girls. And so I really took a lot of pride in being able to write those stories for young girls who were like me, how I was when I was in high school, who were looking for those books.

[00:09:41] Then I turned 30. I was turning 30, and I just sort of felt like I had said all I wanted to say in the teen space. Also because I was working in children's books publishing, a lot of what I read was children's literature, of course. And so I'm reading picture books and chapter books and middle grade and YA all day.

I started reading adult fiction for pleasure because it was a way to separate what I was doing for work from my personal life. A friend of mine worked at St. Martin's Press, and she was a publicist who worked on a historical romance, and we used to send books back and forth to each other. And one day she sent me a box of mass market historical romance novels, and when I tell you, I think I read that entire box in like two weeks. I was like, "Oh my God, this is amazing."

ANNE: Oh, that sounds like a peak. I mean, we're talking in June, so it sounds like peak summer experience. Wow. It brings back so many childhood memories, too, of trading books with my neighbor. I mean, boxes of books. What a delight.

[00:10:46] KRISTINA: I know. We would just send each other packages. That's another plus of working in publishing is just the amount of leftover or free books that you find around the office. That feeling that I had of discovering these historical romance novels reminded me of like you're saying of when you're younger and you find a book that you really love.

What I love particularly about romance, but because I'm talking about historical, I'll stay there, is you'll find a book that you really, really like, and you'll be like, "This was amazing." And you'll look up the author and they've written like 50 other books. And you're like, "Perfect. I'm getting them all." And you can just immerse yourself in the author's entire backlist.

[00:11:32] I think this might be the first year that I haven't done it, but I usually pick one author and I just read their entire backlist for a couple months at a time. And it's the most enjoyable experience because a lot of the times it's series which then break off into other interconnected series and you're just immersed in this world of this family or these friends. Nothing captures my attention the way that a romance novel does.

ANNE: That sounds incredible. Who are some of the authors you've done this with?

KRISTINA: Oh, gosh, Lisa Kleypas, Beverly Jenkins, Tessa Dare, Laura Kinsale, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, who writes... she is actually the romance author who invented the sports romance genre.

ANNE: What?

KRISTINA: In my opinion. And I think a lot of people would agree with me.

ANNE: We like a hot take.

[00:12:29] KRISTINA: Yeah. Because her Chicago Star series is about a team of football players. The Chicago Stars are a fictional football team, and the different women who fall in love with either these players or these coaches. But maybe didn't invent it, but she popularized it, as she made it very popular in the '90s and early 2000s.

So I did that with her, and that was a great time. Last year it was Laura Kinsale. I read a bunch of her backlist. And she's a historical romance author. But I haven't had time to do it this year. This has been a busy... It's probably the busiest writing year that I've had, this year has been. So I'm way behind on anything, any reading.

ANNE: I trust you'll catch up in the fall.

KRISTINA: Yeah, that's fingers crossed that I will be able to catch up on my TBR.

ANNE: Do you read solely romance, Kristina?

[00:13:24] KRISTINA: I would say about 95% of what I read is romance. I read different subgenres of romance. I will sometimes read sci-fi. I will read historical, like I said I'll read contemporary. And then I'll read rom-com. I think there's a difference between a contemporary romance and a romantic comedy. But then occasionally, I do... I also read historical fiction.

There are a few authors who I really love. I love Sadeqa Johnson, Yellow Wife and House of Eve. Those are two of my favorite books. And then I also do read literary fiction. I love Brit Bennett. Her book, The Mothers, is one of my favorite books of all time. I'm looking forward to reading Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray, Kin by Tayari Jones. These are books that I bought when they came out, and I'm just waiting for the chance to be able to read them when I meet all of my deadlines. So, yeah, majority of what I read is romance, though.

ANNE: Well, you said nothing holds your attention like a romance.

KRISTINA: Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:23] ANNE: Which may speak to what your personal reading does for you. I'd love to hear more about what reading means to you or what role it fills in your life, whatever direction you want to take that.

KRISTINA: A question that I feel like I get asked a lot or that authors get asked a lot is like, "What are your favorite hobbies?" And the only one I can ever really say is reading. And it always, I'm like, "Oh, does that sound boring because I'm an author? Of course, I'm going to say reading." But it really is my number one hobby.

When I am not reading a good book, I feel off, and I don't know if you feel this way, too, because I know that you read a lot, or if the people listening feel that way. But if too many weeks have gone by where I haven't read a book, and this sometimes happens when I'm on deadline, I'm just so locked in that I can't immerse myself in the works of someone else, I start to feel really like something isn't right.

[00:15:22] I love reading good books. I love being immersed in other people's art, and reading brings me joy, and it feels like a safe space. And I feel happiest when, of course, things are going well in my personal life, but also when I'm reading a really good book. It makes me excited. It makes me excited about literature. I love seeing how people respond to a book that I've read and really liked too, you know, in the reader community.

I think that reading creates a sense of connection also because I think we tend to be... readers tend to be introverted people. I know. I describe myself as an extroverted introvert. I'm naturally introverted, but I can be extroverted if I need to be. But I think that what brings us all together is that we love to be immersed in the pages of a fictional story or nonfiction if people prefer to read nonfiction. But it really is my favorite hobby. It's what I really love to do in my spare time.

[00:16:31] ANNE: Well, I relate to that. I feel restless when I'm not in the middle of a good book or when I don't have one on deck that I just can't wait to get into. I like to know there's a book, a specific book and story experience waiting for me when I'm ready for it, at all times really. I'm realizing as I listen to you talk about this.

KRISTINA: Yes, yes. I agree with that.

ANNE: Kristina, with your past books being published in February, The Summer Girlfriend coming out in June is a change, I'm thinking that's maybe not a coincidence.

KRISTINA: Yeah, no, very, very strategic to have this book come out at the beginning of summer.

ANNE: Well, I'd love to hear more about writing a beach read in all the senses.

KRISTINA: Yes. I really was just thinking about all of my memories and old current of spending summers at the beach in New Jersey, particularly Wildwood Beach, which is where we went every summer. It's also where we went after prom. I think that might be a New Jersey-specific thing. I don't know if other states have this, especially if you don't have a beach.

[00:17:47] But in high school after prom, we would spend the weekend at Wildwood. Like everybody would go. You would get hotel rooms, or some people had like beach houses or whatever, but we would spend the weekend at Wildwood. That felt quintessential to my youth.

My parents used to drive us to Wildwood Beach. You know, we would sometimes go for the day, sometimes go for a few days. Wildwood has this huge boardwalk and along the boardwalk, there's places where you can get funnel cake and fried Oreo. Literally, you can get anything imaginable fried in dough and covered in powdered sugar. It's there at these places. And these huge slices of pizza, these huge cartons of lemonade, and it's so sugary and sweet, salt water taffy, and the different sections of the boardwalk that has games and rides. It's just so much going on.

[00:18:43] And the beach itself is really long. The point of when you get off the boardwalk to walk to the actual shore, oh my gosh, that always feels like the longest walk in the world, especially if the sand is hot, and you're just trying to run and get to the wet sand as fast as you can because your feet are burning.

These were just like very clear memories in my mind, and I wanted to put that onto the page so that when people read The Summer Girlfriend, they would feel like, "Ah, this is what it means to be at the beach in New Jersey for the summer."

And the smell. The smell of the saltwater is just everywhere, and the seagulls calling to each other and also bothering you. Like the minute they smell food, they are right in front of you. So I was just trying to capture all of those memories when I was drafting.

[00:19:41] ANNE: Oh, I'm so jealous. You were singing the praises of New Jersey beaches before we hit record on this conversation. I love where I live, except I'm incredibly jealous that I'm like 600 miles from the ocean. And no citizen of New Jersey is that far away.

KRISTINA: Yeah, no. Yeah, we're lucky.

ANNE: I would love to hear more about the specific story setting of The Summer Girlfriend, but first could we zoom out for a moment?

KRISTINA: Yeah.

ANNE: Kristina, could you just give our readers a sense of what the book is about?

KRISTINA: So, The Summer Girlfriend is about a woman named Noelle who is saving up to go back to college. She had to drop out when she was originally in college when she was a teenager, and she wants to get her master's degree and become a librarian. But she's just been let go of her main job as a bookseller. She also has a side hustle as a bridesmaid for hire.

And she happens to meet a young man named Jeremiah who is wealthy. He's the heir to a baked goods company, and he is in need of a fake girlfriend for the summer at his family's beach house in the town called Heart Beach. And so they decide to fake date for the summer. He'll pay her to be his pretend girlfriend, and then she'll get the money for college. But not actually falling in love while pretending to be in a relationship is a lot easier said than done.

[00:20:57] ANNE: I enjoyed all the details so much. Okay, but I'm not going to get distracted right now. Let's go back to the story world. In the book's prologue, I think it's set in 1974 and we hear a little bit of the history of Heart Beach and this one specific house that comes into the protagonist's family. I mean, this was a whole new world to me.

The tone is so wistful, and you know as a reader this is the origin story for this house and this place that is going to come to mean so much to this family that we're reading about it in the present-day storyline 50 years later. But also, the way you describe Heart Beach is so fascinating. I loved hearing the details and history, and is... I was wondering if it's based on a real place. Perhaps you just hinted at that.

[00:21:44] KRISTINA: Yeah. There are actually a few inspirations for Heart Beach other than beaches like Wildwood and Ocean City, which is where I went growing up. Heart Beach was founded by a Black couple. And that was inspired by the history of Bruce's Beach in California, which is a part of Manhattan Beach.

Bruce's Beach was founded in the early 1900s. It sounds so weird to say the early 1900s, but it was founded in the early 1900s by this Bruce couple. They'd moved to California during the Great Migration, and they purchased a plot of land and turned it into a seaside resort that was welcoming to Black beachgoers because not all beaches were welcoming to Black people at the time. And it became a very popular attraction for Black people.

But the people in the predominantly White surrounding area were not happy with this. And because there was so much pushback from the people in the surrounding area, the Manhattan Beach Council voted to condemn Bruce's Beach. Then the land was unlawfully seized and the resort was demolished.

[00:22:52] It was a few years ago that the land was finally returned to the descendants, but they ended up selling it back to the county for about $20 million, and they decided to use that money to finally build some generational wealth within their family.

But I kept thinking, "What if that hadn't happened to this family? What if they were able to keep this land and to continue to be allowed to have this be a beautiful resort where Black people were buying homes and where they came to vacation?" And there's also Chicken Bone Beach in New Jersey, which was a Black beach in New Jersey during segregation.

So the history of those different beaches went into Heart Beach as well. I hint on that a little bit in the prologue when they're talking about the history of how the town started but also the particular house. I was intentional with starting the prologue by describing the house because I feel like Heart Beach is a character in itself in the novel. It's the place where everyone always comes back to.

[00:23:58] The heart of the story, of course, is the relationship between Noelle and Jeremiah, but then the broader heart of the story is this house in Heart Beach and how hard Jeremiah's grandparents worked to be able to buy this house and what that meant to them to be able to have a beach house that they could vacation at in the 1970s and how they've continued to keep this house in their family and how multiple generations have walked through the front doors.

It's especially because I think generational wealth is such a hard thing for Black people to be able to get and then attain in this country. And so I really wanted to write about that and to write about this family who they really love each other, but that the house is a reflection of that love and how the house has been expanded over the years in the same way that the family has expanded over the years.

[00:24:55] But it's where everyone comes back to every summer. They are here in Heart Beach, which is why it's a point of contention for Jeremiah, because he's been avoiding the house in Heart Beach after he had an argument with his grandfather before his grandfather passed away. He feels a lot of guilt over that argument, and so he's been avoiding this house, which also means so much to him. And so it kind of is eating him up inside that he feels as though he can't go back because of the bad memory that he has there.

ANNE: I love how you describe the house as being a character in its own right. And it does feel so warm and welcoming. I mean, some books are, in part, enjoyable to read because you want to spend time in the world they're set in, and I wanted to be at that house.

KRISTINA: Oh, good. I'm really glad to hear that.

[00:25:44] ANNE: I love how we see the legacy of the home and the generational wealth in this Black family. And also the recipes were passed down through the generations as well. This story is... I mean, I really enjoyed reading about the family business, but also it's a family business that makes baked goods. And something I've learned about myself is I like to read about things that taste good. I'd love to hear anything you have to say about legacy or sweets.

KRISTINA: That was inspired by my grandmother. We were very close. She passed away two years ago. So the relationship between Jeremiah and Pop, who's his grandfather, was sort of inspired by how close I was with my grandmother. She was like a second mom to me. And she made the most amazing pound cake. It's a secret. I know the recipe, my mom knows the recipe, but that's it. And we don't tell anyone because we're like, "If we're ever in dire straits, we can make that pound cake and sell it."

