Ep 479: Balancing backlist with shiny new releases
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I was in an airport coming home from vacation, and we had like a six-hour delay. It was awful. But I was sitting there finishing this book, and I'm sitting in the airport just like sobbing. My husband's like, are you okay? I'm like, it's right. It's just the book. It's just a good, it's a good cry. 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 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.

Today's episode is evergreen, and it's also no coincidence that we're releasing it right now at the beginning of our summer reading guide season. Our 14th annual guide is now here and ready for access anytime. Get yours at modernmrsdarcy.com slash SRG. That's SRG for Summer Reading Guide.

We know many of you have been counting down the days till the guides release, and I hope you love it. But if you haven't gotten yours yet, and all you're looking for is a tangible way to support our team's work here on the podcast, your summer reading guide purchase is a great way to do exactly that. Get yours at modernmrsdarcy.com slash s-r-g.

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Readers, today's guest is bringing a question that's perfect for right now. I hear it every year in some variation, and I always love talking about it. How can she balance all the shiny new books of summer with the backlist titles that are already patiently waiting on her to-be-read list? Today, I'm examining this balancing act with Elise Brancheau, a professional classical singer who lives in New Jersey. Elise describes herself as a huge reading planning nerd. She's a

And we know Elise is in good company here. I trust many of you identify with her self-descriptor. We're asking, how can this reader who loves to plan also incorporate shiny new summer releases into her reading rhythms without throwing those carefully laid plans way off course? Elise mentioned she was especially feeling this tension right now because it's summer reading guide season and a bunch of new summer releases are about to flood her to-be-read list.

How can she unapologetically embrace old and new possibilities to read right now? You know I've got ideas. Let's get to it.

Elise, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Anne. I'm so excited to be here. Oh my gosh. The pleasure is mine. I can't wait to dig in. First of all, because I know your name from our communities, so I'm happy to see it in submission. But also the request you're bringing today I know is so relatable to so many readers. We hear it so often. So thank you for representing. Oh, you're very welcome. And I'm happy to be the representative of the lovely neurotic book people that are out there in our community. What?

Me never. Nope, nope, couldn't be me. You should see the look on my face. I wish I could see the look on yours. Elise, would you start by telling us a little about yourself? We just want to give our readers a glimpse of the real lives representing in these bookish conversations. Absolutely. So I live in northern New Jersey, really close to the New York City border, with my husband and my almost three-year-old son. So...

He's delightful, and he's also almost a three-year-old, so I'm tired and don't have a lot of time to read anymore. But when I do have free time, I obviously love to read. I love baking. I'm really into sourdough lately. I love doing hikes, gentle hikes. I'm not trying to climb a mountain, but I do love being out in nature. And I do love watching horror movies, actually. Really? Yes. Okay. Yeah.

I know that a lot of people are not into it, but I love reading horror as well. And actually during the pandemic...

A group of friends and I started a virtual horror movie club. So we would pick a different movie each week, watch it on our own, and then meet over Zoom to talk about it. And like those conversations got so deep. It was great. And I love horror because it really gets at like, it can really get at the deepest fears of the human condition without words.

hitting you over the head with it. It can get to it in a kind of sneaky way. So yeah. It's generally not precious. No, definitely not. No. Okay. That Zoom movie club sounds fun. It was really fun. We called it Fright Club. Oh, I love it. Yes. I miss it. I want to start it up again. As for what I do for a living, so I went to school for music and I still sing professionally, but shockingly, I do have other jobs because

Who can make a living as a singer anymore? So I am a classically trained singer, so I can do opera, art song, choral music, kind of anything classical adjacent. And so I have a couple of steady jobs singing for religious services, and then I get to do kind of gig work as it comes, sometimes with orchestra, sometimes with smaller ensembles. It really runs the gambit.

I also work part-time as the director of operations for a conflict resolution nonprofit, which has been really interesting. And then occasionally I do some freelance proofreading work. Not as much as I used to. I used to actually work as a freelance proofreader for Penguin Random House. Actually, I started before they merged together. I started with just Penguin and then it became Penguin Random House.

And that was really cool. It was pre-pandemic, and so everything was old school. Like, I still got, like, a paper manuscript and paper proof pages mailed to me, and I would mark it up with red pencil and...

then ship it back. So I don't really have the time to do that anymore. The turnaround time is just a little too fast for my schedule, but I do think fondly about that time. And I thought, you know, your listeners might be intrigued about what goes on in that process. Oh my gosh, yes. I have so many questions.

Don't want to derail, but how'd you get into that? What did you learn about the reading landscape and what did you learn about your reading life? Oh, I got into it in a super random way. So my mom is a dental hygienist, but she got a bachelor's degree in English literature for fun. And then she started proofreading in dental magazines because she had that knowledge of the field.

And then through her connections with those, you know, dental magazines, she got eventually put in touch with somebody at Penguin. So she started proofreading for Penguin. And then she was able to be like, hey, if you need more people doing this, my daughter can do it. And so they send you a test and you have to, you know, get all the all the mistakes that they've intentionally put in there. And then so I passed that test.

And then they start sending you books to proofread. So I got to proofread almost exclusively novels. I got maybe like one or two nonfiction books in there, but...

Definitely not books that I would choose to read on my own if I were just picking up a book to read for pleasure. I really did learn that I am not a big paranormal romance person. I got a lot of those, lots of vampires and werewolves and other types of were-animals. So you discovered that on the clock. I discovered that on the clock. Lots of the kind of very lighthearted and silly, cozy murder mysteries with

kind of ridiculous names, which if that's your jam, that's great. But I was just like, wow, this is not for me. And I think the hardest ones were these like super complicated fantasy books with like impossibly complicated character names that I had to just make sure every time like, okay, is there like, is this how you spell it? And going back to the style sheet and making sure that all the weird, you know, grammar of these things, okay, this character is this race. They use this type of grammar. Like it was just, that was hard. Yeah.

But luckily, I don't need to enjoy the book itself to enjoy finding all the mistakes and proofreading it. So that didn't really impact my, honestly, if I enjoyed the book too much, I would probably get distracted and be like, oh, no, I'm supposed to be proofreading. So it all worked out really well. But yeah, learned a lot about mostly about what I don't like through that job. Are you a compulsive proofreader? I'm thinking of like Anne Fadiman's Insert a Carrot.

