Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogle, 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 the show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. This week, we're talking all things summer reading with one special guest who is particularly well qualified to go behind the scenes of our 2025 Summer Reading Guide with me.
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William, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here, especially talking summer reading. Readers, my husband, Will Bogle, is here to discuss this year's summer reading guide. And if you've been listening for a long time, you know the What Should I Read Next slash Modern Mrs. Darcy lore. If this is your first episode, this is need-to-know information. But it was actually Will's idea to create the summer reading guide back in like 2011 or 2012. Our first one came out in 2012. And it was a great idea.
But I did this like lead magnet thing, which was like moderately successful and not that fun. And I mean, Will, do you remember our conversation two houses ago in our dining room late at night? I don't remember that. You said moderately successful and not that fun. That's not what I remember. But I might be thinking a couple of years in because it really became. No, I'm not talking about the summer reading guide. I'm talking about the original thing that shall not be named that just wasn't that great. No, I do remember that. Yes.
But you were like, you know what you should do. And now here we are on version 14. I would like to say, you say all the time that we don't say should on the show called What Should I Read Next. I'm not sure. Oh my gosh, and I just attributed that to you. I'm not sure that I said what you should do. I don't know. I know you. I think you might have. Yeah, I might have. But I was right, apparently, because this is now year 14. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah.
So this is definitely something that has gone from something that was not that fun and only moderately successful or whatever to something that not only do you really enjoy, but it seems like our whole team loves putting it together. The audience listeners really are always clamoring for it. We actually start planning this.
months in advance, partly because it takes a lot of work and partly because Lee knows when people will start asking. So we have, we have a deadline in the spring. We're like, we've got to have enough information that we're ready to announce it before Lee starts getting like, Hey, you guys doing that again? Uh, kind of inquiries.
That's true. No matter what we're planning behind the scenes at Modern Mrs. Darcy HQ, one of our big questions is always, what are people going to ask us? And how can we answer that before they even articulate that they want to... No, we want to have answers ready for you, is what I'm saying. And you'll always want to know when the summer reading guide is coming.
coming and even all these years later william you're always willing to stand at my giant post-it note on the wall and help me talk through which books go in which categories and decide between two i'm thinking about including and um if y'all could hear the number of times i'll i'll say in this household um hey would you comfortably process something with me
And then I taught my way to an answer. That is great framing because a lot of times I only have to stand there. You just process it all verbally. But you do such a good job of it. A lot of times, especially actually, we'll get into this year and sort of what's different this year and all. But a lot of times you're already just so far ahead that I'm like, well, what if you move this and whatever? And you're like, no, no, no, no. I've honed it down. I just have this one question, you know? Yeah.
Scope creep. Scope creep, yeah. Right. We don't need to reinvent everything. Help me decide between these two books. But sometimes you say, no, hear me out. And I do. And then we end up changing things. But before we get any further, I want to say that since 2011 and 2012, our business has changed and grown and evolved and our team has a ton of
But also, when we created our first summer reading guide, it's not like we invented the concept, but the summer reading guide landscape was so different than it is now. And that really forces our team, I think led by me, I'll own that, to really ask ourselves, is what we're making valuable? Like, how is it different? What sets us apart? If so many people are making reading guides for this time of year, what are we really offering?
But we keep doing it. I mean, year by year, we keep deciding every year that we're going to do it for another year because we think we do a great job. And I think 2025 is really special. I don't think it's that different from 2024 to you. Slight evolution, not like a huge one. No, I think it's pretty similar.
There are of course only so many ways that you can say, here's a book that, that I'm looking forward to sharing with you all. And, and a little description about it. This is a lot of what we do on, on the blog when we write book lists for the blog. So, so as a, as like a simple concept, like here are the books that are coming that I've read. I guess this is a little different because you've read all of these books, um, which is not always true in spring and fall, but also like, yeah, there's only so many things you can, can do differently. Um,
We found a few ways to make it fun and interesting this year, though. We always do something a little different every year. The features are different this year. Some of the features are expanded. The page length is about the same as 2024. The books, of course, are all different, and they all have 2025 pub dates. We'll get more to that, well, as we go along today, but...
Will, you're here so we can talk about the Summer Reading Guide for 2025, also what you read for the Summer Reading Guide, how it all came together, how I chose the books in this year's guide, and lots more details we're going to hit upon along the way.
Okay, where should we start? I think with this year's theme. We got to start with the theme. Okay. Which is probably where we started, I think. Kind of one of the first thoughts we had is overall for the concept, like what are we bringing? When we say do we do things a little bit differently, this informs sort of both what it looks like, but also some of the features and just even the photography we do. Like all of that stuff's kind of bound up in like how are we packaging all of this? We've not always done themes though. How long have we been doing a theme?
We first did a magazine-style guide in 2017, 2018. You know, it might have been 2019. I know this because I was just looking at the category-less year, folks. We'll get to that. That year, oh.
And that wasn't magazine style. So I think that means 2019 was our first year of a magazine style guide, which got a theme because that needed photos. But it was a gentle, summery, can I keep saying magazine kind of idea. But 2020, we...