[00:26:48] It's literally what we keep in our back pocket. Like, if we ever need to figure out a way to make money, we will start selling that pound cake. And it's the cake that my friends... whenever someone's having a baby or they're moving or some kind of exciting life thing is happening, my friends text me like, "Does this mean I can get a pound cake?" At holidays they're like, "Are you making the pound cake this year?"

And it's just like everyone loves this pound cake. And because it was my grandmother's recipe, and I was thinking a lot about how I was... I remember being so young and standing next to her at the kitchen counter while she whipped the batter. And she would only let me eat a little tiny spoonful because she said I couldn't eat the raw eggs. And I was always so disappointed by that because the batter of this pound cake is... it's honestly my favorite part of making a pound cake is when I can eat the batter.

[00:27:45] I just have these memories of helping her to whip the cake. And she was a little woman, and I remember watching her with her little tiny arm whip all this thick batter and being so fascinated by how she did it so perfectly, that she would make drop cookies and pies and everything from scratch.

My grandmother, she really was kind of grandmother from a storybook. We would come home from school, and she would have cookies, and my friends would always want to come over and be like, "Did your grandmom bake?" You know? She would make lemonade fresh. She was an amazing woman.

The three of us, me, my mom, and my grandmother had this joke that we would one day start selling those poundcakes. So when I was thinking about what the Smith family would be known for, what their legacy would be, I thought, "Oh, poundcakes." It starts with his grandfather making a poundcake for his wife, and then from there he's like, "Well, what else can I bake?" That was inspired by my own relationship with my mom and my grandmom, and how much we all love to bake, and all the secret recipes that we have.

[00:29:00] ANNE: Oh, that sounds amazing. My mom always talked about her grandmother's baking as well. That it was incredibly delicious, but the ugliest baked good you had ever seen. I'm not sure they were Smith's Sweets material.

Now, many readers will not be sad to discover the book that they're reading features a library or a bookstore. We kind of get a twofer with The Summer Girlfriend. Would you say more about that? I especially loved your bookstore's name in the book.

KRISTINA: Oh, thank you. Noelle, at the beginning of the novel, she works at a place called Hidden Gems Books. Particularly it's a used bookstore, hence the name Hidden Gems. And her boss, Harold, is lovingly curmudgeonly, but he's very strict on we only sell used books. And I believe that's what he says is, "People need to read about what came before before they read new things."

[00:29:53] And even though Noelle's like, "We need to sell new books in order to keep people wanting to come to the store," and just because a lot of the time the big best sellers are the ones that are driving the revenue. But he's very, very solid in the fact that he only wants to sell older used books at the store. So that's where that name came from. Then also Heart Beach Books is the bookstore in Heart Beach. That name is just... you know, there's only one bookstore in Heart Beach, so it's called Heart Beach Books.

But yes, Noelle is a book lover, and she discovered a love for reading after she had to drop out of college and her mom was going through some health struggles. She found reading, and she found reading to be a safe space. I think the way that many of us come to reading or the “what” we love about reading is that it provides an escape.

[00:30:45] And she just became a very avid reader, and she had a very wonderful interaction with a librarian who took her around the library and just gave her a bunch of recommendations. And she realized that she wanted to be able to be that person for someone else who was going through a hard time and was shown kindness and patience and was provided with a bunch of really good books to read to help her get through a tough time in her life. So that becomes her goal. She loves to read, but she also wants to share the love of reading with other people.

ANNE: I love that. Kristina, you were saying that Noelle was largely inspired by your student loans. Do I have that right?

KRISTINA: Yes. I just have a lot of student loans, because I went to grad school in New York City. And I remember thinking... and this was early on of when I was in the preliminary stages of thinking of the idea of The Summer Girlfriend, of fleshing it out. And I thought, "Ugh, I wish somebody would just come along and give me a bunch of money." You know? "I wish someone would just come along and pay off those loans for me."

[00:31:56] And then I thought about Jeremiah. Like, wouldn't it be lovely if you knew some guy who was handsome and kind, and... you know, of course, he's not perfect. He's got his own emotional wounds going on. But if he came up to you and was like, "You don't have to do anything. I'll just pay off your loans for you."

So that's sort of what ends up happening to Noelle. He's like, "I will pay your remaining tuition if you come to my family's beach house with me and pretend to be my girlfriend for the summer." And she's like, "Oh, gosh, so hard. You're so hot. Of course I'll do it," you know? It's not hard money to make. But that was the inspiration is just thinking about the student loans that I currently owe.

ANNE: Well, I enjoyed reading about that and her summer at Heart Beach. Kristina, for those heading to the beach themselves this summer, or for those who are not heading to the beach and really wish they were, I'd love to hear about some of your favorite beach reads.

[00:32:57] KRISTINA: Yes, of course. So my first recommendation is going to be a novel called Only for the Week, and this is by Natasha Bishop.

ANNE: Oh, I don't know this.

KRISTINA: This is a romance novel, and is a true beach read because it takes place in Tulum, Mexico. A woman named Janelle is in Mexico for her sister's wedding. She's the maid of honor. But the twist is that her sister is actually getting married to her ex-boyfriend who she broke up with years ago. She doesn't care about him anymore, but there's tension there, of course, that her sister ended up dating her ex.

But she ends up getting in a very flirtatious situation with the best man, who is, of course, the groom's best friend. So it's a lot of messy drama between those four people. But they decide that they are only going to be in a very short fling for the week that they're in Mexico. But of course, when you decide that, you know, we're only going to be together for this limited period of time, things don't always end up like that.

[00:33:59] My other recommendation is a novel called Curvy Girl Summer by an author named Danielle Allen. This is a novel about a woman named Aaliyah who is determined to find a boyfriend by the end of the summer where she's having her big 30th birthday party. So she goes on a series of dates, trying to find different guys who could be the potential boyfriend to bring to this party.

And she goes on all of her dates at the same bar. And she ends up striking up a very interesting friendship with a very cute bartender, and it turns out that the person who might be the best boyfriend for her could have been in front of her the whole time.

So those are two that I off the bat recommend because they take place during summer and have very summery feeling, perfect for the beach. This is a book that published earlier this year. It's called One and Only by Maurene Goo.

[00:34:56] Maurene is another author who started out writing YA and who is now writing... I would say One and Only toes that line between women's fiction and romance. But this is a story about a woman who... she's Korean American, and in her family they have the secret magical gift of being able to read into people's past lives and discovering who their soulmates are. So that's how they make their living. No one knows how it's done, but people pay a lot of money for them to figure out who their soulmates are.

And she is nearing her 40th birthday and she knows her soulmate's name, but she still has not met him. And she ends up falling for someone who's a little bit younger than her. But then it turns out that the person whose name is on the note for her soulmate is this guy's boss. So she ends up in this very interesting love triangle between the younger guy that she likes and then his boss, who she also really likes.

[00:36:00] This was the first novel that I've read in a long time that had a love triangle, but really I genuinely did not know how it was going to end. And I thought that was really refreshing. I really love Maurene's books. So those are three novels that I highly recommend people take to the beach this summer.

ANNE: Ooh, thank you. What's the best book you've read this year?

KRISTINA: I loved every book that I read this year. Oh, One and Only. I would say One and Only probably. That was probably my favorite book. Another book that I really loved this year was Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson. I had mentioned her before. She writes historical fiction.

This novel talks about a little-known history of mixed-race children in Germany post-World War II and how there was a woman who was a wife to a soldier who was stationed in Germany, and how she discovered this orphanage filled with mixed-race children, and this is usually from Black men who were stationed in Germany but then weren't allowed to marry the German women that they met or for various different reasons the children were given up. And she worked to get these children adopted by couples in the United States. A very interesting, you know, multiple perspectives. That was also a really good novel.

[00:37:23] ANNE: Yeah, I really enjoyed that myself.

KRISTINA: Oh, you read it, too?

ANNE: Yeah, yeah.

KRISTINA: Okay, perfect.

ANNE: I really like her. And Kristina, what's one book that you're really excited about reading this summer, high on your priority list?

KRISTINA: Oh, gosh. I would definitely say Score by Kennedy Ryan. This is book two in her... oh, gosh, I'm blanking on the name of the series. But the first book is called Real, and that's one of my favorite romance novels. Essentially, the series is about a group of creatives who are coming together to make a biopic about a woman named Dessie Blue who was a Harlem Renaissance figure.

The first book is about the director who falls in love with the lead actress, and Score is about the screenwriter and the man who's making the score for the novel. I know that there's an actual title for that job, but I'm just blanking right now. I'm thinking score creator. I know that's not right. But it's a romance between the two of them. It's a second-chance romance, because they had dated previously in college, and now they're working on this film together.

[00:38:27] KRISTINA: I loved Reel and so Score is definitely high up on my list to read once I hand in this next book.

ANNE: That's good motivation. Kristina, thank you so much for talking books with me today. Is there anything else you want to tell our listeners?

KRISTINA: Thank you so much for having me. I guess what else I would like to say is that I hope that if you read The Summer Girlfriend, that it feels like a wonderful beachy read, even if you're not at the beach, and you're just reading on your lunch break at work. I hope it transports you to a beachy, summery environment.

ANNE: I mean, I love to take a good book to the beach, but also a good book can take you anywhere.

KRISTINA: Yes, I agree.

ANNE: Amazing. Well, we wish you well as you go out into the world to talk with readers in person so often about the book, and hope you have your best reading summer.

KRISTINA: Thank you so much.

[00:39:25] ANNE: Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kristina, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Kristina at her website, Kristinaforest.com, as well as on Instagram. And we have all those links and the full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

Follow our show on Instagram @WhatShouldIReadNext, and share your favorite summer episodes with a friend who might enjoy listening too. That would help us a lot, so thank you in advance.

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[00:40:12] Thanks 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.

[00:00:00] EMILY HENDERSON: In preparation for this, I reread some of the short stories and essays with the pen in hand, and I was like, "Oh, now I really know this story. I like short stories so much that I don't read them, I guess."

ANNE BOGEL: Well, it sounds like perhaps you really want to do justice to them.

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.

[00:00:50] Readers, our 2026 MMD Summer Reading Guide, the 15th edition, is available now. For instant gratification, you want the digital experience. Go to modernmrsdarcy.com/shop and get your Summer Reading Guide. You'll get the 38-page Summer Reading Guide PDF immediately, and you'll get access to the unboxing experience, where I walk you through the guide book by book so that you can decide how your reading time is best spent this summer.

Now, if you want a beautiful, delivered by snail mail, hold it in your hand, professionally printed 38-page guide, well, this is the second year that has been available. I have already told you these were going, going, gone so fast, and we sold out of that batch. They sold so quickly, in fact, that Will Bogel says we have to order more. So more are on the way.

If you want yours, you still have a chance. Go to, again, modernmrsdarcy.com/shop. What you want to order is the Summer Reading Guide print magazine. It will say very clearly this is the one that's coming in the mail. Go order yours, and it will be in your mailbox, US only, I'm afraid, very, very soon.

[00:02:06] Now, while you're at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop, you can check out our ever-popular Well-Read hat, our awesome tote bags — we're very picky about tote bags, us book people — our book darts, our pencils, our postcards, our new sorority sweatshirts. Lots of good stuff there. All that and more, modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

Readers, I love a summer reading project, as I'm sure you know, of any style. But when I read the submission from today's guest and her quest for what she is calling a short summer of reading, well, I had to know more, and I wanted to talk about it on the show.

So today, Emily Henderson joins me. She is a mom of four, writer, and runner with a passion for home design, and she loves a project. While Emily came to reading later in life, she's found through trial and error what really works for her, and these days, for reasons we talk about, that's often books in an audio format.

[00:03:05] This summer, though, Emily would love to prioritize daily reading on the page so she can build that stamina back up again. And to do so, she's looking for short reading experiences that will not only get her reading print, but also serve as a satisfying substitute for social media that she wants to spend less time on. Emily is looking for short stories, essay collections, memoirs and essays, and micro histories that deliver the quick bite-sized reading experience she is hoping to log every day of summer break, her short summer.

She'd especially appreciate stories that leave her breathless or make her think about them long after she finishes. I have ideas, and I can't wait to dive in. Readers, let's get to it.

Emily, welcome to the show.

EMILY: Hello, Anne. Thank you for having me.

ANNE: Oh, the pleasure's mine. Thank you for bringing yourself and your reading life and your summer project to me and to our listeners.

EMILY: Yes, I'm excited.