I am. It's really bad. I have to sometimes just restrain myself because I'm like, don't be that person. Don't be that person to just be like, I noticed the email you sent me had this mistake. I'm correcting it for you. Don't be that person. But I do clock it and it makes my eye twitch a little bit every time, but I'm working on it. Do you feel that impacting your reading life? Actually, yes. I'm finding that I'm

Especially, I notice it more in older books that were printed long before e-readers existed and now have a Kindle version.

There are so many wild typos and like formatting issues in some of these books that I don't know what the process is of making an older book into an e-book, but it drives me up the wall when I see it. I just want to write to whoever's doing this and be like, please, just hire me. I will fix this for you. It does frustrate me a lot.

I was just personally curious. I don't think we can troubleshoot that today. But readers, if you have tips, you know what to do with them. Elyse, tell us about your reading life. I can't remember a time when I was not a book lover. My parents are both big readers, and one of my earliest childhood memories...

It was my dad. My dad read the entire—he read The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings series to me as a child each night before bed. It must have taken years. And I asked him, I was like, how old was I when you did that? He was like, I think between like seven and ten. So I was young. But we got through all of it. And I actually—I have this memory of—

We were camping in this, like, lean-to type thing, and it was night, and we had a lantern, and he was reading The Hobbit to me. And it was the scene where we meet Gollum, and it was just, like, the eeriness of the darkness and meeting this creepy character in this cave. Oh, just...

Core memory. And so over the years, my reading tastes, you know, have evolved as most people's do. I used to read a lot of fantasy as a kid, but I mostly don't now. I went through a big like nonfiction and memoir phase.

I used to be super anti-e-reader, but then I was like, I have all these big, huge, long books that I really want to read, but they're a pain to carry around. I'll just get a Kindle for that. And now, of course, I've used my Kindle for all sorts of things, but I feel like I needed a reason. I also now am a big audiobook listener, which has been great in getting to so many more books than I would be able to read with my eyeballs.

My go-to genres right now, I read a lot of historical fiction, especially the kind of literary historical fiction. I love a good thriller and like darker mystery. I do love horror or anything kind of like horror adjacent. I love books that really dive into the darkness. And then I do still like nonfiction. I love, I prefer more narrative nonfiction, nonfiction that feels more fiction-y in the way that it's written. Yeah.

And, yeah, I've been kind of dipping my toe into some other types of books, some more gentler reads. I find that I need a little bit more of the lighthearted now. You know, the world is how it is. It's not something that I think I want, like, the bulk of my reading to be, but I've been enjoying these little kind of breath of fresh air books that I've been experiencing lately. So, yeah.

A couple of things that I have realized about myself recently, honestly, thanks to listening to this podcast and being part of the Modern Mrs. Darcy community, is one, I love planning my reading almost as much as actually reading. I love being like, oh, I'm going to read this book then. I'm going to read this book then. Here's my TBR. And it's like...

Again, like I love a good spreadsheet. I probably have too many. And then I also love reading seasonally. So I love when I can match a book setting, the weather in the book, the just general vibe with the actual season that I'm in. So like last summer, we went on vacation to Long Beach Island, which is a beach community in New Jersey. And I read Joyland by Stephen King because it's set on a beachside amusement park and

in the summer and I was like this is perfect like I have both the setting because there's an amusement park in Long Beach Island I was like I have the amusement park and the summer like all it all fits so when I can have that like perfect matchup that's always ideal.

So I actually created a year-long TBR organized by month. And I've put way too many books, I'm realizing now, into each month, but they're all like seasonal. So I had The Snow Child by Ewan Ivey. And for like a winter month, I had Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury for a fall month. And like, that was so much fun to plan. I definitely am not getting to all the books that I wanted to. So that's, I'm like scrambling and being like, okay, okay, March 2026. That's when you're going to go. Yeah.

But now, I used to never pay attention to new releases. I would just kind of, if one came my way, it would be kind of by accident. But now, I'm paying a lot of attention to new releases because of this podcast and things like the Spring Book Preview and the Summer Reading Guide. And now I'm like, okay.

Oh, no, like all my beautiful lists, you know, books that I've listed out for a whole year. And then there's all these new books that are popping up that I didn't know about when I made my list a year ago. And I, yeah, it's silly to say that it's giving me anxiety, but it's giving me okay kind of anxiety. It's not like bad, but it's also, you know, I do fret about it more than I maybe should. So there's a possibility of choice that wasn't there before, it sounds like. Yes, absolutely. Okay.

I find that my anxiety has to land somewhere. I'd rather it land on the books. Yes, exactly. But I'd even more rather, you know, not experience anxiety in a section of my life that I really want to bring other things into my life. This isn't about me. I'm just saying I hear this. Yes, yes. I'm glad it's relatable. For sure. Elise, that is a wonderful backdrop to move in and discuss your books. Are you ready? I am, yes.

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You know how this works. You are going to tell me three books you love, one book you don't, and what you've been reading lately. And we'll keep all these factors in mind and explore what you may enjoy reading next, especially with summer reading in mind, since that's the season we're standing on the cusp of. How did you choose these books for today?

Well, of course, there were so many books that I could choose. That means you're in the right place. Yes. But I picked these books because I find myself gushing about them more often than most to anybody who will listen to me. One in particular is by, I think, my favorite author of all time.

And so I felt like these were a good representation of the books that have really grabbed me, either from many years ago or more recently, the books that are just kind of like living in my head. Elise, what did you choose for your first favorite?

So this is definitely an all-time favorite for me. This is Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. And I read this book over a decade ago, but it still maintains its place in one of my top favorite books of all time. So this is a literary, gothic, historical fiction slash thriller. It plays around with a lot of different genres. And it takes place in Victorian England.

And the setup of the plot, there is a character named Sue Trinder. She's an orphan, and she is being raised by, I guess you would call it a found family of thieves in this sort of gritty Victorian London setting. And one day, this...