Wanted to do the magazine again and then started leaning into it more as the years went by. 2023, we really went big with a literary festival team. 2024, we thought we might not be able to top because we did book camp, like summer camp, but for grown-up readers. And it was so fun. We had a blast with the features and the photography, which I take every year, and the
merch with the book camp merch. You can still get a book camp sweatshirt in our shop. And I really thought, well, maybe now it's just the book camp summer reading guide forever and ever. But I think we were talking our way to a theme. And I don't remember what the idea we had as a team, but I,
Someone said, oh, and one of the ideas we could explore for a category is road trip. And somebody was like, wait, hang on. I think that's the whole theme right there, road trip. So this year's theme is road trip. And we had a lot, a lot of fun with that. And Will, you pointed out to me that it made a lot of sense to do a road trip for reasons that go back to the origin of what should I read next. Do you want to share about that?
The idea did not originate on a road trip. We do a lot of sort of expansive thinking, you know, you got that windshield time and nothing to do and whatever. So we do a lot of kind of what if talking. You wrote a blog post one time about us.
sitting in the car. And I think I pitched you the idea of buying a farm was the, I think, I think that was the dreams and schemes, you know, I love it. Yeah. That was, that was the particular conversation that you wrote about, but, but we do this all the time. I don't think the idea for the podcast came about in a road trip, but we did test it out for the first time on our way home for kids in the back of the car. We were driving through Pennsylvania at the end of a trip. And, and, and of course, you know, Oh,
only so much you can we were in the beautiful Allegheny it was nice in October it was yeah yeah 10 hours or whatever in the car and you said hey what do you think if we just tried this out right now and set up your your your phone in between us and recorded it and we got done and went oh
I think that works. Like, I think, I think this is a thing that is actually a thing, right? That's, we have lots of ideas, but like making them a thing that someone would be interested in or is not always possible. Right. And, uh, and got done with it. It was like, Oh, this conversation, like is a, this is something people want to hear, you know? And here we are. Yeah. Going on 10 years later and.
Yeah. It's wild to me now looking back how fast that turnaround was. We just did that proof of concept in the car in like mid-October 2015. And the first episode launched on, oh, I can't believe I can't remember this off the top of my head, January 10th, January 12th.
But it was just that second Tuesday in January 2016. Like, three months. And at that point, you had already recorded multiple episodes. It was not just like you did one for that. I mean, like, three. There weren't a ton. Yeah, but we were rolling into the holidays and the new year, and you already had... I mean, yeah, it went quick. So...
So the road trip, you know, jumped out at me. Yeah. All of which to say, we have a fondness for road trips. We have a fondness for road trips. And that jumped out at me as sort of a little bit of a connection when we got talking about it. Because, you know, what do you do on a road trip? Yeah. We occasionally listen to audiobooks, but, you know, with...
teenagers in the car and like, you know, not everybody wants to listen to the same thing. And it's, it's a, and listens at a much faster speed than I do. And, you know, so, so finding the right book and the right speed and all that stuff is, is a challenge, but we thought road trip could be a lot of fun. And, and honestly, you know, as a team, um,
I think we're really good at ideas and not always at nailing them down. Like we want to do this, but both book camp. We want to do everything. We just, we like having the options, right? So we want to do all of them. But book camp was just everybody immediately was like, oh, slam dunk. That's the one we're doing. We didn't even like talk about more. I think this year we had a couple of ideas, but road trip really quickly came to the front as like this. This will be a lot of a lot of fun.
You know, the theme that was really the other top contender, we had compelling reasons. I was going to say, we have compelling reasons for holding on to it. No, no, no, no, no. We had compelling reasons to save for next year. So that helped us decide.
And I just heard myself say I have a fondness for road trips. And that compels me to reassure readers, you don't have to actually want to put your body in a motor vehicle that is moving someplace for many hours at a time to enjoy this year's Summer Reading Guide. I don't actually love road trips in real life. I don't like to be stuck. I was going to say, this is not actually true that you have a fondness for road trips.
Well, like, in my imagination. You like going places. In my vicarious travel, I absolutely do. Yeah, you still like the going part of going places. Yeah. Yeah, I don't so much. But that's fine. Like, I can still love the sense. I mean, clearly, you can hear in my voice that it won me over and I had to remind myself that, like, actually, do I want to be in that car for 11 hours? I do not. But I want to read about it. And I want to dream about it. And I want to bring it to life for our 2025 Summer Reading Guide. So, yeah.
We're going on a road trip. And we kept it pretty literal in our layouts in the guide. We imagined going places in motor vehicles. But then in some of the guide categories, I explored more like journeys and adventures and was a little looser with that interpretation. Yeah.
But we'll, yeah, actually, let's talk about that now. So when we started talking about the road trip idea, we wanted to carry it out like we did with Book Camp last year. So in this year's Summer Reading Guide, you'll see that we have some pit stops throughout. This is just a fun little way that we incorporated backlist books because the 35 main selections in the guide are all published between, oh, I think it's April 8th and August 15th.