[00:04:00] ANNE: Me too. Emily, let's start by just giving our readers a glimpse of who you are. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

EMILY: Yes. So, 40-something, mom of four, and I live with my family in Santa Barbara, California.

ANNE: Lovely. Emily, you are here today to talk about books, but we'd love to hear what's your life like. Like, what are you up to when you're not talking about books and reading on a Tuesday?

EMILY: I would describe myself as I'm a stay-at-home mom, I'm a runner, and I'm a reader, basically in that order. And so most of my days start at dawn, and I typically go for a run. My oldest is 15, my middle is 13, and the little baby is 3. So I'm kind of in, I guess I would say, two seasons of life in that I have the older teenagers who keep me busy with their emotions and after-school activities and academics and all of that, and then I have the very physical nature of having a preschooler.

[00:05:10] Between juggling that and trying to find time to carve out space for myself and my personal life and meet with friends, that's pretty much what keeps me busy.

ANNE: Emily, thank you for sending in the submission to our form at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest. Just sharing that in case any listeners are like, "What is she talking about?" But I gathered from your submission that you are a project person, and not just in your reading life. Is that actually the case?

EMILY: Oh, yes, absolutely. I love a good project. One of the things I said in my submission was that during the pandemic, my husband works in a hospital, and with all the stress of having kids at home for school, I needed to find a way to get out of the house.

I had heard about some people running every street in their city, and so I said, "Okay, that's what I'm going to do with my weekends." And I called into our local bookstore, Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara, and I ordered a... I was like, "Hey, here are some books that I want, but also, can I get a map?" An actual physical street map of Santa Barbara.

[00:06:28] I literally opened it up and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go run this neighborhood." And I decided I was going to run every street in our city. It took me about 16 months, and it ended up being 500 miles or something like that. But it was just a wonderful way to see my city and to kinda just see it from the street level and really feel like I got to know kind of the whole area, because I literally have been on every single street in the city. So yeah, I'm definitely a project person.

And then a couple years ago, my husband and I bought our house in, let's see, 2011, and in 2023 we decided we were going to take it all the way down to the foundation and remodel it from essentially the ground up. And that was just another project we embarked on, so that was a lot of internet searching. Pinterest and I were like best friends for the entire time.

[00:07:37] We just made every decision. We literally decided where all the light switches were going, what color were the windows, and how big were our hallways were going to be. I have a friend who's about 10 years older than I am, and she always said, "You know, the great test of a marriage is to hang wallpaper together. And if you can make it through that, then you're good." And I said, "Well, we made it through remodeling our whole house, so we must be doing okay."

ANNE: Oh, yikes. I have some wallpaper I'd like to be hung. I don't think I want to do it with my husband. Okay. That's really interesting context since we're talking to you about a reading project today, or I don't know, maybe we'll find out what it is and how committed you are to it after our conversation. But I hope you leave more excited, not less.

Emily, tell us about your reading life.

[00:08:34] EMILY: It's interesting that I became an adult who is literally never without a book, because when I was a kid, I was very late to learning how to read. And the fact that I would kind of hide that I did not know how to read. I got very good at figuring out context clues and all of these things. And it probably wasn't until fifth grade that I really felt like, "Oh, wait, I just read that book and I understood it."

It was still a struggle through elementary and high school, but I was able to kind of work through and then I just really discovered a love for literature when I was in college. I was an English major of all things. And when you're an English major in college, it's a different kind of reading in that it's like Milton and ancient British literature and The Iliad and The Odyssey and Heart of Darkness and all these classics.

[00:09:37] But I also got to take a really fun class called Detective Fiction, where we read Sherlock Holmes, of course, but then Carl Hiaasen, who I still laugh out loud when I read his books. And then after college, it was kind of like, "Okay, now what?"

But I graduated in 2002, and you would have thought like, Oh, I'll be done with reading. But that was the explosion of Jennifer Weiner's books, and In Her Shoes, and all of those books, and they were just like... I don't know if easy breezy is the best way to describe them, but they were just great books to be reading when you don't want to read hard stuff, but they're still well-written, go down easy. I think one of the things you say is like, "Easy reading means hard writing." And I can imagine that that's exactly how those books come to be.

[00:10:35] Now, as an adult, I'm just never without a book. The one thing that has changed in probably the last eight or 10 years is that I'm almost exclusively reading through the audio format. So I just kinda miss reading on the page. I miss that deep work of underlining and highlighting and going to Google and looking up things. I really just miss that deep reading.

So while I listen to 75-ish books a year, I'm kind of wondering if maybe what I'm needing is less actual titles, but deeper reading on the page.

[00:11:23] ANNE: I saw that in a past submission you'd sent in that you said you read X number of books the previous year, and that was too many.

EMILY: Yes.

ANNE: Would you say more about that?

EMILY: There's just so many great stories and I want to consume them all. But that is absolutely unavailable to anyone. I think I find myself not necessarily FOMO, but just like, "Oh, that looks so great. Okay, I've gotta get through it fast." It's almost like this race to read all of the great literature that there ever was.

Then I think there was a year where I was like 75-ish, and I was like, "This was too much," because I felt like I looked back over that list, and I didn't even remember. Like, "Oh, I did read that? I guess I did. I remember that cover, but I have no idea what happened in that book."

[00:12:17] But also, like what I was saying about how being an English major, I still remember the gist of scenes that I remember reading back in college, which was a long time ago. And so I feel like if I slowed down, still read audio because I love that format, but that I replaced some of those books with books on the page, it will help me slow down a little bit and kind of consume the story versus, I don't know, I guess get a deeper understanding.

ANNE: That is really useful to keep in mind. Emily, this is really interesting and great context as we explore what you want in your reading life in the months to come and how I can help. I know you've brought a specific project that I've now referenced several times to the podcast today. Would now be a good time to tell us all about it before we go forward?

EMILY: Yeah, I think that's perfect.

[00:13:16] ANNE: Okay. What do you have in mind? And I'm wondering if it's a natural extension of what you've been describing just now.

EMILY: During the summer, I want to read a short story or an essay every day for the summer, and what I've been loosely calling this is called Short Summer. And the idea being that the idea of reading a whole novel day after day on the page kind of feels overwhelming right now. But if I sit down, and I'm like, "Oh, I just have like 20-ish pages, 20 to 40 pages to read," I can find that time throughout the day, or even if I just have a good chunk of time while the kids are off at school to sit down.

And then it feels like not only can I get the beginning, middle, and end of a story or a thought or idea from an essay, but it feels like I'm more experiencing it than running through it like I might if I were listening to an audiobook while doing other things like dishes or laundry. I feel like it will force me to sit down, pen in hand, and really absorb the idea of what an author is trying to say.

[00:14:37] The thing I like about short stories is that they're so compact, and so much is expected out of... you know, every word seems to be important, whereas a novel just has kind of like forever to talk. Maybe not forever, but you get what I'm saying.

ANNE: Yes. Emily, some readers would notice that they want to do more deep reading, and they might choose a book and do some deep reading. Would you tell me how the project nature specifically appeals? I'm endlessly fascinated by how readers seek to make their reading lives fun and enticing and make their plans work for them and their personalities. I'm wondering if I'm projecting or making assumptions or if marrying the project with the wider aims is really critical here.

[00:15:30] EMILY: It makes a lot of sense because, like my running project, it was very simple. All I had to do was I needed a map and a Sharpie and a GPS app, which I used Strava, and I just picked a neighborhood and I went. Whereas this project with short stories and essays, it's essentially like I've got this collection of short stories, all I need is this book and a pen, and then I'm off. So it's very simple. And if I just map out one chunk of time, maybe it's like 45 minutes or an hour, to me, a project, if I'm going to complete it, I very much could make things more complicated, but if I want to complete the project, it's gotta be simple.

ANNE: I was instantly captivated by Short Summer. Obviously, the length is a factor here. Tell me about your relationship with short stories and essays.

[00:16:30] EMILY: Well, as an English major, you read a lot of anthologies, and so I wouldn't say that I have a whole lot of current connection with short stories themselves since college, really. I didn't really pick up a whole lot of short stories until one of my selections is a collection of short stories that you mentioned, I think, in one of your Quick Lit things, and I was like, "Oh, that looks cool." And I listened to it on audio, and I was blown away.

Again, it's that economy of language that's required in a short story that's just so wonderful that always draws me to them. But I kind of forget that I like them because they're not that popular. Like, short story collections are not that popular now.

[00:17:21] ANNE: I was just reading something in Publishing News, industry take, where the premise was there has never been a market for anthologies. Period. The end. Readers love short stories, writers love short stories, and also this is not profitable, or it almost feels even viable format, and yet they keep coming out and readers keep coming to them.

EMILY: Yeah. Well, because... Actually, I take that back. Lily King came out with a short story collection a few years ago, and I remember loving every single story that was in it.

ANNE: I still have a bookmark in that from several years ago. Thank you for... This episode has actually made me think, "What are the collections that I've begun?"

EMILY: But again, I listened to them on audio. I just remember loving all of them, but I don't really remember the gist of all of them. In preparation for this, I reread some of the short stories and essays with a pen in hand, and I was like, "Oh, now I really know this story. I like short stories so much that I don't read them, I guess."

[00:18:25] ANNE: Well, it sounds like perhaps you really want to do justice to them.

EMILY: Yes, yes.

ANNE: Which ironically might make you less likely to pick them up because it has to be like the right time. You need the space, you need the pen, you need the chair.

EMILY: Yes.

ANNE: Where an audiobook, you can listen in the car.

EMILY: All the time, yeah.

ANNE: Or whatever it is you're doing.

EMILY: Yeah, yeah. And so I feel like if I have the project connected to it, then I'll make the time. I'll be able to fit that in.

ANNE: Emily, it sounds like you know so much about your reading life. You've read short story collections in the past that you've really enjoyed. I know several of your favorites are going to be essay collections. What brings you to the podcast with this project? I'd love to know what I can add that you feel like you're still missing.

[00:19:06] EMILY: I guess maybe direction on what am I missing in the literary world that's either classic or contemporary published that maybe I wouldn't know about in terms of short stories or essay collections. I think there are more nonfiction essays out there. Those are a little bit more readily available. But I guess it's more direction, like, "Hey, here's something that maybe you hadn't thought about." Or if you're hearing something in my responses that's like, "I think you might want to try this author."

ANNE: Okay. So do I get to be the outside POV who looks at what would enhance this project? What might you want to read that you haven't even considered yet?

EMILY: Yeah. I think that would be really... Especially when it comes to nonfiction.

ANNE: And I hope that talking about it helps it feel even more immediate and makes you even more excited to get started.

EMILY: Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:20:00] ANNE: Okay. So we know where you're going in the future. We're going to flesh that out a little bit with identifying some more potential titles. But first we're going to look back at what you've enjoyed and haven't enjoyed in the past.

Emily, you know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one you don't, and what you've been reading lately before we come back to Short Summer and your options there. How did you choose these books today?

EMILY: Well, I had to narrow it down to it being short stories and essays, so that made it easier because I haven't read too many of them. I was introduced to a short story collection by you called The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck. This is a collection of interlinking short stories, mostly set in New England.

The way it's structured is in what's called a hook and chain, which is actually what poems or songs are done, where the first and last line rhymes, and then the middle lines are all couplets. So that's how he structured these short stories, where the first story is kind of a standalone in the beginning, and then there's what you'd call couplets of short stories in the middle, and then the last short story is connected to the first short story.

[00:21:24] And I thought it was just a really interesting way to organize a collection. But the theme of all of them kind of being set in a similar area, discussing first love and all of that does kind of make them feel... Like, it doesn't feel like they're all willy-nilly short stories. They're just all kind of together, even though they're different stories, but they follow similar themes.

The title story is about two musicians, Lionel and David, both very talented, and they fall in love traveling through New England recording American folk songs. And this is set back in 1916. They do it on these wax phonographic cylinders, which when he was describing it, I was having a hard time thinking of it until I read the second story where she described them as looking like toilet paper rolls. Which was a really... I was like, "Oh yeah, now I have a good image."

[00:22:25] What I liked about these two interlinking stories is that the last story almost answers the questions of, like, how do you really know someone you love, and kind of the intensity of a first love. And there's one really great line that Lionel is kind of telling this story of his youth when he's in his 80s, I think, and he says, "You know, I look back on that time, and it's not with sadness or grief," but that he looks at his life like it could've been an inch longer. And I thought that was just such a beautiful way to... I guess you're looking back and being like, "Oh, that could have been different." And just a beautiful line that kind of encompasses everything.