Con artist thief who only goes by the name Gentleman approaches this den of thieves, and he says that he has this plan to go out to this country manor house where this rich old man is living with his niece, who is also an orphan named Maud Lilly. And Gentleman plans to pose as a tutor for her and in the process seduce her into

And marry her in secret. And then once they're married, commit her to an insane asylum so that he can get all of her inheritance. And he needs Sue Trinder to help him to pose as Maude Lilly's maid to kind of help him get where he needs to go with Maude. And he promises her to split whatever he gets from the inheritance with Sue if she does this for him. So...

Like, I could just stop there and just be like, okay, this is the exact perfect book for me. Literally everything, like, Victorian England, like, old dark manor house, like, a plot to deceive, like, I'm in. But this book goes places that you just do not see coming. And it's the most intricate and beautifully, like, astonishing plot I think I've ever read. Like, my jaw was on the floor multiple times in this book. Yeah.

I love the gothic atmosphere. You've got your creepy manor house. You've got this gritty underworld of Victorian London. It has this perfect blend of these moody, dark vibes where you sense these undercurrents of tension and something's not right. What's going on? Is everything as it seems?

I think this is definitely, I mean, it is an homage to Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, but it definitely has a, it is its own book and it takes this sort of fresh look at that story and this type of story. And the thing that I especially love about this book and all of Sarah Waters' books is that the prose, the dialogue, the characters all feel so real.

perfect for the time period in which she's setting the book. The characters in the setting and the prose don't feel like I'm reading a contemporary novel that, oh, just happens to be set in Victorian England. Like, it feels like I'm reading a book written in that time. And it's

astonishing that she does this because she has other books that are set in different times, all historical fiction, but they're not all in Victorian times. And she just matches the tone perfectly for whatever time period that she's in. So this feels, it feels like I'm reading an old book, which I love. And she has this slow burn type of

writing where the prose is so gorgeous that I don't mind the slower pace, but it's like the frog in the boiling water thing where you're like, you don't realize that you're like holding your breath until the big thing happens. And you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I was so tense. Like it is just everything about this book is like a 10 out of 10 perfect book for me personally. Wow. Okay. Where are we going to go next after that? Yeah.

My second book is The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. This is definitely a literary historical fiction. This is the second book I read by her. I read Matrix first, and I just found out that Matrix and The Vaster Wilds are part of a kind of loosely thematic trilogy that she's writing. And a third book is coming out that is kind of tied into this, which I am very excited about.

She says if she can ever finish it. Oh my gosh. Please, Lauren. If it ever allows itself to be written. Oh boy. And I feel like I can put words in Lauren Groff's ear because we aired a conversation with her on the podcast where I think she talks about that directly. Oh my gosh. Well, please, Lauren, please let it be written because I need it. So the plot for this book, it's always so funny whenever I am trying to like

convince somebody to read this book, I'm always just like, I know the plot sounds like nothing happens, but like, trust me, it's very propulsive. So the story centers around a young girl who escapes from a colonial settlement somewhere in what is now the Americas. I believe it's in the Virginia area. It's the middle of the night. It's kind of the tail end of winter turning into early spring. It is snowing and she just escapes and runs into the woods. And

And she is just trying to survive and trying to get to somewhere, anywhere that has people who will help her and keep her alive, essentially. And like, that's kind of the plot. And I know, again, like I know it sounds like nothing is happening. And there's really, for the most part, it's just one character. So there's not really much dialogue because it's just one character for the most part. But like, that is the brilliance of this book.

It is a profound and propulsive story about survival, transformation, revelation. She, like, Lauren Groff just weaves in these, you know, kind of gradual backstory reveals about this girl, about...

Her life before they came to the settlement, you know, what life was like in the settlement, not good. We know why this whole group came from England to the New World. And then most importantly, like, you eventually learn, like, why is she leaving when it's so dangerous to be out in this woods alone? She goes through this deep interior journey and you just, you feel...

her sense of the world kind of start to splinter and break apart. And it's just so, it's so beautiful. And at the same time, there's this like very real visceral struggle of like, I need to survive. I need to not starve. I need to not get eaten by this bear. Like, you know, like, it's just, it really was propulsive for me. And then Lauren Groff's writing just

You feel, like, you can feel the ice crystals on your fingers. You can feel her, like, pulling this dead fish out of the water. Like, all of the descriptions of the natural world are just so vivid and visceral. I found that, like, I really need that. Not need it, but if I can get that in a book, that is, like, more than half the battle. Like, to feel the atmosphere, to feel the physical place is huge for me. So, yeah, this book is...

quiet in some ways, but also very urgent in other ways. And there are just certain passages, you know, when you're reading a book and you read a passage and you're just like, I need to put this book down and like sit back and just like stare at a wall for a couple of seconds because like it just...

Like hits you in like it hits you in your gut. Like I had that in this book to the point where I still think about it. And I'm just like, wow, that's like changed how I've seen the world a little bit. So, yeah, I can't say enough good things about the Baster Wilds.

Okay. Listening to you describe Fingersmith, I wondered if you were very into plot, plot, plot. I don't know. Vast or Wild, you use the word propulsive, I think more than once. And yet it's not, it's not plotty.

No, and I do love a good plot when it is well done. I don't like twists that feel cheap and just like a last final like, aha! Like, I love a plot when it is really well done and thought out and when the characters in that plot feel really real and I fully understand their motivations. But I also, I don't need a plotty, plotty book. If the prose is gorgeous, if it feels good,

deep enough emotionally resonant like I don't need that you know sort of traditional plot like in Fingersmith with all of my books because it doesn't have to be plotty to have you staring at the wall going whoa at the end yeah it's usually not plotty moments that give me that I need a moment but propulsive is indeed high praise yeah I couldn't stop reading it I flew through it

All right, I love it. Elise, what's the third book you love? Oh, the third book is Northwoods by Daniel Mason. This is another, I realize that they're all historical fiction, which I didn't intentionally do, but I think is a good representation of me as a reader. How interesting. Yes. That being said, I would, if I had to like assign a genre to this book, it would definitely be a literary historical fiction. But there are parts of the book that creep into present day and then on into the future. So, yeah.

And there are other things which I won't talk about explicitly because I feel like it's kind of spoilery, but it's another book that sort of defies a firm categorization.