5th, all new for 2025. But Backlist is great in the summer also and tends to have much shorter wait times at your local library. Now, one of the advantages of getting the guide is on May 15th, you're going to be able to put in your hold requests for those books coming out later in the summer that are not available yet. And you're going to be near the top of the list. But sometimes you want to read something right now. And so we have these pit stops throughout the guide that are set in places that
kept popping up in the summer reading guide. For example, we have a Texas pit stop because there's several new books set in Texas. And I chose four or five backlist books that I really love set in Texas and highlighted them there. And then for some of these pit stop features, we have a local independent bookstore that myself or someone on our team really loves that they say a few nice words about connected to the pit stop.
A couple of pit stops could be anywhere. Like we have books set on the coast and we have books that are road trip books, but most of them are actual geographical locations. Also this year, we really built out our awesome on audio feature. This is something that we've done for, I want to say maybe in 2019, William, do you know off the top of your head?
I think so, because before that, when we were doing them on the website, like we only had the categories in the books. Like there weren't really other categories.
things to go with it because as far as like a page goes there was just like not a place to put that or whatever um but i think we did i think we did audio it was the first year we did articles yeah i think we did did the awesome audio from from the get-go um it makes so much sense for for summer i mean to go along with your road trip idea right it is just a great time of year to have the audiobooks uh handy and so so matching that with the new titles was made a lot of sense
Mm-hmm. Well, that was in response to a question we get so often from readers, which is, hey, I see these books which are particularly good on audio. And I can't answer that question for all the books because...
For those August releases, the audiobook probably isn't finished yet, but I listen to anything I can get my hands on that's already published or that I'm able to get early access to to listen and tell you what is great on audio. So this year I'm able to do that for new for 2025, but also I went through all our past summer reading guides going back to 2012 looking for books that featured road trips, but
but also metaphorical or practical. Practical? Geographical, how about? Journeys. And I was so surprised at how many there were to choose from. So I had already listened to some of those audio books. I knew they were fabulous. I listened to the others and we built out Awesome on Audio to have this big backlist section. I think there's 14 or 15 titles in
that are road trip and journey tales that are awesome on audio and also backlist books. So I'm excited for readers to get their hands on that this year. Yeah, that's always a very popular theme. And I think this year, like you said, building it out a little further and reaching back a number of years throughout the summer reading guides will be a lot of fun for folks. I hope so. Wait, I think so. I mean, it was a lot of fun for me. If it's half as fun for our readers, like, yeah, they're going to love it. All right. Well,
So audiobooks, we're talking about books, but do you want to talk about the books that are in the guide? Yes, I want to talk about the books. I'm going to have to restrain myself because unboxing isn't until Thursday. But yeah, I'm ready to talk about the books. Yeah, we don't want to give away what's in the summer reading guide. That'll be out Thursday morning, May 15th. We're doing unboxing twice. So you can join us, whether you're a member of the communities or you've got an a la carte, you can join us live for that on the 15th.
And hear more about what Anne thinks about them beyond what's in the guide. But getting to the 35 titles that are in the summary and guide is a job, right? I mean, that's a whole process. So not all the books make it. Otherwise, we wouldn't really be making anything, right? You'd just be listing things, books that came out.
Just be listing things. Yeah. But no, I've been reading since November. You've been reading. And I would say I feel like more disconnected this year than I've maybe ever have. That's so interesting. I mean, in past years, like I've been extremely connected. So, I mean, one of the first few years when we started doing it, the first couple, you created your own PDF. Yeah.
Like you put it together. I don't know. Were you like probably using word or something, you know, like less mine. Yeah, I did. I did. But then I started, I started doing them on the, on the website, on the blog. And so I was like every book, every title, you know, like I was seeing all of it. Um, now that we're having them design more, um,
somebody else's thing. I like, I'm, I'm not kind of, I'll get to see it at the ending phase. If actually I have a copy right here next to me, cause we just got it back, um, fully designed. So I have seen the whole thing at this point, but it's so pretty. Oh, it's great. Yep. I love it. Um, but, but this year you were showing me the post-it note and you were asking about like categories and books and, and, and where, what goes where? And I was just like, I just don't even remember seeing any of these books. Yeah.
Well, that's because it's different now. In our household, there's been so much less visibility to people other than me and what I'm reading because things change so much with the pandemic. Like the potential summer reading guidebooks used to be
literally all over the house. They'd be in the kitchen and the dining room table and by my favorite reading chair and on the coffee table and in my office. And now I think just like a week before the guide comes out, I only have maybe six or seven physical books in the house and the rest are coming in every day. But beginning in 2020, publishers really started prioritizing digital arcs and
I mean, if it's on my Kindle, you can't see it. I talk about what I'm reading a fair amount. You know, we'll sit down on the couch and be like, what are you reading? Here's what you know. What are you reading? But it's not the same. That is not as helpful for me. No. Especially because, you know, I'll ask, hey, what are you reading? And in the early spring, you're reading a book every day or two. That answer is constantly changing. And I just can't, I just can't keep up. You know, you tell me a little bit about what it is. And then the next time you tell me about this book,
And it's a totally different author, totally different book. And I mixed them all up and I, you know, I just can't keep track when I'm not seeing the covers and, you know, like being able to sort of put a title with a plot with a cover, you know, and keep track of them that way.