It's also beautifully written. These stories are great. Again, I think those short lines talk about how compact a short story has to be, but also kind of open. Even though it's one line, it opens up a whole world that maybe you didn't know was there.

[00:23:31] And to me, I love the ending of a short story that kind of leaves you breathless and leaves you with a little bit of an ellipsis that is still satisfying. Like you don't feel like, "Oh, I want to know more." You're like, "Oh, but there's this whole other story." Like the story kinda keeps going without you, I guess that's what I think. You're lingering or thinking or wondering, and that's what I love about that one.

ANNE: Okay. Well, I'm really glad that worked for you. Emily, what's the second book you love?

EMILY: This is a collection of essays. It's called The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green. This came out in 2021. I felt like I couldn't escape the cover. I felt like it was everywhere. Maybe that's just because we were all home during the pandemic.

[00:24:25] Honestly, it's a joyful book. It's like 40-ish very short, two to three pages of essays of... I guess, would you call them essays? They're reviews of things like the internet and Diet Dr Pepper and Halley's Comet.

Green writes with such a joyful melancholy about him. He's just so aware of the bittersweetness of life. One of the lines I loved was, "We all know how loving ends, but I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I'm here." And I just think that's just such a wonderful sentiment to be like, "Look at this world that we're in."

And there is a little bit of COVID talk in there, so if people aren't ready for that, they might not want to go there. But I really liked it, because I'm kind of in a space where I want to look back at COVID and be like, "Wow, that was a really big thing that happened in our world. Let's think about it."

[00:25:32] ANNE: Yeah. Okay, so that's an example of an essay collection you loved. The John Green collection is really varied. He talks about Diet Dr Pepper and Wintry Mix and the Indy 500. Some of the things he discusses are on the surface fun, I almost want to say frivolous, but I don't know that joy feels frivolous right now, because he loves Diet Dr Pepper. But some from the jump are deep and moving. What is it about that reading experience that you really loved as a reader?

EMILY: I think it's just the bittersweetness. I think some people look at bittersweet as like there's some negativity around that. I've always looked at it as like that is the juice of life, where you can encompass something so light and Anne, like you said, frivolous along with deep and heart-centered. And that is what life is. And I think that's why I'm so attracted to that kind of writing in nonfiction, that it's like you can talk to me about something that's hard, but it's also beautiful at the same time. That something that is good doesn't always have to only be joyful.

ANNE: So you liked the bite-sized complexity?

[00:27:03] EMILY: Yes. Yeah. And I also just like John Green as a person, too. He seems very relatable to me. And so maybe that's why it's like I kind of felt like I was reading the inside thoughts of a person I just enjoy knowing, his public persona obviously, but I think I just like that part of it, too.

ANNE: Okay. That's good to hear. What did you choose for your third favorite?

EMILY: This is kind of more of a collection of nonfiction essays that's like, I would call memoir, like a memoir in essays. And it's This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. They're all previously published, or they are addresses or speeches that she gave. So previously published in like The Washington Post or Vogue and other outlets.

[00:27:58] I'll just touch on two of the essays. One of them is The Getaway Car. This one is like part writing advice and part really... Like if you're somebody who likes to know about wonderful authors like Ann Patchett, you get a lot of juicy tidbits of what her life was like before she was Ann Patchett, capital Ann Patchett.

And the way she describes the whole idea of like you have this wonderful idea for a novel in your head, and it's just so perfect, and it's the greatest work of literature, and then getting it on paper is like impossible. And so I love that. And David Sedaris, if you can take a compliment from David Sedaris, says that this was the best essay he's ever read about writing, which I thought was pretty high praise coming from him.

ANNE: Whoa.

[00:28:55] EMILY: Yes, it was wonderful. And then the title essay, which is called This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, it actually begins by telling a lot about divorce and how her parents' divorce and her first marriage kind of falling apart. And it's done in a way that is respectful. It's not like a big rant. It's very interesting to follow along the story.

And then she basically ends with she was in kind of like a long-term boyfriend situation who also had gone through a divorce, and then they were there together for 11 years, and they end up getting married based on the fact that he had some kind of medical emergency, and she had to go fly and see him, and it was a whiteout snowstorm, and it was very cinematic and romantic. And then you're like, "You know, this is how this happy marriage kind of began."

[00:29:54] Then also throughout the essay collection, she touches on this relationship with her current husband, Karl, and you kind of... You don't get just the beginning of the marriage. You also get how you get there in the other essays that are in the collection.

I just found them really well written, but they also kind of flow together even though they were written totally separately for different magazines. I think also people who liked Ruth Reichl's Save Me the Plums, and the reason is because it reminds you of the time when magazines were king. These gorgeous magazines. There's an essay in there of her writing for Gourmet. And I love magazines. I wish magazines would come back in a big way, but we might be past that. But if you are somebody who liked Save Me the Plums, I think you'll definitely like this one as well.

[00:30:53] ANNE: Okay. Well, that's an interesting comparison, and now I want to reread both books. Emily, would you now tell me about a book that was not a good fit for you? And I'd love to hear what it was that didn't work.

EMILY: Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert. This is a collection of essays on... It's kind of like looking back at the '90s and 2000s, and feminism of that era, and kind of looking back essentially like, "Hey, maybe we weren't so good to women back then," is kind of the gist.

It's a wonderful book for nostalgia, especially the way she talks about the comedies of the early 2000s, and the way she kind of talks about women and feminism and the way they were treated. If you like culture discussions, those parts are done really well. But I didn't feel like this author had... I don't know. I struggled with knowing, "Okay, what did she come here to say? And what does that mean about our current situation?"

[00:32:08] I think the essays that I like both touch on a theme that's interesting, but they also bring it forward to like, okay, well, why now? Why are you writing this now? I think that's important when I'm reading a good essay, especially when it's about an idea that's not a personal essay. It's an essay about big ideas. I want to know, well, how does that reflect on my life and how I think about things? So I think that it was kind of missing a thesis, I guess.

ANNE: Okay. Do you happen to know if you like that in your short stories as well?

EMILY: Like the author came here to say something?

ANNE: Yeah.

EMILY: I think so, yeah.

ANNE: Okay.

EMILY: I like to try to figure out, like, okay, what is this author trying to do?

ANNE: Ooh.

[00:33:02] EMILY: And I guess that could encompass what are they trying to say about the larger world, or even just about these characters. Like, what are we trying to represent here?

ANNE: That's helpful. Emily, what have you been reading lately?

EMILY: Lately I read a great collection called Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. This is kind of another look back at the pandemic, and it's like part cultural criticism, part memoir, where Naomi Klein was confused with another famous Naomi, and that may have caused some consternation in her life.

I really liked the author. She describes the mirror world. I found it useful to think of that idea as developing empathy for whatever I'm railing against right now. There's somebody on the other side of that mirror who is railing against the same thing, but from the other direction. And I feel like reading these essays that were really well-written and also interesting and definitely a topic for our time, it helped me kind of develop that empathy for the other side of the mirror.

[00:34:16] ANNE: Okay, that's very interesting. So, Emily, you loved The History of Sound, the short story collection by Ben Shattuck, The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, and This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. Not for you was Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert, and lately you've been reading Doppelganger by Naomi Klein.

Emily, we are finding options, short stories, and essay collections for your Short Summer project, a short story or essay every day over summer break, and you want to discover great stuff but also prioritize daily reading on the page. You mentioned in your submission, too, that you are hoping these short bursts of reading will be a much more satisfying substitute for social media. I imagine you're not the only one thinking along those lines right now.

[00:35:05] EMILY: Yes, I would like to go back to the days where I spent my time reading with books on the page, because that's actually something that probably, I would say, when I got into social media more is probably when I stopped reading on the page more. Now that I think about it, I'm realizing this in real time, if you can tell.

ANNE: Okay. Well, that sounds like an important observation. I mean, there's so much that you could possibly read, and we both know you are well aware of that. But something I really have in mind is what you said in your submissions, that you like short stories that leave you breathless. In your submission you said, like, the ending of Passing by Nella Larsen, or Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? And also essays that make you think about them long after you finish them, like These Precious Days by Ann Patchett.

So I think I have an idea of what kind of reading experience you're going for there, but do you want to say more about that? I mean, how am I capturing it, like mirroring it back to you? Am I getting it right?

[00:36:13] EMILY: Absolutely. I think that the most satisfying part about reading a short story that does leave you in that "oh my gosh" moment is just that it... like I said before, it's like the story just keeps going on even though it's done, and I can still experience it even after I'm done reading.

ANNE: And also maybe that it still matters?

EMILY: Perfect. It still matters, yes. And at the end of a good essay, it still matters. Yes.

ANNE: We are not going to load up your TBR with 30 different titles today, but we always invite readers, request, beg readers to send in ideas for further books that you or readers who really resonate with what you're saying that you will enjoy, may enjoy reading next, and to go to whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com and comment in show notes, or sometimes people tell us on Instagram.

[00:37:10] So with that in mind, I'm going to share that you said in your submission that you love essays that take a specific thing that happened to the author and manage to make it universal. You love commentary on culture or investigative journalism, pop culture, literary criticism, true crime, politics, and many more fields.

And you love obscure micro histories of something like... you tossed out bananas in your submission. So readers, I'm just going to get us started today, but I'm sure you have so many more ideas. Bring 'em. We want to hear 'em. Can we jump in?

EMILY: Yes, let's go for it.

ANNE: First, I want to give you two resources. The first is Episode 452 of What Should I Read Next? with our guest, Jessica Crockett. It's called Get a Little Taste of a Lot of Good Stuff, and it aired in fall of 2024, but you could listen right now. It's evergreen. She wanted to talk about short stories and exploring more short stories, and we talked about all kinds of collections and standalones that she may enjoy reading next.

[00:38:11] So I recommend listening to the episode, but also you can go straight to the show notes and you can see the full list of titles we talked about. So even without listening, that's a good resource for those interested in exploring more. Now, that is short story specific, not essays.

We also did a Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club. We called it our own curated short story collection in 2024, and we listed a bunch of short stories for our readers. I'll share that link in... I'll share it with you, Emily, and I'll share it in show notes for those who are members. But I'll just toss off a few. We shared a George Saunders story, a Jhumpa Lahiri story, Weike Wang, Joanne Harris, Deesha Philyaw, and we shared The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury. I think he could be such a good classic author for you to explore, but we can say more about that in a moment.

[00:39:04] Emily, I'm definitely keeping in mind the idea that you want a story that leaves you breathless. I'm imagining that something that could look like is there being a change in perspective or understanding at the very end that makes you go, "What? What just happened?" Like maybe sends you back to the beginning, or something that makes you think, "Oh, I was sure it was going this one place, and I realized I didn't understand anything at all."

EMILY: Yes, exactly. I love a story that does that.

ANNE: Okay. In that case, I'd like to surface a crime collection, or how about a short story collection by a crime fiction author, Laura Lippman, for you called Seasonal Work. Is this one you know?

EMILY: No, not at all.

ANNE: Okay. Well, it came out maybe peak pandemic. It came out a few years back. But she is a well-known Baltimore area crime writer who is prolific. She has published a book a year as long as I've been paying attention to her work for 10 or 15 years now.

[00:40:05] And some of these stories have been previously published. Some were written specifically for the collection. So, as she was pulling these together with her editor, she said that really the stories fell into three different buckets. There's a section about Baltimore, and also, if you're a longtime reader of Laura Lippman, she has written a Baltimore PI protagonist named Tess Monaghan in multiple books.

So there's a section about Baltimore and Tess. There's a bunch of stories about girls and a bunch of stories about infidelity, which she calls the old crime staple. And she especially liked that the stories about infidelity addressed every point on the triangle: the unknowing other woman, the betrayed spouse, and also the cheating spouse, and there were some fun dynamics there.

[00:40:53] Something else I like about her is that she's very conscious of something that I heard you hint at, that novels may be easier, but short stories feel like a high-wire act, and you really have to deliver in less than 20,000 words, or for some of her stories, less than 5,000.

But she is so good at portraying what seems like an ordinary domestic kind of tale and turning it into something, to satisfied readers, deliciously dark and pleasantly off-kilter just in the course of a couple of sentences. These are tightly written on an individual level. They are all very varied, but hang together really nicely as a collection.

The beginning story, "Seasonal Work," is based on something she saw as a journalist when she was new in the field, and she said it was never proven that what she thought she was seeing was actually what she was seeing, but she believes it to this day.

[00:41:49] But it's about a family on the take posing as holiday helpers. It starts with this heartwarming scene that becomes something else, all narrated by one of the kids who's involved. How is this collection sounding to you?