So I found this book. Honestly, I had just read The Vaster Wilds and I was like, I need another book that's going to give me that high. Like I was looking for another book that would give me similar type of vibes. And I saw this book in a bookstore. And honestly, the cover is a little weird. I don't think the cover accurately like depicts the type of reading experience that you would get reading this book. I don't know. Maybe that's just me. But I saw the word woods in the title and I was like, okay, I'm going to pick this up because I love a book set in the woods. And I was like, okay, I'm going to pick this up.

And I read the book flap and I was like, this sounds really interesting. And then I read like the first few lines and I was like, yep, this is going to work for me. The prose, again, is just like so exquisite. So this book is so interesting. I have not read a book quite like it before. There's not really a central human character in this book. Really, the central anchor of this book is a house in the Massachusetts woods.

And the book starts, again, similarities to Vesterwild, two Puritans run away from their colony because they're in love and they just want to live freely on their own. And they build this stone house in the middle of the Massachusetts woods. And then the novel follows the life of this house over centuries and then beyond into the future. So each section takes place at a different time in history, moving chronologically forward.

That's, you know, that's kind of unique enough. But then each section is in like a different format. So some sections are in letters. Some sections are a doctor's case notes, song lyrics. There's an entire section that's just a footnote. So the main text is a one line proverb. And then the rest of the section is a footnote about that proverb. There's a true crime magazine article. There's a real estate listing. Like it's so wildly inventive and interesting.

I just, each section, I got so attached to it. And I was like, I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave this section. Like, keep, just make the whole book the rest about this. And then I would move on to the next section and be like, oh, no, no, no, I love this section. Like, don't leave this section. Like, and that to me is like, that's a note of a good book when writing.

I am loathe to leave one section, but then I can't get enough of the next. So I was just really blown away by the creativity of this book. Like they have sections that are from the perspective of an owl and a beetle, like wild. But the emotional impact of this book was so deep.

deep to me as well. I finished this book, I was in an airport coming home from vacation, and we had like a six-hour delay. It was awful. But I was sitting there finishing this book, and I'm sitting in the airport just like sobbing. My husband's like, are you okay? Yeah.

I'm like, it's right. It's just a book. It's just a good, it's a good cry. It just, it really explores these themes of, of history and nature and memory. And it made me honestly look at the world around me. It made me look at my own house differently. Like who's lived here before me? Who's going to live here after me? What are the pieces that we all just leave behind that, you know, the physical marks of our presence in our lives and also like the emotional moments

parts of us that we leave behind in the places that we live in and that we move through. What does that mean for us? And what does that mean for our past and our present and our future to all be connected? It just, again, kind of altered my perspective on the world. And I can't stop thinking about this book. I can't stop raving about it. It's, I think, one of my all-time favorites. Elise, tell me about a book that was not a good fit for you. And I'd love to hear why. Wrong timing, not emotionally resonant,

dragged. I mean, you know. Yes, I have reasons. So this book, and I want to clarify, this is not a book I hated. There were things that I did like about it, but ultimately it was frustrating enough that I feel like it belonged in this category. So this book is The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters. Again, this is historical fiction, but it kind of creeps up too close-ish to contemporary time, I would say.

It is set in the 1960s, and a Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia comes to Maine for the summer to pick blueberries. And while they're picking the blueberries, the youngest child in this family, their daughter Ruthie, is with her older brother Joe, who's supposed to be watching her. And Joe kind of meanders away, gets distracted, and then when he looks back to the rock where Ruthie was sitting, she is gone. So...

They obviously search for her. They can't find her. They ask for the police to help. The police kind of don't really do very much because 1960s, they are an indigenous family. Racism is real. And eventually the summer comes to a close. They have not found her. They have no clues about where she may have gone, what happened to her. And they're forced to go home without her. So nobody knows what happens for over 50 years.

So this novel follows this family through several decades of their lives as they deal with the trauma and the ripple effects of that trauma of this loss and how it shapes their lives. So this book, it seems like it could have been a really good fit for me. I loved the idea that the setting really drew me in. I was like, ooh, like the blueberry fields in Maine, that feels like it's going to be really...

kind of like a lush, descriptive feeling, even though I knew it wasn't going to just stay in that one place. I was also really intrigued by a story centered around a Mi'kmaq family. Like, I have not really read a lot about that culture, and I was, you know, really interested in getting a feel for what life was like for them at this time in history. But the book kind of just frustrated me at every turn. I acknowledge that this may also be that I was expecting it to be a different book than it was, but

From the description of the book on the back of the book, I thought it was going to be more of a mystery than it ended up being. For me anyway, the mystery element felt very obvious very early on. And so it was...

frustrating for me to know more than the characters knew, like, from very early in the book. And so I'm just, the rest of the book was just me kind of being, like, waiting for them to find out what I already knew. Like, I would have much rather have not known and found things out with the characters rather than long before. I think partially because of that, the tension really felt deflated right when I felt like it was just

should have been getting going. I felt really frustrated with the characters too and their choices and things they did and more so things that they did not do. I'm trying to not be specific because I don't want to spoil anything, but I just felt like they felt very passive to me. Like just things and like very tragic and traumatic things just were happening to them and they were just

I was just reading about their experience of things happening to them rather than them making choices that are going to move the plot forward. And yeah, this is probably unfair, but I felt like I was being a little bit maybe like emotionally manipulated because it was so sad that

so much of the time. And so many awful, awful things happen to these characters. Just boom, boom, boom. And I was like, are you just trying to make the reader cry? Like, I don't know. It just, I, I, I can obviously read hard things. Like I read horror. I read like really intense, like memoirs of people escaping like horrific situations. Like I can deal with it. But to me, I felt like this book was sad because,

And the books that I tend to like are dark. And I'm not really fully sure... I feel like I can feel the distinction between the two, but I don't know if I can put...

the distinction into words, so maybe you have insight on that. But I wanted more sense of place, sense of the time, sense of the culture. It just all felt really unrooted in any kind of specificity. And that's what I love in the books that I love. And it was funny, I was preparing for this and I was like, you know what? On paper, I feel like this book has a lot of similarities to The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, which I loved. And I was like, it felt like I called up Liz Moore and was just like, here's all

all the things I didn't like about the Berry Pickers. And she was like, oh, okay, I'm going to write the book you wanted this book to be. So then she wrote God of the Woods. So like, if that gives you any insight into like... I love that book. I didn't know to thank you for it. Oh, of course. Yes. Thank you, Liz Moore. Thank you for doing that specifically for me. It was not the book that I was expecting. It was not the book I wanted it to be. It felt like there was enough good bones there for it to be something if it had been, I guess, just crafted in a different way. Yeah.