But you read a few that I initially thought might be in the summer reading guide. Do you want to tell us about those? So I typically do. So early on, I'm sure other team members do as well. This was definitely true for us. Like you said, with books flying in the house, I would be seeing them all, right? We're tearing open the mail and I'm like, okay, more books. What do we do with these? And a lot based on cover, sometimes based on blurbs, like things would catch my eye.
that I would give a first pass to pretty early, right? You've got enough books that we probably don't know anything about that you're trying to just quickly get through and say, like, is this worth reading the whole thing and like investing in finding out if this fits in the categories and this is a book that you're going to love and all that, you know? And so I would take a first pass at some things and be like, hey, you know what? I think you could take a chance on this. It is music to my ears when you say, hey, is there anything you want me to read? I'm looking for a book right now.
Yep. Yep. And you can say, Hey, this is, this is one that's sort of on the bubble. I've not even read it yet, but I'm not even, but I'm not sure if I should spend the time on it. Right. That kind of thing. You know, this, I guess because of the physical copies, like it has been a little weird that way, but I read a few, a few, I read three, I think this year that were contenders, I guess. Um, and I liked all of them. Or you've like finished three. No, I'm in a bit of a reading slump this year. And I think, I think that's it. I think it's just the three.
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Tell us about your three. I read The Dorman by Chris Pavone. I was excited about that one. Yeah, so that caught my ear. He's been in the guide before. I think I've read every one of his books. And he has a loose series of spy novels.
And I've really enjoyed them some more than more than others. But but the world is loose enough that like there's a little bit of familiarity to it and really easy to jump into. They're super fast paced and generally well plotted. You know, the reveal makes sense and the payoff is there and all that stuff. Right. So this is a total complete change.
This takes place in like basically one neighborhood, almost entirely in one building in New York. And you're getting multiple points of view. It was much more literary. There definitely was a plot, but there was a whole lot of just sort of
interconnected relationships and in the building and, and sort of lots of backstory. And it was just a very different, different book than what I was expecting for him. I think you told me that going in. Um, I really liked it. The tone was, was like I said, definitely different. And it was a lot more, uh, political than I expected.
When you finished it, my impression was, I am going to read this. But I never actually did. Not like I decided against it, but I kept choosing other books. So I haven't read this Chris Bavone yet. I think you will. And I think you should. You'll probably enjoy it. Especially because you tend to read more literary than I do in general. And he has kind of gone that direction. And so, yeah, I'd be curious what you thought about his...
stab at the New York society, uh, literary novel. Okay. I look forward to our conversations about it. So another one that I read that, that I think you shoved in my hands was called a heartwood. Oh, I totally did. Yeah. I think, had you already read it when you suggested to me? I'd already read it. Okay. I mean, it's a hiker in the woods in Maine. That's what I was gonna say. I don't know that you needed to read it before you could say, it had my name on it. Yeah. Uh, a hiker. Yes.
I think we call them seasoned protagonists. I can't remember specifically. So the main hiker disappears. So she's not in the book a whole lot. But I think she's an older woman whose partner... She's a pretty seasoned hiker. Her partner has sort of dropped her off and let her...
Uh, he's supporting her on, on a long trail, like the Appalachian trail, you would, uh, frequently have people that like sort of in town, uh, kind of do deliveries and, and, and kind of resupply you with food and that sort of thing.
but she disappears before the book opens, I believe. And then, and then the book follows sort of this search for her. Uh, and there are a couple of, of, um, sort of disparate storylines and characters. One of whom, uh, I just, I really, really liked lady in a, a nursing home with a strained relationship with her kid. And she, you know, like over time you come to realize she's kind of like being, she's fascinated with this story, this missing hiker. And, um, but also you're like,
But who cares? Like, I just, why, why that, you know, but it really paid off, um, to, to have like sort of this ancillary character, the, the, the main character and what's happened to her. And then also the, the search and rescue team. Um, and there's a lot of focus on them and what they're doing. And it was outdoorsy and mysterious. And like I said, I really liked the kind of
odd characters that you didn't even understand necessarily for 80% of the book. Like, why are they even included in this story? Like, how is this going to kind of come together? I really enjoyed this one. And I'm glad you did too.
This was in the guide in the mystery and thrillers category until the 11th hour. But I cut it for two reasons. One, I mean, I'm telling you about it today. If I had known about it at the time that we did our spring book preview with that April 1st release date, I would have included it then. But it wasn't on my radar. But I was so excited to read it. I loved Sea Wife, her book before this one, about a family that takes this tense,
horrible, amazing year-round trip around the world on the, is it the family yacht or a yacht they borrow?
everything goes wrong. I love that. I wanted to read her next book and it did not disappoint, but I decided to go a different direction. It had the April 1st publication date, which is a little early, especially I wanted something later for that specific category because I like there to be a broad distribution. But also a couple of team members were like, this book is everywhere. And I had no idea that this book was doing really well. It was a big celebrity book club pick.