EMILY: It's perfect. I love crime fiction anyway, and this would be a new author to me even, and it sounds great.

ANNE: Okay. I am glad to hear it. Now, I don't know if this is good news, bad news, or just news, but this collection is really great on audio. It has a full cast of narrators, but they have definitely chosen who will narrate each story with care. And if you want to mix it up, or... You know what? You can make the call, but it's been found to be really satisfying on audio for many readers.

EMILY: It's good to know, because my new favorite thing is to listen on audio while I'm reading on the page.

[00:42:48] ANNE: So you can have the experience of the audio, but also gain those benefits — I mean, this does sound like school, but I guess you were an English major — of doing the deep work of reading and writing and marking up?

EMILY: Yes.

ANNE: Okay. I love that for you. More stories with a little bit of a twist. I love So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan for you. Have you read anything by Claire Keegan?

EMILY: No.

ANNE: Okay. She's an Irish writer working now who really, I think, blew up on this side of the Atlantic with Small Things Like These, and her short story collection, Foster, that was packaged as a short little novella with an intro.

So both are so worth your time. Foster is a short story. Small Things Like These is a novella. But she's widely admired for being just one of the best writers working today. I loved Foster personally. I mean, I love all her work. I love her work. So I read Small Things Like These, and then I read Foster, and then I came to So Late in the Day and was expecting bittersweet, heartfelt, moving... Somehow her stories are bracing and gentle at the same time.

EMILY: Mm.

[00:44:01] ANNE: But then I read this collection, So Late in the Day, which is different. It's more like, "Gasp, what just happened? Oh, my." I didn't know Claire Keegan got dark, but this story collection gets dark.

The subtitle of this book is something like Stories of Men and Women. It might actually be, importantly, Women and Men. And there are three stories in this collection. One was published 25 years ago. The others are much more recent, and they've been curated and expanded with the way that they were chosen to be together in this collection and talk to each other.

But these characters are very flawed. I feel like everyone starts out a little bit domestically, but you see... I don't know. I thought I was seeing ordinary people in ordinary moments, but they don't work out that way. And what we end up with is women in extraordinary situations, sometimes perilous situations. I feel Claire Keegan kind of giggling as she's writing these and winking at the reader as they're going along.

Emily, is this sounding good at all?

EMILY: It sounds so good.

[00:45:15] ANNE: Okay. Then I won't overthink it too much.

EMILY: You've chosen all of my favorite things: winking at the reader, an author who maybe laughs at her own jokes while she's writing them. That's what I was imagining. Bracing and gentle. All of the adjectives were right up my alley.

ANNE: Okay. I am glad to hear it. Also, you need some essay collections. And you said that you love to read something kind of peculiar and unexpected, like a detailed history of the banana?

EMILY: Mm-hmm.

ANNE: I understand that wasn't specifically about bananas, but it did make me think of a book by Aimee Nezhukumatathil called World of Wonders. The subtitle will help you know what to expect. It's In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments.

She narrates her own audiobook, and it's fabulous. I should have told you, if there is an audiobook of So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, I would listen to that in a heartbeat because she's Irish, and I want that accent in my ear, but I have zero personal experience with that. But I have listened to Aimee Nezhukumatathil before, and I love her voice.

[00:46:23] She's a poet writing nonfiction, as she's done with a couple of collections. And what I love about poets writing prose is I just feel like their gift is choosing the exact right words that fall in the exact right order, even when they're writing normal sentences with normal punctuation.

But this is a little bit personal storytelling, memoir-ish, and a whole lot of what she's learned from and observed in the natural world. She's really reveling and viewing the world with wonder and curiosity as she calls you to look at insects that you have or maybe haven't heard of, probably haven't if you're me, and plants, and her own experience just growing up as a kid and now a woman who loved nature and who saw a lot of varied nature as her family moved many times from Kansas to Arizona and then east to New York and Ohio.

[00:47:25] It's great on audio, but if you read the book with your eyes, there are illustrations that are just really lovely and gorgeous and may add to your, I don't know, your like, "Oh," experience of what you're reading. So I think this would be really fascinating, interesting, and also inspiring and calming and grounding. How is this sounding to you?

EMILY: It sounds wonderful. You know, the poets do have a way with words. It's like when a poet writes a novel, you know? You're just like, "Where did you come up with this?" So that definitely appeals to me.

ANNE: Well, I love that, and I'm glad to hear it. Let's go to West Virginia. The book I'm thinking of is actually in this year's Summer Reading Guide. It's Small Town Girls: A Writer's Memoir by Jayne Anne Phillips. Do you know her? She won the Pulitzer in 2024 with Night Watch, but this new release is a memoir in essays that all... I mean, they hang together, but they totally stand alone. I don't believe you would need to read them in order.

[00:48:35] But in it, she's exploring how her West Virginia upbringing, and specifically the small, specific West Virginia hometown she grew up in, shaped her way of seeing the world, her career, her friendships, her entire life. Do you know her?

EMILY: I don't.

ANNE: Well, I like this one for you because it is very extremely uniquely specific, and she goes in... I mean, I imagine she knows. Some people know West Virginia really well. Some people reading this are probably from her hometown, but many of us just don't have a clue. And she knows that she is sharing a unique, otherwise inaccessible experience with... I mean, even I'm practically next door in Kentucky, and I don't know anything about West Virginia.

But when you said that you like books that make the highly specific feel universal, she's amazing at saying, "Look close. Let me tell you what it's like," and then describing an emotional experience that feels so universally human. Or she describes things in such a way where something that I otherwise would've known nothing about, I can look closely and compassionately at.

[00:49:52] So maybe she's describing the legendary Hatfield and McCoy feud, where many people, I think, just know that it's a thing, but she really gets into the details in a way that humanizes the players, and also makes you see how it's relevant a long time ago and relevant today, and why it's a big deal, and what it means. And you're reading about the Hatfields and McCoys, but you know some of those emotions, and you can see them playing out in many places, not just West Virginia.

But she leaves West Virginia, too. She describes writers that she loves that have influenced her greatly, but she also describes things like being sent to a western Kentucky funeral in 1997 because her New York editor was like, "You're from Middle America. It's all the same, right? West Virginia, western Kentucky. Go sit at this girl's funeral," who was murdered in a school shooting that happened in Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997. And she's writing about one specific thing. But what she's writing about is about the broader human experience.

[00:50:52] And these essays are on a theme. And while they're all very friendly with each other and feel like they belong in this collection, they're not strongly linked. So it would be easy to read this book slowly, one essay at a time. You could jump around. You could turn to what interests you most first. She reads her own audio. It's good in that format, if that is useful information. How's this sounding?

EMILY: It sounds wonderful. The last story you talked about, I also listen to Pantsuit Politics, and I know that Sarah Stewart Holland, I think that might have been the shooting she was part of at her high school or... So this is a definite yes.

ANNE: Yes. That's the one. Well, I'm glad to hear you might find that interesting. I feel like I've said Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw so many times on this podcast, but it remains a really interesting pick that is so good on audio, and one that I have recommended fervently, and it feels like nonstop for going on six years now.

[00:51:55] Love Jhumpa Lahiri, especially Interpreter of Maladies. I think Ray Bradbury writes a lot of stories where you have no idea what's happening. You think you know what's happening, you're pretty sure you know what's happening, and then at the very end, he's like, "Oh, this is going to be fun when they read my closing paragraphs." I think you may really enjoy his style if you've not read him.

Toni Morrison has only written one short story, but I think you may enjoy it. That's called Recitatif. And then Hanif Abdurraqib wrote a really interesting, engaging, fantastic on audio, he reads it himself, collection called They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, where he writes about specific songs or musical experiences, but then takes that one specific thing and turns it into the universally human. I think you may enjoy seeing that done with music. Flannery O'Connor is another classic where you get to the end and go, "Wait, what?" Anything jumping out at you here? Is this the kind of variety you're looking for?

[00:52:56] EMILY: Absolutely. I already have The Secret Lives of Church Ladies on my TBR, so that one will definitely get read this summer for sure. I've kind of danced around Ray Bradbury, but never picked any of them up, and so I think that will definitely be on my list, too.

ANNE: He'd be great to take just a little taste of. I mean, it'd be easy to Google Ray Bradbury stories I can read right now, so you can hold it in your hand. You could print off a short story that's available on the internet, and then you could get yourself a collection that you can highlight the bits, if you enjoy what you read a sampling of.

EMILY: Yes, definitely.

ANNE: All right. Emily, I really enjoyed our explorations today. How are you feeling about your project?

EMILY: Oh, I'm feeling very excited, like I have a direction to go in, definitely some new authors that I hadn't considered before. This is great.

[00:53:50] ANNE: All right. Well, I am delighted to hear it. Now, we talked about a lot of potentials, but the ones we really honed in on were Seasonal Work by Laura Lippman, So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and we ended with Small Town Girls by Jayne Anne Phillips. Of those books, what's really jumping out at you? What do you think you might read next in your project?

EMILY: I think I'm going to go for the crime fiction with Seasonal Work. That one sounds like a good place to start.

ANNE: All right. I'm happy to hear it. I hope it's a fit, but regardless, I hope you learn something really interesting about yourself and your reading life with it.

EMILY: Thank you so much.

ANNE: Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Emily, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next for her short summer. Find Emily on Substack and find the full list of titles we talked about today. We have all those links at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

[00:54:45] Follow our show on Instagram at @WhatShouldIReadNext to keep up with summer reading updates and what's new at What Should I Read Next HQ.

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Thanks 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.

[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: So you don't know what the books are.

ASHLEY CORNELIUS: Yeah.

ANNE: I'm going to tell you three books today, and I'll be so curious to see if stuff jumps out at you from the Summer Reading Guide that just would not have occurred to me based on our conversation.

ASHLEY: Yeah, that'll be really interesting. I'm very excited about having books to keep an ear out when we're listening or watching.

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

[00:00:53] Readers, our Summer Reading Guide is a big deal around here. Although every year I'm eager to remind readers that it's not a list of books you should read, it's a list of books you could read. And my hope is that in the guide I give you the information you need to choose titles that will have you feeling oh so very satisfied with how you choose to spend your precious reading time this season. Today's guest knows that reading is personal, and that's why she's here to get my help figuring out which titles from the 2026 guide she should prioritize.

Ashley Cornelius lives in Santa Barbara with her family, where she's a high school science teacher. She loves to talk books with friends, no surprise there, but she's also into sewing, crocheting, and working in her garden. Ashley reached out to tell me about the books she's loved and one she didn't from past Summer Reading Guides, and wondered if I could help her select books from this year's guide that might fit her desired summer vibe. Would I ever.

[00:01:49] Today, I'm helping one particular reader decide what to read next. But more than that, I'm walking you through the thought process of considering what to read next in light of what you already know about your reading life. I hope after listening, you'll feel even more empowered to choose your next summer read. Let's get to it.

Ashley, welcome to the show.

ASHLEY: Hi, thanks for having me.

ANNE: Oh, the pleasure's mine. We were so excited to get your very timely submission in our inbox. Readers, we don't usually talk extremely specifically about recording dates because it doesn't matter, but today it does. Ashley and I are talking on Tuesday, May 12th, which is significant because the Summer Reading Guide comes out in almost exactly 48 hours on Thursday, May 14th, and Ashley's submission was Summer Reading Guide-specific.

So, Ashley, you haven't heard the guide yet, or read or any of it. I happen to know what's in it, and that's going to be important as we talk about your summer reading today. But thanks for bringing that query to the show. I'm excited to dig in.

[00:02:50] ASHLEY: Yeah. I'm happy to get more time with the Summer Reading Guide.

ANNE: And early.

ASHLEY: Yes, very.

ANNE: All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on. Would you start by just giving our readers a glimpse of who you are? Tell us a little about yourself.

ASHLEY: Yeah. So, I live in Santa Barbara with my husband and my teen son, and we have two dogs. And we're very excited because we're going to go pick up my daughter from her first year of college this weekend, so we'll-

ANNE: Oh, congrats.

ASHLEY: Yeah, we'll be back to our full family. It'll be really fun. I teach high school science, and I do a lot of work with my teachers' union, so that's where most of my time goes. And then in my outside of work time is with my church and I do a lot of crafty things like sewing and crocheting and working in my garden.

And then this last year I've been really enjoying doing some ocean swimming with a few of my friends. Also, people would probably just not even recognize me unless I mentioned that my family, my little family of four, we are passionate Chicago Bears fans, and so I'm always looking forward to football season. It's kind of like the one fun end-of-summer thing that happens.

[00:04:07] ANNE: Oh, I love that for you. And I didn't expect that from Santa Barbara.