I'm still thinking about sad versus dark and what that means. Well, I think what you said about the berry pickers feeling unrooted in specificity gives us a hint to what's there. Maybe sad things just happen as it feels in life. Things just happen and sometimes keep happening.

I'm thinking of one of my favorite quotes from a, I think a minimalist pick in last year's guide. Not a hundred percent sure about that minimalist part, but it's the Clara Lombardo called same as it ever was.

But there's this quote in there where the protagonist is like, it just never fails to astound me how spectacularly bad the universe is at timing. Like you think it would parcel out the tragedies in, you know, nice evenly spaced segments, but instead you get just a ton dumped all at once. Like, like a brutal snowstorm and then nothing for the rest of the season. But a dark book is,

has a like certain worldview like it's saying something about the world it's written in like it is scary out there and bad things do happen and as a result here's what happens in this story i'm just making this up how does what are you thinking i think that's right i think the books that are dark for me that work for me are you know hard things are certainly happening to these characters but i think the sense of tension that they have to do something about it they're not it's

The dark things have to spur an action by the characters that they're happening to. They're forced to make, you know, sometimes very hard decisions, but the hard things are not just happening and then they're sitting there thinking about how sad they are that they happened. Does that make sense? I don't know. I think maybe it's the combination of sad, hard things happening with kind of a more driving, propulsive plot as opposed to...

sad things happening and then everyone's just sad all right we're both gonna process this we're gonna understand this so much better in like three weeks yeah because we don't need to create a master theory today yeah but we are recommending books for you and i'm holding on to that sense of tension but also thinking about things like agency and expectation and specificity yeah i like that we can work with that elise what have you been reading lately

One is Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughey, which I found out about in the spring book preview. I had read Once There Were Wolves by her, I think earlier this year, and I really liked it.

And I knew from that one and also from the description of Wild Dog Shore that, you know, climate change and climate disaster is a central part of the plot. So I was a little hesitant because that kind of topic does actually – that's a dark topic that I'm like, ooh, feels too real. Sometimes it can give me a little bit of anxiety. But it came up on my Libby as available. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do it. And I'm glad that I did. I mean, it was – again, it was hard. It was dark.

But I really connected to these characters. They were all, they all felt very real, very flawed. But you're ultimately rooting for them to get out of the situation. So it's set in a, I think it's fictional island, but based on a lot of real islands near Antarctica. There's just this underlying sense of mystery around there's a family that's the only people on the island and the island is kind of no longer really safe to live in. So they're having to move and

remove all these seeds from the seed vault on the island. And a woman comes washed up on the shore. And they're like, who are you? How did you get here? Like, this is not an easy place to get to. And so there's a really great sense of mystery, just sort of this simmering, foreboding sense of like, everyone's keeping secrets, what's really going on. I listened to it on audio. I thought the audiobook was excellent. I'm not, I don't know if this is going to be like a

Favorite book of the year, but I really, really enjoyed it. And, you know, kind of a typical type of dark, mysterious book that I like to read. Where the world out there is scary. Yes. Like that's what the novel posits from the beginning. Yes, definitely. Okay.

Another book which is wildly different. Not a deep dive into the darkness? No, quite the opposite. I read The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. I think that's how you say her name. And of course, this was a, I slotted this in to read during the month of April because I had to. Like, I could not read The Enchanted April in another month. This is a very gentle, very character-driven story. The plot is

Barely there. It's a group of four British women who go and live in an Italian medieval castle on the shore of the Mediterranean for the month of April. And again, that's sort of mostly where the plot ends, but it was lighthearted with still a lot of heart. There was that kind of gentle, dry British humor that I found myself chuckling at,

It was a nice kind of palate cleanser and refreshing change of like, okay, a book where like nothing horrific is going to happen. It's just,

You know, you could smell the flowers. You could feel the soft breeze. Like, you felt like you were there in that castle. You could smell the wisteria. It wasn't like a book that I would be like, shove everything off my shelves. Like, I need to read books like this now. Like, only these. But I think it's good for me and my mental health to have books like these kind of interspersed between my typical more dark reads. So yeah, I really enjoyed it. I'm glad that I have kind of been venturing out into the

the lighter side of things. That sounds great to add that to the mix. Thanks. All right. Elise, what are you looking for right now in your reading life?

I am feeling a little bit torn as a reader. As I mentioned, I love to plan my reading. I love... I have so many great backlist books on my list that I have been, like, dying to read. I've taken so much joy in just crafting this, like, monthly TBR. And there are some books that I'm like, oh, I really want to read these, but that's such a winter book. So, like, I have to read that in the winter. And so I have all these books just, like, you know, patiently sitting there waiting for their, you know, time to shine. And then...

I'm now aware of all these new releases coming out and so many of them sound so good. And I'm just like, I don't want to, you know, shove aside one of these backlist titles. I just like, I imagine them like just screaming, no, like I personify my books in a big way. And so I'm trying to leave room for some level of spontaneity to pick up that new release that is just like on my mind and calling my name. But I also don't want to just...

fully go in that direction only and abandon all of my backlist and like pre-planned books. So I'm not really sure like where that balance lies. And I also, I love, still I love reading seasonally. So I'm kind of wondering like if a new release book feels like, oh, this is such a summery book, like The God of the Woods. Like I couldn't read that.

in the winter. Like, that's a summer book. Like, so if a new release maybe feels like, oh, this is a perfect summer book, or maybe it's not. Maybe it actually feels like it belongs in the fall, or this takes place over years, so it doesn't matter when you read it. Like, I think that info, if I can find a way to find out that info about a particular book, that will maybe help me figure out when to slot that in. But I don't know. I feel like I may be overcomplicating things and overthinking things, too. So...