I've been very much in my own lane, eyes on my own work. I have not been on social media this year. Maybe I, quote, should have been for professional reasons, but friends, we're all doing the best we can in 2025 and 2024 for me, and it looks like not being on the internet and that combination of factors matters.
made me go a different direction. I love the direction we went in. We went a little quirkier. And I think people are going to be really excited to find below the radar book I don't think they would have otherwise found that came in in this book's place. But that does not mean I didn't love Heartwood. And I'm so glad you did too. Yeah, I really did. And I'm glad you pointed it in my direction.
We didn't do a pit stop for Maine in the summer reading guide because we did a really popular literary tourism post for Maine on Modern Mrs. Darcy. But there are so many good books set in Maine. Add Heartwood to that list. And Will, I think the last one you read was nonfiction.
Yeah. And this actually was a hardback that came. Well, you know, it probably wasn't hardback, but it was an arc that came in the mail. But but it caught my eye. The description either in the publicist's letter or on the on the back of the book called it Slumdog Millionaire meets an inconvenient truth. And I'm like, wait, how did those things go together? This is a memoir called A Billion Butterflies.
Dr. Shukla. And basically, I mean, the Slumdog Millionaire part, like it's his memoir of growing up in rural, rural, like very rural India. And then his career development and the opportunities he had in climate science.
mostly in the US, but all over the world. And he ended up sort of becoming this very well-known and important figure in climatology and weather forecasting, I guess, that he helped set up the sort of national institutes in India. Fascinating, fascinating story.
He's older than I expected. So a lot of the stuff that's happening, I'm like, wait a minute, who is this person? So, so writing the memoir, like he, he is older than I expected and starts the storytelling back in like the sixties with the moon landing. JFK is promised to like get to the moon. The administration also wanted a, a sort of, you know, scientific like worldwide cooperative engagement versus sort of this, this race to the moon. And so, uh,
They come up with this idea to record more data than has ever been recorded. And I just didn't know. I mean, whatever you get the weather to the hour on your phone and we check it pretty obsessively and are amazed when it's wrong because it's right so often and all. But he really goes back to like, we did not know what the weather was going to be tomorrow. You know, there was a time not that long ago that like we just had no idea.
And so he talks all about like the development of, of the models and, and, and how we got to prediction is better. And, and his entire career was, was built on the idea of trying to, trying to understand monsoon and predict monsoons because growing up as a kid, like they just didn't know when it was going to rain and they, their entire livelihood depended on having a rainy season and knowing when it would start. So you could plant your crops at the right time. And so he was always focused on that and eventually figures out that it has to do with
I'm sorry to say I don't remember the science. I think it was the temperature of the ocean. So speaking of, that's probably why I didn't recommend it for the guide. It was very readable and I found it to be really, really interesting. But there was a lot of science. I don't think everyone would find it. It is not what we call narrative nonfiction. Like, I don't think everyone would sort of stick through all the meetings, all the titles, all the organization names, all the science. He does a lot on the math side.
of how they kind of came up with these models and how they proved which ones do or don't work and why the weather report in Europe is different from the weather report in America and all this stuff. It was a very fascinating, interesting overlap of sort of coming technologies. Invention of the supercomputer was really important because the math is so big to do any kind of weather prediction. Like you had to have a computer that could just churn through everything. So I found it really interesting.
but definitely didn't feel like a crowd-pleasing summer reading nonfiction title. Well, I really enjoyed when you were reading this because you'd sit down to dinner and be like, hey y'all, listen to this with some just wild factoid you'd read. There were tidbits. Yeah, there were such good tidbits.
So those are a few that I took a peek at and again, didn't pass the two of them onto you. You had already read Heartwood. But you were mentioning Heartwood that you, because of the dates and such, decided to switch it out for something else and had something lined up. Like you were ready to go with that. How did you find hunting for the books overall? Did you have an abundance of books that like kind of had to find a place to fit them or? Ooh.
That's such a good question. Yeah. You know what I'm realizing now? My mother loved to shop. She'd talk about the thrill of the hunt. She'd go to Goodwill every day if she could. She just loved to find things.
like unusual and interesting stuff. And I do not share that with shopping, but I absolutely share that with digging through piles of books that we might read in a given season. I really enjoyed The Hunt. It looked different this year. I'm always scanning the readerly horizons. This year, I found so many of my favorite books just by browsing through the digital catalogs saying,
These are the review copies that came available this week. And friends, just because a review copy is available doesn't mean I get a copy. Then I have to ask the publisher very, very nicely to grant me access. And then like 70% of the time they do.
But I would just see what looked good. And sometimes what looked good was I'd be like, ooh, hey, there's the new novel from Frederick Bachman. Of course I want to read that. But sometimes it looked like, I have never heard of this author, but I'm so intrigued by the premise.
And then I'd read a little more about the author and see, is it a debut? What's their history? Is it not a debut? What have they written before? And then I'd read the first few pages and I'd decide if I wanted to go on. And I just found what I hope will be some like really sleeper gems looking through that way. And in that sense, I really enjoyed The Hunt.