ASHLEY: Yes. Anytime we see somebody else with Chicago Bears gear, it is like we get a little head nod and... a little community.

Annie: I love that for you. Now, Ashley, would you tell us a little about your reading life?

ASHLEY: I grew up in a household full of books. My parents are big readers, and so my younger life was a lot of The Baby-sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins. And then after I kind of graduated from that, most of my reading was shaped by what my parents had on their bookshelves. So I read a lot of Sue Grafton and Tony Hillerman, and then some fantasy with Anne McCaffrey, and The Lord of the Rings, of course.

Then after college, I kind of just read the same 40 books over and over again. I had my collection, and so I had some John Grisham and Tom Clancy and Da Vinci. Those are ones that I just rotate throughout the year, just kind of pick up the book that I was in the mood for.

[00:05:13] I was not very confident about picking up new books. I would go to the library and basically just pick out the same authors that I already knew that I liked. But then about 10 years ago, first my kids started reading chapter books, and so I had a lot of fun just, you know, reading them for them, but really it was for me, and I just got to experience more of the middle-grade books, which was really fun.

And then my friend at work started a book club, and I started listening to both the Read-Aloud Revival for book recommendations for my kids, and What Should I Read Next? for myself. I also, in the last couple years, kind of co-host a really casual book talk group at my work. With all of those combined, now I'm just filled with new books to read, and just have, yeah, just a full list of books. And then I just kind of have to force myself to reread books because I still love that, but I have so many new ones to try.

[00:06:14] ANNE: So you didn't come to reading as an adult, but it sounds like you had a major change in your reading life as an adult.

ASHLEY: Yes, exactly. Well, really, I think it was just a growing confidence in hearing other people's recommendations and being able to figure out what I thought would be a good fit for me. And I do, fortunately, love a really big variety of fiction. So, like, I will read science fiction and fantasy and romance. Although, it's interesting to me that romantasy doesn't always really connect with me, which seems weird when I like both of them separately, and then sometimes when they're together, they're not my favorite. And realistic fiction with, you know, family drama. So, I think having that big variety and just getting new recommendations from lots of different sources has really expanded what I get to read every year.

ANNE: Well, I'm so glad to hear it. Thanks for telling us about that. Ashley, what brings you to the show today?

[00:07:16] ASHLEY: Well, I just love the Summer Reading Guide. I love the whole experience. I have some friends that will get together and watch it. So-

ANNE: That's fun.

ASHLEY: Yeah, and then we'll talk about it. We'll try to get up, meet together in the middle of the summer and find out which books we really recommend to each other, and then I'll just listen to all of the podcasts that are, like, the behind-the-scenes or when your team is talking about books from the Summer Reading Guide. I don't know, I just love it. I think part of it is just the ritual of a summer for me, and a summer break from work. And so being able to connect fun reading into that.

So when I heard that it was time for the new Summer Reading Guide to come out, I was like, "I'm just going to go back and look at all of the books that I have in my old printed copies of the Summer Reading Guide, and I'm just going to do it. I'm going to treat myself for this day, and I'm going to fill out the application and see what happens."

[00:08:16] ANNE: Well, thanks for doing that. Would you tell me more about watching the Summer Reading Guide Unboxing with friends? I know people do this, and also, I would love to hear the details, because I'm doing something else at that moment in time. But I'd love to hear what you do.

ASHLEY: We've done it a few years now. I think the first time, maybe I took the day off of work and we did the morning version together live. And we, you know, just bring some tasty snacks together, and fun... coffee drinks, and just take notes while it's happening, and then we talked about it after.

The last couple years we haven't been able to watch it live, which means that then we watch it together, the recording, and then we pause it after every section and talk about every section. So, basically, double the time that we spend talking about books in the Summer Reading Guide. It's really fun having a group that we know each other's reading tastes now, and we know what we like from the Summer Reading Guide, so we know which overlapping books that we think we'll like between the three of us.

[00:09:21] ANNE: Well, thank you for telling me about that. Today, when we talk about the books you love and the ones you don't, would you tell us how you chose these?

ASHLEY: Yeah. This was another kind of fun thing is I just dug through my house to find all of the printed reading guides that I had saved. I could find the reading guides from '22, '23, '24, and '25, and I just started flipping through, looking for the ones that stood out to me, that have lasted over time. And I kinda decided that the last year's Summer Reading Guide was maybe too new, and it'd be more fun to stick to the ones that really have stood the test of time in my memory.

And so I stuck to the older ones. Well, and I also picked the books that were specific... that I only read because they were in the Summer Reading Guide. When I was flipping through, I did see other books that I loved, but either I read them later in the year or they just were books that I read mostly because another friend had recommended them. So they were all definitely books from the Summer Reading Guide.

[00:10:34] ANNE: Okay. And the question is, what should you read this year?

ASHLEY: Yes. When I'm listening to the Unboxing guide, I try to get it down to like 10 books for the summer. But of course, there's always the fear of missing out. Like, am I missing out another book that would really be the best one? And also, just, you know, can't read them all, so you're trying to get it down to those top 10. Getting your input will be really fun.

ANNE: Oh, this is so interesting. Okay, so you don't know what the books are.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

ANNE: I'm going to tell you three books today, and I'll be so curious to see if stuff jumps out at you from the Summer Reading Guide that just would not have occurred to me based on our conversation.

ASHLEY: Yeah, that'll be really interesting. I'm very excited about having books to keep an ear out when we're listening or watching.

[00:11:24] ANNE: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing where your summer takes you. But first, let's talk about the books you love. You chose these because you love them from the Summer Reading Guide. What did you know you were looking for? Like, what makes a really standout reading experience for you?

ASHLEY: So during the summer, I definitely have a vibe is the... It's nice to have that word to be able to use. But I definitely have a strong vibe that I want for the summer, which is generally I don't want to be crying the whole book. I have a very low threshold for crying. Like, I will cry pretty easily in any book or movie, and I don't want to be crying the whole way through.

But when I was looking at these books, a moment of sadness and intense emotion turns out to be something that really makes something more memorable for me and stick with me. But I do like the lighter... And anything also that connects just to summer camp or places that I travel for the summer, those are things that just bring me into what I guess I call just a summer mindset of being on break or vacation.

[00:12:29] ANNE: Okay, that sounds lovely. We'll see if I get lucky with choosing locales that you maybe have traveled to or want to. Ashley, are we ready to jump into the books you love?

ASHLEY: Yeah, let's do this.

ANNE: What's the first one you chose?

ASHLEY: So the first one is The River by Peter Heller. I actually find this super interesting because I was just flipping through the summer 2022 reading guide and saw The River, and I was like, "Oh, that has to be it." But it wasn't until I was setting stuff up last night that I realized that I had actually read it in the summer of 2019. And I think I really got it just from the minimalist guide from that year.

And then I think you just had put in a few, like, older books into the 2022 Summer Reading Guide. So it was there. And I even had a note on it saying, "Oh, I loved this one," but I didn't catch it until last night, so I really read it earlier.

[00:13:28] So in The River by Peter Heller, two college friends are spending a few weeks in a very remote river trip, and starting with this fast-moving wildfire, their trip takes this dramatic turn from this peaceful time on the river and outdoors to this survival mode.

I just loved this book because of the gorgeous descriptions of their life on the river. I just felt like I was there with them. I have spent over 30 years of my life going to Southern Oregon to visit family, and we always spent a day or an evening or both on the river. And so reading his descriptions of the river, and even though I'm not a fisher, like his descriptions of how they were fishing just pulled me into that world and reminded me of what I love about being in nature, specifically on a river.

[00:14:25] I also really loved the relationship between the two friends. This book I find is a really good example of the right amount of sadness for me. While I really tend towards the lighter books over the summer, The River does have this really sad moment in it. I saw in my notes, I was like, "I wasn't really happy with the way it ended." But it still stuck with me. The sad moment didn't feel gratuitous. It really made me think about the book for a lot longer than I would've if it had been a super happy, peaceful ending.

ANNE: Okay. I'm glad this worked for you. It sounds like this was the right book for you, and also, am I hearing elements that made it a good summer read? Because I think you said in your submission that a certain amount of sadness doesn't necessarily mean you won't read it, but it's definitely going to get kicked into fall.

[00:15:17] ASHLEY: Yeah. When I was flipping through, I saw Crying in H Mart, and I had a big note on it, "Save for fall." And sure enough, I did. I read it in the fall, and a bunch of my work colleagues also read it, and I mean, it was just a wonderful book, and I loved it, but I was like, "I am not reading that over the summer." So if it's really going to deal with themes of grief or trauma, that is not going to be a summer book for me. But if it's going to take me into a world, then it is going to be more meaningful, and it's going to stick with me more than the perfect... where nothing happens. Like you want stuff to happen.

ANNE: Okay. But The River was the right amount of adventure, tension, intrigue, mystery, happenings.

ASHLEY: Yeah. I want a book that, in the summer, that I'm just going to be like, "I can just sit here for a couple hours and read or stay up late at night reading because I want to know what happens." It's definitely a sign it's a good summer book for me.

[00:16:23] ANNE: That's very helpful. Thank you. Ashley, what's the second book you love?

ASHLEY: Then from the 2023 Summer Reading Guide, I picked The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. This story starts with Amina al-Sirafi. She's a former pirate, which former... I don't know. Any kind of adventure story, I'm like, I'm in on that. She's laying low in a remote home with her 10-year-old daughter when she's approached by a woman who is really begging her and bribing her to come find her granddaughter, who has been supposedly kidnapped. And so Amina al-Sirafi gathers her loyal partners. She has to rescue her ship and crew to take off and rescue the missing granddaughter.

I love a quirky team gathering together for any kind of mission or adventure. This book is really sweet because, even though they haven't seen each other in many years, their friendship and their support of Amina I thought was really beautiful and fun.

[00:17:31] I also love seeing a female character who's a mother. The fact that Amina is torn between her love of her work on the sea, which is funny to call it work because she's a pirate, but she's missing her daughter and wants to be with her daughter, but also wants to show her this good example of what it means to be able to do something, work that you love. I just thought that really elevated this beyond just a typical adventure story for me.

Amina is also a little bit older. She has a difficulty with a bad knee, which I relate to. I listened to this one on audio. I really felt like the voice actor did a fabulous job of bringing this character to life. This is something I noticed. I just re-listened to it because a new one, or the second one is coming out soon. One thing that I really loved is that there was just the perfectly placed cuss words. I just thought it was so fun when they would just pop in at just the right moment to give an idea of how she was feeling in stressful situations.

[00:18:37] ANNE: I'm so glad you know about the new one, and that it's on your radar already. And that does come out today as we're speaking. It will already be in the world as readers listen to this. But that is The Tapestry of Fate, when Amina is called once again to the sea, and she has to find this ancient spindle that can unravel not just thread, yarn... what do spindles spin? But it can unravel time and re-spin it with a different result. And also her estranged husband is causing trouble and her family has wishes that aren't really in sync with hers, and she's gotta go figure it out.

Ashley, I remember you do about 25% of your listening, I think you said in your submission, of your reading, that is on audio. The first book was excellent on audio. It elevated the experience. And I've only listened to maybe half an hour of The Tapestry of Fate, but am already finding it so good in that format.

[00:19:37] ASHLEY: Oh, I'm so excited. I just did a subscription to Libro.fm mostly so that I could get that book on audio, so I'm really excited to hear that people are enjoying it.

ANNE: Well, I'm excited for you. It sounds like it'll go great with your crocheting and gardening, etc.

ASHLEY: Yes. Perfect.

ANNE: Ashley, what is the third book you love?

ASHLEY: So then from the 2024 Summer Reading Guide, I picked The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. This takes place at a summer camp on the East Coast, and a child has gone missing, and her brother also went missing 15 years before that.

So in order to figure out what happened to the girl, one detective is determined to find out what happened to the missing brother in order to really connect those two and figure out what's happening. I love the atmosphere of the camp, and again, the nature. I also really enjoyed the changing points of views in the chapters. That's something that I find I really enjoy in a book is when you get to know multiple characters from their point of view. And then also having both of those mysteries revealed throughout the book made it a really good page-turner for me.

[00:20:52] Another thing that I noticed when I picked out this book is that I think this is a good example of how I've used the summer book guide to find books that were amazing for me before they became really big. And so I've noticed that I'll read a book from the Summer Reading Guide with these expectations that it's just going to be a really good book for me. And then I've seen them blown up on, like, BookTok or other types of social media. And the second wave of readers reads them because other people liked them, and they might be disappointed that the book didn't match their expectation.