I need a little therapy session about that. In your submission, you said you want to be someone, well, you asked how you could be someone who loves planning and spreadsheets, but also sometimes wants to be spontaneous and more of a mood reader. Yeah. Yeah. What are you thinking? I mean, having heard yourself lay out that dilemma is what happens next. Maybe not obvious, but do you have any hunches as to what might work for you?

I think in terms of my crazy monthly spreadsheet for a year, A, I think that I've already put too many books assigned for each month because I'm not getting to them all. I want to very badly, but I'm not. So I think I need to pare down. I already go through in the story graph when I find a book that

Seems very obvious that it's going to, you know, feel like a summer book or winter book. I have a little seasonal tag tagging system in Storygraph so I can easily pull up like, hmm, what are my summer books? So it may be more helpful to just maybe have that big, like all of the books that I feel like could be good for the summer and then maybe plan a little bit less in advance. Maybe not for a full year, maybe for like, maybe I just plan for the season and then only, you know,

take up half the space on my list for books that I'm pre-planning, my backlist books that I want to read, and then knowingly, intentionally leave room for new releases? I don't know. I feel like I need a system, but also, like, do I? Can I just pick up a book and read it? Like, what's wrong with me? A lot of us do really like systems.

You know, this makes me think about writing books, how when I was working on a book, like in the middle of a writing session, I felt like, oh, I'm going to write a book.

oh, I can finish this. I can hit my deadline. This is going great. And then I'd go back into my regular life and it wouldn't be clear to me when the next writing deep session was going to be and I'd start to panic. But as long as I knew the writing session was coming, was scheduled, it would be okay. And I wonder if there's not some correlation here. I mean, I don't know about you, but I experienced this in my reading life

When I have like a solid 90 minutes to spend with a book on any given day, I get really excited. Like, oh, this is going so quick. Oh, I'm going to be able to get through so many books. Oh, I'm so excited about, you know, going through the titles I cannot wait to read. But then things can be really busy for a few days and I'll think like, oh, what happened? Yes. Very relatable. Not great at pattern recognition, if that's not clear, or at least not in some senses. Yes. Maybe I'm too close to my own life to see it.

I do really like the idea of planning for spontaneity. And I realize that that will sound absolutely ridiculous to some people. But to be able to build in these wildcard slots so that there is room for the more impulse, or if that's too strong, the more seasonal picks that emerge in that season, not six months in advance.

So that you can slide them into your reading life without feeling like everything else gets shoved out of place. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. Like, yeah, you're absolutely right. I do get a lot of comfort of being like, I don't need to worry about this like mountain of books that I have to read because I've slotted it into its place. Like it will get there. Like I don't have to.

have those all those titles swirling around in my mind thinking of what am I going to get to it like it's it has its place so if I can leave intentionally that like blank space that's actually kind of fun like it's sort of a mystery like what what is that book going to be like then I get the joy of like searching for it kind of in a more condensed timeline I like that a lot

Elise, how does it feel right now to not get through? I kind of hate that phrase, get through, but you know what I mean. To not be able to read the books that you had anticipated being able to read in a certain month or season. What I'm trying to tease out is, might it be beneficial to have like an essential list or a bonus list? Might it be helpful to think about any kind of grouping of books you gather on a seasonal theme as options, not to-dos? This is what I'm trying to suss out.

I do get a sense of like, oh gosh, like I'm such a slow reader or like, oh man, like now I have to, now I have to wait a whole year to read this book I wanted to read this month. And like, I think I'm a little too rigid about it, but yeah, I do get that sense of

of not getting to a book that I really did want to get to during this season. I think having options, having the idea of these are, you know, this is the menu that I have for this season or this month, and I can pick which ones I want rather than, like, this is what the chef delivered. Like, you're going to eat it whether you want it or not. You know, like, I think having that type of mindset is probably going to work better for me. Because also...

The person I am a year ago when I made this reading list, like, might not be the person I am right now when I am, you know, looking to pick up a book. And so I don't want to feel like I'm being forced to read something that I'm just like maybe not in the mood for right now. I like having that anticipation of knowing that I have these great books coming up. But I also think, yeah, treating it like a menu might make more sense. You make your menu in advance. Yeah.

And then when the time comes, you get to decide what feels right right then. Or, you know, what your priorities are. Yeah. If you want to go with a more like head driven instead of gut driven. Yes, exactly. My seasonal menu. I love it. How does that feel? That feels really good. It feels a little bit gentler on myself. And like, these are all like self-imposed problems. But I am recognizing where things need to like have a little bit of give. So that eases my anxiety for sure.

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I'm thinking maybe we do two back lists. Who knew? Yes, please. That would be amazing. All right. Now, while we're talking readers, the summer reading guide is not out yet. So at least you haven't seen anything. But I'm going to spill, I think, two books and then give you two back lists. How does that sound? That sounds great. Okay. Let's start with the back list. I have put these out there in our spaces, but I haven't discussed them on the podcast. So I'm curious if they're on your radar or not. But the first book,

back. You know, is this technically, this came out within a year. I don't know if it's technically backlist, but it's not new for summer 2025. And that first book is The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck. It's sitting, I see it right now. It's sitting on my shelf. I have not read it, but it's sitting right there. I see it. I love it. Okay. Tell me how this book came to be sitting on your shelf, please. I think I got the recommendation from Reddit, honestly. I

And I don't remember if I posted the initial. I may have been like, I need a book like Northwoods. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Yes. That is it. Okay, good. Yeah, I think it came from a Redditor being like, oh, if you like Northwoods, you would like The History of Sound. And I was like, okay, sounds good. So, yeah, and I'm glad that that is how you feel as well.

Okay. This is a collection of linked short stories. I wouldn't personally go so far as to call it a novel in short stories like Northwoods is, but they are so thematically linked. At the very beginning of the book, before, like, it's almost like the epigraph. I think it's a kind of poetry or song called A Hook and Chain is Defined. Okay.