Now, in some ways, the hunt is really disappointing because I can't tell you how many times I'd find out about a book. I'd be like, yes, absolutely. This is a linchpin for mysteries and thrillers. And I'd read the first 10 pages and be like, eh, no, on to the next. Because it wasn't, mostly it's that it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. And I was really excited about what I thought it was going to be. And that's what I felt like I needed to make the guide the kind of cohesive experience I wanted to be.
There are so many good books. I did have a really hard time this year finding mysteries and thrillers and nonfiction. And then the end, I think because I'd been looking so hard in those categories, I had to make agonizing decisions about what to cut. Would you talk through some of those with me? You know, I'm not a big fan of those.
Talk about bringing visibility to the summer reading guide. I think that last weekend before our deadline for design, I blew through like three different books and then I was under the weather and you ran out to the bookstore for me to buy one. It actually wasn't released yet, but it was already out on the shelves to buy one slender little nonfiction book that I was so excited about the concept of and ended up not using after I had 20 pages. I could say like, oh, this is so interesting. And also this isn't what I thought it was going to be.
And I don't think it's bringing the balance I wanted to that memoir and nonfiction section. But that's not at all unusual. Like the race at the end, the like weighing. I like what I have, but I'd love to take it in a quirkier direction, in a like more debut focused direction. Do you remember those last conversations?
Yeah. And I also remember just sort of the, there's always the general feeling of like, well, if I had a little more time, I could read a few more things, you know, like it is one of those projects that's like never done. We just put a deadline on it. And like, it's, it's, it's, which is true. I mean, there, there are always more books being published. There's always more books that, that even if they're not yet published that you're getting access to. Right. I mean, some of picking the summer reading head books, there's like the ones you can read, right. If, if we don't get a copy, right.
Yeah. It's not going in, you know, not because it's not a great book. You just didn't have access to it in advance. Come July, y'all are going to ask me, oh, why didn't you include this amazing book in the guide? And the answer is going to be like, I didn't know it existed.
Like I had no idea in early May that this book existed in the world or I couldn't get a copy. But so often like the process of discovery continues even when our guide deadline wraps. And something that brings me great comfort is knowing that there's always a place to talk about those titles that I find after our summer reading guide deadline wraps. There's always an episode in Patreon, a bonus episode that's focused on
books that I read, enjoyed, but didn't include in the summer reading guide. And I let you know what those are and give you the information you need to decide if you want them on your summer reading list. And then the new discoveries I make always make their way to the podcast, to Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club, to Patreon bonuses. We never run out of ways to talk about books we love around here. So you were talking about wanting to fill out nonfiction and memoir as a category. Yeah.
That's always a category, right? We haven't always done some kind of nonfiction, but I made the decision a few years back that we always would. Always will. Yeah. Okay. But the other categories, generally speaking, those emerge based on the books, right? Yes, they do. They do. But they are pretty, you know, they're not, there aren't really any that are out there this year, William. Yeah.
I'm a little bit sad about this. Like last year we had this basically Family Saga Part 2 category emerge that was tales of midlife reckonings and coming of age that just happened to be what the books presented themselves to me as. And this year I toyed with doing some categories like there are a lot of books set in Hollywood and there were a lot of books that were just utter trash.
And readers, we talk about content warnings and unboxing. I've read every page of every book in this guide. I can answer all your questions. If you're thinking, oh my gosh, Anne, I do not want to inadvertently pick up a heartbreaking novel, we'll make sure that doesn't happen for you. I thought about doing something sort of magical. There was lots of found family. But the genres were so different for the books that were set in Hollywood or that were road trips. And I decided to kind of go with the tone of
Instead of those fun, like more niche buckets like Heartbreakers. Although I guess Heartbreakers is all about the tone, isn't it? This year, let me tell you our categories. They are family dramas, tales of love and friendship, mystery and thriller, memoir and nonfiction, historical fiction, and then...
My uncategorized books are literary and contemporary fiction. And I have to tell you for all of these, like we had family saga literary thrillers and we had historical literary family dramas. And we had several wonderful historical books that are set in like the 80s, which felt like they captured a moment in time in a really immersive way, but also really
They didn't feel of a piece with the other historical fiction books. And so those two books appear in literary and contemporary fiction. Two of those could have been love stories. I mean, something that I really noticed so strongly with our Spring Book Preview books was there were so many that defied easy genre categorization. And there's lots of genre benders for summer also.
Which is a lot of fun. But also, as always, I encourage readers to take a look at the books in every category, not just to like zip to mystery and thriller because that's all you want to read in the summer. Like there's strong mystery elements in some of the family dramas, some of the historical fiction. I don't want you to miss out.
And as a category, you generally are going more of a genre. Like, what genre is this? As you said, tone. Like, what kinds of books might a reader gravitate towards? And what do they want to know about this list of books? Versus, as you said, Hollywood.
We did this year. I almost, I don't want to say we always do. I don't actually know that's true. It's happened a couple of times, but, but I know this year there's another feature about the submarine guide books remixed. So instead of being in those categories, you kind of pull together some different themes and make separate lists out of them. Was there a Hollywood list?
I don't remember there being a Hollywood list. No, but there is one called Book, Song, and Screenplay Writers that captures those books that are strongly in the world of publishing or music. Or you can tell there's a book I loved about a screenwriter. There's a place. There's a place for them. So that's another way also when you're...