So I really enjoy finding the book through the reading guide and not just because everybody else liked it, because I have maybe the right level of expectation for it, and then I can just really enjoy it instead of comparing it to the hyped-up version that it becomes later.

ANNE: Ooh, I love that for you, and I love Liz Moore. I'm so glad you found this one. Have you read anything else by her?

[00:21:54] ASHLEY: I read Long Bright River. I had read that before separately and really didn't even connect. I'm not great at remembering authors, especially if there's been a long gap between them, or if I wasn't actively seeking another one. But I really enjoyed Long Bright River as well.

ANNE: Okay. I know we've talked about The Unseen World several times on the podcast. Recently I read Heft, so I know I talked about it on the blog. I can't remember if I talked about it in this space. But there's more Liz Moore waiting for you if that interests you. But neither of those books have the summer camp, wilderness mystery vibes that feel especially apt for the summer.

ASHLEY: Yeah, yeah.

ANNE: Ashley, now tell us about a book that was not right for you, and I love that you chose one from the Summer Reading Guide as well. What did you choose?

[00:22:41] ASHLEY: So this one is from the 2022 Summer Reading Guide, The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd. In this book, there's a map that appears to be this cheap gas station map that would have sold hundreds of copies, and the main character gets pulled into the mystery of why is somebody trying to purchase every single copy of this one specific map.

Her father, I believe, was a cartographer, and she is... And when her father dies early in the book, and she's pulled in this mystery of, like, what is happening with this map? I loved the premise of the story. There are some magical elements regarding the map. I really liked that.

But unfortunately, there's a twist at the end... and this was the first time that I had this reading experience, but I've had it happen a few other books. But there's this twist that reveals some parent-child dynamics that I just can't get over. I just can't enjoy the rest of the book knowing that this one thing happened.

[00:23:49] And unfortunately, you don't ever know because it's a twist and it's a surprise. And so you don't really know that it's going to happen until towards the end. But I just, you know, can't have the same level of enjoyment once that twist has happened.

ANNE: Hmm. Okay. Now, readers, Ashley and I talked about this twist privately, and we are going to avoid it for her in the Summer Reading Guide selections. But Ashley, I'd love to go back to what drew you to that book in the first place. What were you hoping for when you picked it up? Do you remember? I understand I'm asking you about something that happened quite a while ago at this point.

ASHLEY: Well, I think that the mystery of it is, like what's happening and kind of a bit of an adventure. I also like a modern-day... Like, it was taking place kind of in current times, but also has this little element of magic. And if I'm remembering right also, I think she teams up with some people, the main character does, and of course, I love that. So it just seemed like it would be a really good fit for me from that description, that part of it.

[00:24:58] ANNE: Okay. It's helpful to hear what called out to you even as you found something that you maybe knew at the time you didn't like, or maybe that was a new discovery.

ASHLEY: It was a new discovery. That was the first time it happened to me.

ANNE: Okay. Has it changed how you read going forward, or does it just make you anxious?

ASHLEY: Well, usually what happens now, and it's only happened a couple other times after, but usually when I start to sense that that twist is about to happen, I just immediately start skimming and then I just finish the book as quick as I can. It usually happens so close to the end that I'll just finish the book, but I have a very grumpy attitude towards it after it's happened. But at least now I know why, and then I'll just kinda quickly read it so I know what happens.

[00:25:47] ANNE: I'm thinking aloud what this means for what you may enjoy reading this summer. And I'm just thinking about how different readers may view the responsibility of the author in what they reveal and what they withhold about characters and their stories. And I don't know, sometimes a big reveal feels dramatic and perfect, and sometimes it feels manipulative.

ASHLEY: Yes.

ANNE: I don't have a unified theory, but I'm going to be holding that idea in mind as we talk about your future reads.

ASHLEY: This might come up later in some of my recently read ones, but I will say that if I feel like a character has died purely to raise the drama of the situation and make it emotional rather than it being a natural part of the story, I get grumpy. And that is a very Kristin Hannah thing that I've noticed with her also. So there is a level of like I want to feel like the really sad events are critical to the story, a natural result of a character being real rather than just a "And now they're going to get killed so that you will feel very sad."

[00:27:05] ANNE: I will be holding that in my mind. Even as part of my mind is like, "But we don't know what's going to happen in life." Sometimes they... Yeah. But we do have control in novels, and yeah, hold- holding all that tension there. Ashley, what have you been reading lately?

ASHLEY: I recently read Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. That one has a lot of drama and mystery when the woman is washed up on shore on this very remote island, and yeah, there's a lot of mystery about why she's there and what has happened with this family of caretakers on the island. Again, great nature scenes that I just loved. At the end, there's this very dramatic moment that I have would just want to talk to everybody about. But I did feel like in the end that it made the book better to have that type of ending.

And then I'm also a very big fan of Rainbow Rowell. I just recently read Cherry Baby, and that was a very fun reading experience.

[00:28:12] And then I also read What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, which the first part of it takes place... it's a character who is 150, 200 years in the future, and he's researching this event that happens with what would be our modern day, and he's trying to figure out what happened based... And he's using all of their social media and text messages, all the digital imprints that the people involved have left. And then the second part is that person that he's been researching, their perspective of what happened for this mysterious event.

It was super intriguing. I really loved reading it in terms of seeing this really new dynamic, but I don't think it's for everybody because it is a very slow-paced. The characters by the end are not very lovable. So I'm glad I read it, but I don't know if I'm going to recommend it to a lot of other people.

[00:29:12] ANNE: Okay, that's interesting to hear. Ashley, what are you looking for in your reading life right now?

ASHLEY: Mostly it's all about setting up these fun reading experiences for the summer, because once I can close my classroom door and go into summer, I guess the way that I make it through all of the hard work that's going to happen for the last few weeks of school is having this set up, this expectation of all these fun things that I get to read and do over the summer. And so I'm really looking to have some books that I'm excited about reading, and also maybe setting up some kind of reading experiences or some kind of maybe retreat types of things that I can have organized and ready to go for the summer.

ANNE: Fun. Okay. Do you have any ideas? Because I know you said in your submission that you're looking for some how-to.

[00:30:12] ASHLEY: I'm not doing any big traveling this summer, and so I want to set up something where I'm just like, once a week I'm going to do this thing. But that's where I get fuzzy. But something that I'm getting either out of the house or meeting up with people and just reading in a different situation to make it a little bit more special, a little bit more of an escape from any chores and stuff that are around the house. But trying to set up these experiences over the summer, and I'm trying to navigate that. Like, what would that look like for me? What is a way that, one, that I won't make it so complicated that I never do it, because I tend to do this, where I really go crazy. I could do this and this and this, and then it's too much and I don't do it. So keeping it simple, but also unique to the summer.

ANNE: Okay, that sounds fun. I have ideas. First of all, if you are in or interested in the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club, for years now, we've done a Readers’ Weekend in July. These are 100% online, and we only gather online, with the exception of 2020, which was a sad year for in-person gatherings, and we just went hog wild with our virtual events that summer.

[00:31:30] But we usually only gather online for three to five hours over the course of a weekend, and you can choose to come to none or all of them. It just depends. But we also share sample schedules for how you could spend that time as a reader, and break down itineraries with hour by hour what you could choose to do. And sometimes people like a little structure. That's a weekend, but in the winter/spring, we've also had a Readers’ Day where we've shared a smaller sample schedule like the one we just did in February.

So that's a resource for anybody who wants it. You can log in and download that Readers’ Day kit that we just had in February. We'll be sharing the reader's weekend one not too far from now. That's coming up in July.

I know some readers like to take reading vacations or reader's getaways, where they'll get themselves an Airbnb, or go to the water or the mountains, or they'll book themselves into the local hotel with a really great pool, whatever that is for you. But just from a low-key kind of way, because I love reading, and I have never once done something like that for a reader's weekend or reader's getaway.

[00:32:41] Actually, if I haven't said yet today, the theme for this year's Summer Reading Guide is Reading Retreat. And we had a lot of fun staging retreat vibes and settings in my home with food, drink are really important, I think, to that situation, a comfy chair, nice places to sit, nice scenery out the window, like that matters, too. But just when I want to take a little break or do indulgent daytime activities or weekend stuff, something I love to do. This is going to sound so silly, but I'll go to a coffee shop that I love, like a local coffee shop that I love, even if it's not the closest one to my house, with the intention of getting two drinks. I will read until my coffee is gone, and I'll read a bit, little bit longer. But then there's something about knowing I'm going to stay there for the second cup of coffee or I'm going to switch to tea.

And readers, I have a less tenuous relationship with caffeine than I used to, but I gotta go someplace that serves decaf if I'm going to do this and not going to switch to herbal tea. But just the idea when I get there that I know I'm settling in for a long time just feels so luxurious.

[00:33:57] Or you could set up a progressive kind of situation where you know you're going to go to one coffee shop and then another, or you're going to go to coffee and then the place with the great lunch counter with the pretty view, or you're going to go to the botanical garden with the pretty bench or the park that you like, or you're going to go read by the water. Maybe you can do that easily in Santa Barbara. And then you're going to go to the... You can see how I'm constantly thinking of food in this kind of situation. But then you're going to go get some kind of nourishment or refreshment. You could even do this in such a way where you read by yourself and then you meet a friend, or you meet a friend and then you go read by yourself. And if that friend's a reader, you could structure that to involve either a book discussion or reading together.

Is any of this stuff pinging for you?

[00:34:42] ASHLEY: For sure. I think location is super important, and again, like the food thing, when I was reading Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell, I found some Cherry Coke in the fridge and I just sat outside watering, and it was just beautiful. The sun was setting, and I was drinking this Cherry Coke while I was reading it. Reading in a different location in my house even made a difference and made it just so like that, in that case, was just like a 30-minute retreat. So I think being deliberate about that with different locations, like you are describing, is exactly what I'm craving. And then I'm just inviting friends as it works easily instead of making it into a big function.

I did host a mini readers’ retreat at my house last summer, and it was really fun. We had two hours of just kind of silent reading and then lunch together and then another two hours. And people just came as they could to the day. And I really loved that. I loved hosting that experience. But what I really want is to not be responsible for all of that. So going to a coffee place or a cafe is probably more likely to happen this summer.

[00:36:00] ANNE: I hear that. I love that you brought up the Cherry Coke in the backyard. And it sounds like that's impulsive. That's wonderful. And also, there's something that can be really inviting and magical about planning in advance and putting something on your calendar that says, "At 2:00, I go sit in my chair and I read." And even if it's the chair you like in your house, but please, get yourself a drink or something. Just a little something that says, like, "I am doing this on purpose," and just, you know, be nice to yourself in the way you like. Take your shoes off, even if it's only for 20 minutes, if that makes you happy. But just not reading until the phone rings, but knowing, like, "This is a little bit of time I'm carving out for myself."

ASHLEY: Yeah.

ANNE: Whether that means blocking out a certain amount of time on the calendar. And a certain amount of time could really be 20 minutes. That would still be a little bit of time. Three hours would also be really fun, but to know that that time is set aside, that's the plan, you're going to enjoy it.

ASHLEY: Exactly, yeah.

[00:37:02] ANNE: Yeah. Okay, I love that that's the way you're thinking going into your summer break.

ASHLEY: Yeah, I'm excited. That's good.

ANNE: Ashley, you're also looking for books.

ASHLEY: Yes, books.

ANNE: Let's talk about what we've got here. You love The River by Peter Heller in the original 2019 Summer Reading Guide, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty from the 2023 guide, and The God of the Woods by Liz Moore in the 2024 guide.

Not for you was The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd from 2022, but you did learn something important about your reading life about relational dynamics and then the tension between exposition and reveal and what it means for characters in the story. We're going to be keeping that in mind as we recommend books today.

And you love to read all kinds of stuff, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, realistic fiction, some family dramas, adventure, nonfiction, which is usually memoirs, and 75% with your eyes.

[00:38:13] ASHLEY: That's me.

ANNE: Ashley, I'm going to tell you what I'm thinking. And readers, these are all books from the Summer Reading Guide that I talked about at Summer Reading Guide Unboxing, which you can watch any time now that it's out and available. And I'm going to share what I did in Unboxing, mostly, plus a little bit more about the book generally, and also how it relates specifically to Ashley.

And the one I want to start with is by Travis Mulhauser, whose debut, Sweet Girl, was critically acclaimed. He wrote a book a couple years ago called The Trouble Up North, also critically acclaimed, but I don't believe either book landed in the hands of a ton of readers. And I'm hoping his new one finds a wider audience. It's called Fair Chase. It was just published on April 28th by Grand Central. Is this an author or work you're familiar with?