Oh, I may be wrong, but isn't that like from like a sea shanty type of, like it's a structure of like a sailor song? Am I crazy? Oh my gosh. No, I don't think so. And that really fits with this book of stories that is all about Nantucket. Oh, yeah.

But in the beginning of the book, and I'm not reading for it, but it defines the hook and chain as a song or poem form, like a structure in which the first and last lines rhyme and then they're rhyming couplets within. So if you were just flipping through the story collection or reading it, you might not be

I mean, you would definitely notice they were interlinked, but this is very consciously, like firmly structurally done. So in the book, these stories are presented at, well, you have bookends.

the first one and the last one. And then in the middle, the stories are presented as pairs where you hear the first story, but then the second story provides a new perspective on what was shared before. Like sometimes from a distance of a hundred years or more, or sometimes just by changing the perspective of the narrator. That's just super fun for structure nerds. But...

They are interlinked short stories and they run from 1700s Nantucket to present day New England. They're tightly interconnected and it's so fun. Well, you get to know a lot of different people over a lot of time. Like there's this really important piece of art that strikes a contemporary person in a way and then you go back and find out who painted it and why, for example. Yeah.

You sound interested. You already have the book. I don't think I need to go into great detail. I do need to add a little note. I happened to listen to the audio. What I didn't know was that Ben Shattuck is married to Jenny Slate and he's

I imagine that is connected to the fact that Nick Offerman, Ed Helms, Jenny, Paul Meskel, like... Oh, wow. There's a lot of familiar voices on the audio. And I didn't actually pick that up until I realized, wait, I think Nick Offerman is reading me this story, but why? Why? Because I didn't pay attention to the narrator before I picked it up. But it's a really interesting short story collection. And I think...

I'm a little hesitant to say this because I don't want to knock short stories, but I think for those who find themselves really able to sink into a novel easier than short stories, the interplay between the various stories will make this a really easy entry to those who want to read more short stories, but have just found it challenging to incorporate those into the rhythms of their reading life. This is also a deep atmospheric dive into Nantucket. Yes.

I just get so excited when anybody's like, deep atmospheric. I'm like, yep, I'm in. But also, like, this is not a summary book. Like, if you're thinking Nantucket, like Ellen Hildebrand, like, no, no, absolutely not. Like, this is way more, this is an excellent pick for fans of Northwoods. Oh, okay. Oh, amazing. This is fantastic because this was already on my YouTube.

yearly tbr list like it had its place and honestly actually i think it got bumped because i didn't get to it i forget when i was supposed to read it but um i'm so glad uh now it's going back on because yeah just hearing you express that and i am also one of those readers who wants to read more short stories but just find myself not doing it so um this is perfect thank you

All right. I'm glad to hear it. And I'm glad that we're not adding a new title because we're going to do that before we hang up today. All right. Next, I'm reaching back a couple of years to a Julia Fine novel from the 2023 Summer Reading Guide called Madelena and the Dark. Do you know this one? I have not heard of this, no. All right. This is a Fine Arts book. Let me just tell you how Julia Fine described her own novel when she was pitching it. This is her Faustian Little Mermaid Fever Dream. Oh, yeah.

Yes. Okay. Okay. Dark fantasy, classical music, art and ambition, forbidden love, and also so much lushly described Venice from hundreds of years ago. So we have at the center of the story, an ambitious young female violinist who makes a deal with the devil in the canal, like she has heard you can do, but she,

She gets exactly what she wants and is stunned at how that unspools in her life. So this is a Baroque Venetian fairy tale about this young violinist, her best friend,

who's her rival as well, and they're consuming hold on one another. There's lots of avaldy, jealousy, and I mean, these Venetian lagoons are dark and ghostly in this book. Oh, yeah.

I'm sold. I mean, yeah, that is everything. When you said Baroque Venetian fairy tale, I was like, yeah, those are the catnip words to me. And I don't read a lot of fantasy. So this is great. Like I, the few fantasy books that I've read recently, I've really loved, but they were like,

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange, and Mr. Norrell, they had that historical, also very Baroque type of feel to them. So, oh, I'm very excited by this. This one is also very grounded in the real historical world. But I don't believe you can go make a deal with the devil in a Venetian lagoon. Not that I'm aware. In any era. You never know. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah.

Okay, so that's the backlist. Can we talk new for summer 2025? Absolutely. We're going to talk about them and then you can decide if they are indeed like right now books or if they belong in a different place on your literary calendar. I'm inclined to think the first one is going to be summer. And that is Bug Hollow by Michelle Hunnevan. It comes out on June 17th. It will be in the Summer Reading Guide.

When I heard you describing Northwoods, it really brought Bug Hollow to mind. And that's not because the books feel the same at all. But when you said you got to know certain characters in Northwoods, and then you didn't want to leave them behind, but then you got to know the new people, and you were like, okay, I don't hold against you anymore, Daniel Mason. And then you'd have to leave them behind, and you'd find the new people. You know, so like, yeah, page 80 is like, is conceptually connected to page one and page, you know, 250. But

You are in totally different places at each point in the story with totally different people. And that's how Bug Hollow is as well. This story begins with a road trip. We got a lot of road trips in the guide this summer and, you know, just coming out on bookstore shelves. But it begins in 1970s Northern California. There's the oldest son of this California family, lived in the state forever, who graduates from high school. And he gets parental permission to take a road trip up the coast with his friends to celebrate.

But he does not return on schedule. Nothing terrible has happened. He's just decided, you know what? I like it up here. But his parents don't know that. And they set off to find him and bring him home.

And that is an ill-fated trip. The consequences aren't immediately obvious, but I mean, that decision to go get him and what happens next, I mean, the impact's just domino through family life over the next four decades and in the pages of this book. And this is not a saga exactly where it's like, and this happened and this happened and this happened. You like helicopter into very specific places in time

to characters that you knew existed, but you hadn't been in their heads before, and you just kind of drop into the middle of their life, even though you don't know what happened with this family for the past eight years since the last chapter ended, for example. So we go in the minds of many of the family members in this unhappy, maybe struggling family. But I wouldn't say it's, you know, I wouldn't say it's either sad or dark. It feels realistic and complex.