Trying to branch out a little bit instead of strictly looking at the category and seeing like, I don't know that I really like these kinds of books. If you look at the remixes, you may catch a couple of things and say, like, I like this kind of idea. Oh, I might not have picked that one up because it's in a different category than I typically gravitate towards. Yeah. And this year, I mean, our remix is a way to recategorize the books. Yeah.
That's where we list all the debuts for those of you who want to know what's new. And like that's where I highlighted the books that were set at locales around the world. And that means not based in the U.S. like I am. So you can travel the world vicariously. Those are just a couple examples. There are one, two, three, four. There's seven lists in this year's remix. And that is something we've done I think since we did our first magazine style in 2019.
I was wondering when that started. So part of that is, is kind of giving people another way to look at them to break out of their standard go-to genres. Right. Which we tried to do in 2018. So that would have been right before we started doing these remixes in 2018, we published the summer reading guide as a collection of books with no categories.
We didn't do categories. I will put the blog post in which I explain some of my thoughts about this in show notes because it's really fun. In 2018, we did. We released it with no categories. If we had wanted to run a grand social readerly experiment, this might have been how we would have. I mean, we wouldn't mess with you all like that. But it turned out to be that inadvertently. That year, we published it without categories. And
That was my, I mean, please don't throw tomatoes at me, but that was my decision because I was looking at these books and I was thinking, gosh, so many of these are so good. And I'm afraid that readers are going to miss them if they go like, ugh.
I don't read mystery or, oh, historical is just not for me. I didn't want them to miss out. And I was afraid that if we put a fantasy novel in a fantasy category, lots of readers who would love that book would just write it off because they had told themselves that those kinds of books weren't for them. So we didn't do categories. And a bunch of readers were like, thank you. And a bunch of readers were like,
Help me? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do with this list when it's not broken down for me? So in that blog post we linked to, I explained like a little bit about the feedback we heard and
and then what the process of sorting the guide into categories was like. So every year since then, we've done categories. That was a really fun experiment back in 2018. I remember after the guide had released and after we thought we were done, I wrote out every title on an index card like I do and I put them at our kitchen island and I just shuffled and shuffled to get them into categories this time. And I remember adding one book to the guide because I didn't like the balance of the books in the categories once I did that.
But that was really fun. And also, don't worry, we won't do that again. But I would like to remind readers that sometimes your meant-to-be-written-for-you favorite books are waiting for you in places you are not expecting to find them. So I really encourage you to approach the guide with an open mind. Here's my soapbox.
or superlative reading experiences delight us in part because they bring an element of surprise. They're not what we usually read. They're not what we were expecting. And so they feel really special and unique. And often those come from places we're not expecting. I'm going to step down now. From your soapbox? Yeah. As we wrap up here, speaking of places you didn't expect...
I don't know that you want to give away the book, but one of the books this year, you got from a publicist who is pushing a big book. And it's like, well, okay, thanks. I knew about that. That's a big book, right? No, I asked for that. I asked for that. And she said, I'm delighted to send it. And also...
Like, I know you. We communicate about books because I work for this publisher and send you lots of stuff. And I think you may enjoy this one also. And I'm not going to say what it is. We're hoping that we're going to be able to read it for Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club this summer. It's a minimalist pick. But I really loved it. That was a fun discovery. That, like, stands out. I can't remember that happening in recent years.
So shout out to publicists who, you know, believe in their authors. But yes, also... Who are doing hard work, yeah. Doing hard work. I mean, hand-selling individual arcs to people trying to get the word out about a book. And that's part of the fun of doing the Summer Reading Guide. But high fives to her. I mean, she knew I loved this book, this book, and this book from her publisher she was familiar with. And she could tell what I was willing to take a chance on and said, I think this one might be your next read. Yeah.
And yeah, I inhaled it. I loved it. It's in the guide. It's in love stories, though it's not a romance. And since we can't do that personally, we don't know each person personally, I want to just highlight one more feature that we include in the guide. With every book, we've got a couple of titles that we say that this book is for fans of these other titles. And so hopefully you can recognize yourself.
Uh, as like, Hey, these are some books I've loved. And, and so they're talking to me, you know, if I love those titles, here's a book that I'll probably like as well.
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If you've seen our summer reading guide these past few years, the information we present for each title is structured the same this year. And what I'm trying to do is not necessarily, I mean, definitely not sell you on a book. I'm trying to tell you what the reading experience is like so you can decide if you want to have that experience. So we tell you the basics. We tell you the title and the author. We tell you the publisher because every publisher has its own personality. If you pay attention to such things, you're going to be able to tell you the story.
The publisher may mean something to you. We tell you the publication date so you know if you can already get it or if it's something to plan on reading later this summer. And we, I think, just started including the page count last year. So you can kind of gauge what kind of, I mean, you can gauge if you're going to take it on your quick trip or if it's something that you can like really sink into if that's what you're looking for. So we want to give you the information you need to like hone in on really great summer reading experiences.
Well, as I said, I'm excited because I got my hands on the guide yesterday. So I have seen it and very excited to share it with everybody. We should tell them how they can get a copy of the guide. Yes, we should.