ASHLEY: It is not.

[00:38:59] ANNE: Okay. I'm not sad to hear that, and I'm happy to make the introduction. I think this is a really good fit for readers who enjoy Peter Heller in general, but because of the content here, especially The Last Ranger. And also it feels a fair amount like Charlotte McConaghy. And part of that is like the moody, atmospheric broodiness, but part of that is this is a book about, not only about, but this is a book about a wolf.

It's set in the wilds of Northern Michigan. The story begins when a gray wolf is spotted in the area. It's the first time in 100 years a wolf has been seen in this part of Michigan. And this wolf is an endangered species, so it's exciting, but also it's a wolf, and people are scared, and a lot of it is because they don't understand what it means to live in the area with wolves. And I did so much Googling that was highly unnecessary, but also a lot of fun for me to learn more about wolves as I was reading.

[00:40:01] But people are scared for their pets and their livestock and their small children. And then there's also a lot of property development going on in the area, and developers are scared for different reasons. They know if the feds find out that there is an endangered species nearby, then because of the laws, construction will cease, they'll lose a ton of money. It's really important to them economically that that not happen.

So what they do is they hire a poacher to take out the wolf before anyone official can verify its presence. But our real main character here is, or how about the one that everybody else revolves around, is this 14-year-old foster kid, and his name is Delos. And he's seen the wolf himself, he is not scared of it. He is an advocate... Does it sound silly to say a 14-year-old is an advocate for nature? But his heart really goes out to this wolf, and also he knows how to use the situation to his advantage.

[00:40:59] And I'm not quite sure how to tell you succinctly what's going on in this book, but Delos is a foster kid, he doesn't have a family, but he's been telling everyone for years that he is a blood relative of this certain notorious local family called the Sawbrooks. And everyone respects them and is also a little bit afraid of them.

They've been in the region for 100 years. They're moonshiners. Their shine is notorious and coveted. They are swaggering badasses. And Delos, in part to protect himself and in part because he wants to belong to something bigger than himself, has been telling everybody, "I'm a Sawbrook. I'm related through my dead mama. Don't mess with me because they will have my back."

[00:41:45] What he explains to the reader is, "Look, it's not that I'm a liar exactly. It's just something I wanted to be true so badly." But what Delos knows about the Sawbrooks is they care about wild things, and they will care enough to try and protect the wolf. And if he's the one who brings this news to their door, like, who brings them this noble and important mission, that maybe they'll respect what he's doing, and maybe they'll protect him too. Maybe they'll take him in. Like, maybe they'll make good on the claims he's been making for a long time that they are connected in some deep way.

This book is like this tense, atmospheric story where things are in motion and the stakes are high, but also the writing is... Like, I remember reading out loud to my husband and teenage son sitting on the couch, like, "Listen to what this character is saying her daddy told her about getting a new car once in your life." Just on a sentence level, it's so delightful sometimes. But issues it's exploring are small-town politics, nature versus development, family, truth, loyalty.

[00:42:56] This is a loose follow-up to his 2025 book called The Trouble Up North, which introduces the Sawbrook family. But this new one, Fair Chase, it stands alone just fine. You can totally start there. How does that sound?

ASHLEY: I am so excited about this already. I've been to Yellowstone a few times, and just love every time I'm there. And one of the experiences is learning about the wolves, and maybe trying to catch a glimpse of the wolves. And on top of that, the science teacher side of me just loves the ecosystem-wolf dynamic, and what that means. Even from your description, I'm already growing attached to this kid and the wolf, so that just seems perfect for me.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. I have a book for you about an English teacher and a science teacher, if you're okay with it.

ASHLEY: Perfect, yes.

[00:43:54] ANNE: It's the new Laurie Frankel. It's called Enormous Wings. Do you know it? Are you familiar with it?

ASHLEY: No. No, I'm not.

ANNE: Okay. This is just out. I think it came out May 5th. And I was just in Nashville. I served as Laurie's conversation partner for her Nashville book tour stop, so I got to hear... I get to relay a little bit of her personal thoughts about this. That was a delight. She's still on tour, if anybody gets to go see her or has the opportunity, take it. It was a lot of fun. But I really enjoy her writing.

And what Laurie Frankel does is she writes these situations that are technically realistic, but just a little bit larger than life. It feels like reality, but with the volume and the plausibility factor just dialed way up. Or maybe it's the implausibility factor. Like, this is realistic, but ooh.

[00:44:47] And this is by far her most fanciful work yet, because it features the pregnancy of a 77-year-old woman. And I thought it was so interesting that the book actually does come up with an explanation that sounded like, eh, I mean, as far as it goes, that's a really good explanation to me for how this happened.

One of the things I asked her was, like, "Laurie, I was surprised there was a reason," and she's like, "I knew people were going to want to know. I had to throw them something."

But this is about a 77-year-old woman who becomes pregnant. Our protagonist is an English teacher, and I mean, she is an English teacher to her bones. The dialogue is so fun. She's correcting people's grammar constantly in a way that is somehow endearing and not obnoxious. She's quoting the books she taught. She has a deep and abiding love for Hamlet.

[00:45:38] The title is based on a Gabriel García Márquez short story called Enormous Wings. Her name is Pepper Mills, so puns galore, but she thinks puns are never, ever funny, and there are jokes about that, too. But after she gets into a minor fender bender, her adult children freak out and impress upon her that it is time for her to move into an assisted living facility.

She does not want to do that, mostly because, well, she doesn't want to give up her autonomy, but also her ex-husband is already a resident there, and she's like, "I lived with him once. I don't want to do it again. 300 other roommates is not enough to dilute the Roger effect."

But to placate her three grown children, she moves in and is like, "You know what? This isn't so bad." I mean, the food is atrocious, but she makes friends, she falls in love with a science teacher, so there's lots of science-y jokes. And then despite having gone through menopause a quarter century before, she falls pregnant, and her doctor is like, "No, really, like, you are pregnant. This is not a false anything. You are pregnant."

[00:46:43] But everybody's thinking, like, First of all, this can't be possible, but it also can't be safe for a 77-year-old woman to successfully carry a pregnancy. And for a long time, everyone assumes she will miscarry, but that doesn't happen. And the book kind of gives a reason to those who want a reason for what's going on here. But you know what I didn't tell you is Pepper lives in Texas, and it turns out she does not have any medical options except to wait and see what happens next.

So this book is not science fiction, but it's almost science fiction in the way it takes you out of this world, out of the reality that we know, and into a reality where daughters are mothering their own mothers as they become mothers. It just feels a little topsy-turvy, upside down, in a way that feels really mentally expansive. I don't know how else to describe it except say read it, and I hope you'll get what I mean.

[00:47:43] But like sci-fi, by upending the rules of reality, it helps you see our reality more clearly. The best I can describe the sense of humor here, which is pervasive but also sometimes real dark, is that it feels a lot like Annie Hartnett's The Road to Tender Hearts, if you enjoyed that.

ASHLEY: Yes.

ANNE: And last year's book that I loved, These Heathens by Mia McKenzie, that would also make a really good comp here. But this book is about aging and risk, and it is so heart-rendingly poignant as it contemplates what love and life look like through changing seasons. And because it's set in an assisted living facility where many patients are moving from the very basic low-touch assisted living to the nursing facility, there's lots of discussions about pain and cancer and the normal and natural and painful and not as painful ways to be sick and grow ill and die.

[00:48:46] The little band of friends that forms among Pepper and her boyfriend and their tight little group of friends in the nursing home community is just gorgeous. It's so delightful to read about. And also, Pepper is extremely close to her 15-year-old granddaughter, Lola, who brings a whole different dimension to the story. I loved each one of the three adult children.

But something I really want you to know about this book is even though these people are family, and even though it makes sense that Pepper finds a group of friends almost immediately in her assisted living facility, the way that grandmother and granddaughter team up to fix a big problem later in the book, they end up taking a road trip. So the book feels... it takes on a different dimension then. And the way the residents in this assisted living facility come together and enjoy their life... the way you talked about how you love adventures and you love any story where an unlikely team of people come together to get stuff done, I think this book really will speak to you on those levels.

[00:49:57] I'm sure I'm leaving out something very important. I'm going to need to email you later. But I feel like this is almost an adventure story, but it's not the kind of adventure we typically think of. How's this sounding to you?

ASHLEY: Oh, I'm super intrigued. I just love some good witty dialogue, and especially if I know going into it that it's meant to be a little larger than life, and maybe something a little bizarre is going to happen, then when I'm mentally prepared for that, I just can sink right into it.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. Okay, I'm really torn but I'm leaning toward more English teachers, and I like that this comes out July 7th, gives you something to look forward to. Have you read any Daniel Mason? He has a new book coming out called Country People.

ASHLEY: I don't think so.

[00:50:46] ANNE: Okay. You would probably know him from North Woods, which was a novel and interconnected short stories that we talked about on the podcast. This new one has a different tone, and this is a romp about teachers. Mason says that his intention was to write a serious novel about Chekhov, you know, like serious great American fiction, but instead he ended up with this.

It is a sharply comic novel about the absurdities of city people packing up their lives and moving to the country. They think they're embarking on this grand, romantic, outdoorsy adventure, but all those romantic notions about what's going to happen and what country life is like run smack into reality.

If you don't know Daniel Mason, I would say reading this, imagine the most satirical Amor Towles. I think that puts you in the realm of what this tone is like. But this just feels like a romp. It also feels like a prolonged coming-of-age and just a serious midlife reckoning story.

[00:51:58] This is also a good book for book people because it's about two literary nerds. They're married. Oh, they're from California. And they're leaving California life behind. Not suggesting you do the same, but you know their point of origin, and they are traveling cross-country to Vermont for the wife's visiting professorship. She's an esteemed scholar. She has this cushy gig in Vermont for a year at this little private liberal arts school. They are so excited to embark on a year-long adventure with their two kids. One's in third grade, one's in junior high. They both think they know what they're getting into. They have no idea.

Kate is obsessed with Milton and Paradise Lost. That's her area of expertise. Her husband, Miles, has been writing his dissertation for something like 14 years. He has tried and failed to write 11 dissertations, which actually sounds like another book in the Summer Reading Guide, just in this one specific area. And his continuing quest to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up now that he's 40-something is pervasive in the book.

[00:53:04] And this story is just packed with these almost realistic absurdities with the small-town scandals. And there are plenty of them. There are these conspiracy theories, like the husband Miles, gets sucked into this cult, I think, obsessed with the dream of a hollow Earth that is very active in his community.

They have a family dog that comes with them on the trip who has a turbocharged sense of smell. This dog was bred for truffle hunting, and that ends up playing very directly into the story. We get the dog's perspective sometimes about what he smells and what he needs to find.

There is a local ski instructor so handsome he's known for scrambling the senses of anyone in his radius as he's teaching your kids how to ski down the slopes. There's lots of transcripts of this local show called The Miscellaneous Minute that are more than a little absurd woven through the story.

[00:54:04] But Miles and Kate... Well, Kate gets into a little bit of work difficulties, but Miles gets into all kinds of trouble when he's not sure what to do with himself, and the way that plays out is just, it's fun. I mean, even as the content is the stuff of our daily lives, like after-school activities with the kids, a visit to the emergency room, a school play where scandalous things happen, a happy dog dirtying the sofa of the professor's home that you're renting for the year. This is really just a big-hearted story of reinvention, rediscovery, and also serious midlife reckoning, and an adventure into this world you think you know and find out you, bless your heart, you had no idea. How's that sound?

ASHLEY: Oh, this is hitting a lot of the right things. I have plenty of my own dog stories, and I love when there's a good character as a dog, and you get to see... Because you just know, like people who know dogs know when it's accurate that that's probably exactly what the dog is thinking. So that kind of tips it above the just slightly interesting into very interesting and maybe perfect for me.

[00:55:13] ANNE: That sounds great. Ashley, I have more ideas that we'll save for after we hit stop on the recording, but I hope these are sounding good. Now, there's a whole guide coming your way, so more to choose from. But of the books we talked about today, Fair Chase by Travis Mulhauser, Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel, and Country People by Daniel Mason, what's sounding good? What do you think you might pick up next?

ASHLEY: I think for sure Fair Chase is going to be sitting on my table waiting for me to come home for my first day of summer, because that just sounds so perfect. But all three of these are going to be in my list to read over the summer.

ANNE: Well, I'm happy to hear it. Thank you so much for bringing your summer reading planning to us, and for talking books with me today.

ASHLEY: Oh, thank you. This was so much fun.

[00:56:07] ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Ashley, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find the full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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[00:56:52] Thanks 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.