So through this book, we get to know and get the perspectives of the sisters at various points in their lives, the prickly mother who struggles with alcohol abuse, his easygoing architect father, and a few other figures in their lives. This is mostly set in California, but there is one trip halfway around the world too. I think it's Dubai where the father is on assignment for a time and where...

This sounds like a cliche, but life-changing things happen there. I think these are characters that you will enjoy getting to know. Some are more likable than others, but they're all really interesting. And Honovan takes these leaps and pivots, but also it feels like the story of a family. How does that sound?

That sounds really intriguing. I love the 1970s Northern California setting and also Dubai. That sounds really great too. Family novels can either be a hit or miss for me. I'm not really sure why, but I can sense there is this, you know, there's an ill-fated trip. Like I sense there's a lot that you can't say because of spoilers. So I can sort of feel the complexity of that plot kind of simmering there. So I'm very intrigued by this.

I'd be really curious to hear what you think. It is historical, I'm realizing. But yeah, you'll have to read it. We'll have to talk about how the family aspect of it hit in the relationships. Yeah. If the characters feel really, you know, real and complicated and interesting, like you said, like that's a huge, you know, bonus for me. So this definitely sounds like it could be right for me.

Okay, the last one I have for you is The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark. It's out June 3rd. This is a book about a ghostwriter who is employed by a best-selling horror writer who happens to be her father, but they are estranged. She did not want anything to do with her family of origin because everyone knows who her parents are. And it's kind of been ruining her life. And when she had a brief...

bad marriage. She wanted to get rid of her husband, but she kept the last name because she did not want to be connected with them. And now she's built this career, ghostwriting celebrity memoirs. Nobody knows she's writing these books, but in the industry, she has a reputation. But she kind of blew up her career and she got on the blacklist by doing something that felt morally right, as you'll see in the pages of the book, but it's causing her professional problems. So at the point, the story really kicks into gear. She is hard up.

She doesn't have any money. She has all these legal bills. She has no work. She has to pay rent. And then her agent comes to her and says, hey, I have an amazing offer for you. Vince Taylor has asked for you. He wants you to ghostwrite his next horror novel. And she's like, I don't write horror. And also, he's my dad, but I'm not going to tell you that. But...

Her dad has decided he's going to write a tell-all memoir, not a horror writer, and give the people the story that they have always wanted to know. And that is about the crime that shattered and defined their family that happened way back in 1975.

her dad vince's two siblings were murdered in his home he was the only surviving child he's the main suspect even though he alibied at the time it proved out but the case was never solved and lots of people think he did it and he's decided before he dies because he has this illness that's uh taking away his his mind and his memory and quickly so he's like okay the time is now if i'm going to figure this out

He wants to reveal what happened, but he doesn't know. But he trusts his daughter to help him figure it out and put it down on paper and put the past behind them. That sounds like too lofty a motive for Vince, but there is nothing Olivia would like more than to put the past behind her. Suspenseful, twisty. This is super dark. Super dark.

This family has a lot of secrets. Obviously, there was a brutal murder in the home. That's a pretty dark beginning. But also, the reason nobody knows the truth is the truth is suspected to be really ugly. And, like, content warnings galore on this one, listeners. Like, Elise, I feel like you're good, but if... I'm good. Right, right. For those of us who, like, don't want to read about... I mean, it's rough. It's rough. It's rough.

But it's suspenseful. And I think the industry angle, the writing angle could be interesting. You mentioned you love Liz Moore. This felt very Liz Moore to me. Not so much the God of the Woods, but it has a lot of strong parallels to the unseen world. Not read-alikes by any sense, but a lot of the same propulsive father-daughter puzzle aspects. How does this sound to you?

Oh, that sounds absolutely perfect. I have not read The Unseen World, but I love Liz Moore. And yeah, you just, you know, hit a lot of the keywords for me, you know, propulsive, dark, secrets, content warning. Yeah.

It's so funny. Whenever you describe a book, it's like, this is really, really dark. I'm like, oh, writing that one down. That sounds amazing. And I do love a good propulsive dark thriller, especially in the summer. I don't know why. That is the time where I just am like, yeah. Oh, this is also set in California. It's set in Ojai. And while I think you could read it anytime...

I don't know. I'm trying to discern if it feels summer to me because it is summer and now feels like a good time for this kind of book based on what I gravitate toward or if it's actually set in the summer. But it's definitely not bad for summer. Great. Oh, perfect. Well, that's definitely going on the summer list for sure. All right. I'm glad to hear it. Okay. How are you feeling? I'm feeling great.

I know there's going to be books from the summer reading guide that are just going to be like, yep, got to get those, got to read those this summer. So getting those personal recommendations from you is just great. It'll help me kind of narrow my focus a little bit in that way. And then I'm glad that you recommended one backlist title that I was already planning to read. So that Kills Two Birds with One Stone. Yeah, I like how that worked out. Yeah. And there's a lot of variety in these books, which is really great. Some definitely feel in my wheelhouse. Some I think are going to be a little bit

more outside of what I normally read, but I'm really excited about that. Amazing. All right. This isn't really a fair question because two aren't out yet, but actually I think I know the answer. What are you going to pick up next, Elise? Well, yes, I can't pick up the ones that are not out yet, but oh gosh, I'm debating. I mean, I already am planning to read The History of Sound. Madelaine and the Dark sounds really good too, but because it's not quite summer yet, I think I'm going to go with The History of Sound. The

Oh, you said it wasn't summary. I'm torn. You know what? Because I know I'm going to be adding a bunch of books on my TBR that were not planned. It'll help ease my anxiety to read one that I was already planning. So history of sound, but I'm going to read them all. Absolutely. I love it. I'm happy to hear it. Thank you so much for talking books with me today. Oh, thank you. And this was incredible.

Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Elise, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Elise at her website, EliseBranchot.com, and check out the full list of titles we talked about today at WhatShouldIReadNextPodcast.com. Keep up with all the happenings at What Should I Read Next HQ by signing up for our emails, where we share a peek at each week's new episode and let you know about other big stuff happening in our world.

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Thanks to the people who make the show happen. What Should I Read Next is created each week by Will Vogel, Holly Wokaczewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rocha said, ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading. Happy reading, everyone.