Okay, this is the biggest thing we do all year. It is an included perk for members of our communities. That's the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club and our What Should I Read Next Patreon. Once again, this year, we are making a la carte access available if you don't have the time or inclination to join a community. If you do a la carte access, you get the digital PDF and you get an invite to unboxing.
Unboxing is not essential, but it's so much fun and adds a lot of context and nuance to all our selections. Plus, I answer questions live. And I answer more questions for our patrons in a follow-up episode. We do all things SRG, Ask Us Anything. Shannon and I are planning on recording it right after the unboxing this year. If you can't come live, it's totally fine. We do a replay. If you have no interest in unboxing, that's fine too.
This year, for the very first time, we are printing the guides. We know that many of you for years have like gone off to FedEx or Kinko's or Staples or your local print shop if you're that lucky when the guide comes out so that you can have your copy that you can hold in your hands and tuck in your bag and take to the library and the bookstore and on vacation and leave on your coffee table and reference next year when the books are more readily available at the library and we're print people. Like I totally get that.
But it's gotten really, really expensive. Last year, it cost me 60 bucks to print mine at Kinko's and the results were only okay. So this year, we've been experimenting with printing magazine style stuff and mailing it to readers. And we're ready to do that for the summer reading guide. Will, you've really been the boss on our team of this grand experiment. Y'all, you can order the guide online.
Online, it's in our shop at modernmrsdarcy.com slash shop. A big drawback is you will not get this in a hurry. I couldn't bear to make our content deadline like early April. So we're mailing these
Probably, what, on Unboxing Day? On the next day? Right about when they come out. We're mailing them when they're ready. We're sending them by U.S. mail. Because of the state of the world and shipping and tariffs and all that, we're sending them to U.S. addresses only. I hope that's not forever, but that is the situation for our small business in this season. And I'm sorry if that means you can't get your own where you live. But...
We're bulk ordering. They're, I think, going to be gorgeous. We've printed ones for 2024 so we could take a nice look at it and design for that in 2025. And you can purchase this year a standalone print summer reading guide that does not include a digital PDF or unboxing access that's available in the shop.
If you already have the summer reading guide through your community membership or your a la carte purchase, you can also choose to add a print guide in our shop and we will mail it to your doorstep. William, what else do people need to know about the print guide? I think that covers it. They're great. They're great looking. We actually are also printing the past couple of years. We're going to have 2022 print.
through 2025 available. And I just got an email this morning that they've got a pile of 2022 ready for me. They're really good looking booklets. They're printed. Yeah. Oh, I can't wait to see that. I'm going to go pick them up. Yeah. So, and 2022 was one of my favorites. I love that with the, it had the citrus fruit cover. It's just a real fun design. So yeah, you can get those. They're going to be great to throw on your coffee table. As
Big difference being, again, we'll ship those out as soon as we get them after Summer Reading Guide Day. They then go first class, so it's going to be five days or something before they get to you. As opposed to if you buy the digital a la carte, you'll get the email with the PDF at 10 a.m. on Thursday the 15th. And we also have merch in our shop. This year we have a...
bookish hat. We have a concert style tee and we have great stickers that are road trip themed. But I mean, I'm going to want mine on my car well past the end of summer reading season. Yeah.
I'm going to wear this hat all the freaking time. I cannot wait to get mine. I'm excited about the merch this year. We've had a number of things with our logo, you know, with the, we had an I Rather Be Reading t-shirt several years ago. We've got a tote that we've stocked for years. But last year, the book camp theme, we incorporated into creating some stickers and a couple of things. And this year, the road trip just...
Uh, yeah, I love the concert tea. So we call it a concert tea cause it's got a bunch of locations on the back as if someone were going on tour, but they're, uh, independent bookstores. So a real fun, uh, way to kind of look at, uh, some of the, our favorite shops from, from our team, uh, across the country and the stickers are just adorable. So.
Check those out in the shop. Yeah, they're super fun. And there's a related feature in the guide. So I hope you enjoy that too. Okay. I think we've come to the end of our road. No pun intended. Okay. Kind of intended. Totally intended. Ginger always says bookish puns are 100% intended around here. So we'll go with that. Will, thanks for joining me today. I had a blast. Thanks for having me.
Readers, I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. And if you have questions about the Summer Reading Guide, share them on the blog in comments for this new What Should I Read Next episode post. I answer lots of questions during unboxing. And like I said, we're always wondering what our readers want to know. And I decide what to share during unboxing based largely on what I know you want to know. So if you have any questions,
Ask your summer reading guide questions, share what books you're interested in seeing in the guide, and see the list of titles Will and I talked about today all at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.
You can keep up with the latest that we're working on by signing up for our emails where we share a peek at each week's new episode and let you know about other exciting events in the world of What Should I Read Next? Like you would have already heard about our new merch and the stuff coming up for summer reading guide season. Sign up at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com slash newsletter. We're on Instagram at whatshouldireadnext. And if you follow or subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast platform, that makes a big difference in our viability.
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Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next is created each week by Will Bogle, Holly Wilkoszewski, and 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.