Shownotes Transcript
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The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank, and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated. Card may be used everywhere MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. Rebecca's not with me today. I've got Erica and Danica with me to talk about, I mean, just the best beach reads of all time. Is it all time? That's what we're doing, the three of us.
Just a little something, you know, we put it together. It's fine. It's casual. So we had a big piece feature. I don't even know what you call internet units of this magnitude that we put together. Contributors, we wrote a bunch of blurbs for summer reading season here. And we're going to do a couple things. We're going to talk about what we think makes a good beach read, maybe memorable beach reads of our own. And then I think all three of us did multiple blurbs at least for this piece. So we can highlight some of our own picks there.
Let's see, before we get into that, a couple of programming notes. We're doing our next live recording of the Book Riot podcast at Powell's July 9th. We're doing the best books of the year so far. Rebecca's coming out. Vanessa Diaz is going to join us. And then Keith Mossman, who is the book buyer extraordinaire at Powell's, is going to join us over there. Tickets will be in the show notes there.
Over on First Edition, I'm going to cross post to this feed, I think, because people asked me to. I'm doing the 21 Jeff Kor books of June. So everyone can listen to that there. And let's do a quick sponsor break. And then I'm going to throw it to you, Erica, first to talk about what you think of Beach Read is. But not yet. If like me, you love travel as much as you love books, you're into stories that sweep you away and stay with you like a favorite souvenir, check out Strong Sense of Place.
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Today's episode is brought to you by Sony Pictures Classics presenting Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. From the title, you can tell that, yes, it is about Jane Austen, or I should say a Jane Austen lover, but it's also like grown. It's a romantic comedy. It's like the perfect little rom-com that is bookish when you want to watch a movie when it's rainy. You know what I mean? All right, follow me.
So it is a new romantic comedy about a Parisian woman played by Camille Rutherford, who dreams of becoming a successful writer and experiencing true love while attending a Jane Austen writers residency in England. Jane Austen wrecked my life opens only in select theaters in select cities, May 23rd and nationwide May 30th. For more information and tickets, visit Jane Austen wrecked my life.com and
It looks fun. I'm going to go see it. I don't know about you. I think you should. I think you should. Again, check out janeaustinwreckedmylife.com. And thanks again to Sony Pictures Classics for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Avon Books, publishers of Along Came a More by Alexis Daria.
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I love the story you'll be rooting for from start to finish. So let's get into it. We've got Eva Rodriguez. Her husband crushed her by saying he needed to chase his quote unquote dreams, whatever that means. She just wants to have fun now. But then you get Roman Vasquez. He's magnetic. They meet at a wedding party. Secrets collide. Emotions erupt.
Next thing you know, we've got sizzling, sexy, impossible to put down romance, which is what we wanted. Make sure to pick up Along Came a More by Alexis Daria. And thanks again to Avon Books for sponsoring this episode. Okay, now, Erica, what makes a good beach read for you?
A good beach read. First of all, I'm from Tennessee and I've been to the beach like a couple of times and it was a lake, the river. What was your body of water that you would, would you go to a body of water and read? No, I'm black. We don't do, we don't do bodies of water. Okay. You know, I mean, it's, it sounds nice. Like when I hear beach read, honestly, cause I'm just so not beachy. I have nothing against it. It's just the, the ocean, the vast ocean kind of, I have an existential crisis a little bit when I see it.
But I equate it to summer reading. Summer reading to me
It's like light, airy. It might be a little... It might be a bit of a basic answer. But I like books that take place during the summer. Just like, you know, we're living the same thing. And like light, breezy. I like slice of life manga type of thing. Very low budget, low stakes. But on the other hand, I also like stories that really like kind of grab you and make you like submit to their world and like really just...
Because I feel like a lot of times, you know, summer is associated with vacation. So it's like a little getaway. Maybe a longer stretch of time where you can dive into something too, right? Exactly. Several hours on a Saturday. Danica, do they have summer in Canada? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure this out.
I am as south as you can get in Canada, where you like dip below the border a little bit, but stay in Canada. So we get summer. And it's also funny because as the opposite, I live on an island. So it's just all beach. Like it's beach and everything. Oh, wow. So you just call them reeds. They're just reeds. Right.
You're always at the beach. But yeah, when we were putting together this list, I became more and more aware that I don't know what a beach treat is. Same. Yeah. So this is a great podcast. I'm so glad you guys. Why don't we volunteer first? Yes. Because.
Like, it seems like people either mean it's a page turner, like it really pulls you in. You can read it even when there's a lot of distractions around you. Or it's something super light, fluffy, fun, which often means like it's either romance or it's a really dark thriller, which I...
I don't know if that's coherent. I think those are demons that like that. So I think that is wild to like a really dark thrill in the summertime. Cause I think I'm like the two of you where I want something that
pretty breezy that if I fall asleep during it and I pick it back up and I don't remember what happened, maybe it matters. It may not matter that I don't remember what the last few chapters were about. So something page-turning. So a lot of genre. I think maybe Danica is what you're cluing on to do a lot of genre that way. I, like you, Erica, I like it when it's hot to read something that's on the beach or it's set in the summertime or, you know, someone's wearing big hats and they're sweating a little bit. If they're on vacation too, all the better. I enjoy that. Or...
I think I like to get into something and sink my teeth into something long where I do have hours. Again, this used to be a different time of my life when I didn't have kids and a busy job where I had a Saturday and I would just sit outside and read all day. But something where the hours can kind of while by and I enjoy it. A lot of people take on a summer reading project. And I think that's one of the same reasons. So I'm going to have a lot of time. I'm going to be more motivated to do that.
I want to transition to memorable summer reading moments here, Beach or otherwise. And a similar one for me is I took down all of His Dark Materials one vacation. Michelle and I went to Dominican Republic. I had one giant omnibus paperback. We're not doing videos, so you cannot see my hands doing a big sandwich. I can see your hands. Okay, there you go.
erica are you in the internet you are the internet i'm in the internet not at the beach because she's not at the beach she's too scared to be in there and it was a really good experience because i just you know i pick it up and i made it through the whole thing and i got lost in it for the whole week my you know my subconscious or my internal life was
about that story, even as my external life was about drinking too much and all-inclusive and getting mouth sores from eating too much pineapple. But I think that's probably my number one summer reading experience. You were just living my perfect life. Yeah, you were. Yeah, I'd like to do that. Is there a difference between beach reads, summer reads, and vacation read? Or are those all the same thing? I think to a first approximation, they're the same, Danica. Yeah.
Yeah. That's my sense. Okay. Cause I don't think of like his dark materials as a beach read, but I could put it in vacation read. Right. Yeah. I mean, cause you could easily do that. I don't, I don't know. In a winter time, Christmas time, holiday time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I think Beach Read, I mean, we can get to the list here in a second, but I think Beach Read, it's going to have bright primary colors on the cover and probably a cartoon figure of someone wearing a hat of some kind. That's a Beach Read too. A hat. Hats are important. A hat has to be on the cover. Erica, I am bald and not black, so I got to cover that up. You say as you rub your head. I know, right? Subconsciously, my hands are just trying to protect it as much as humanly possible.
Danica, do you have a memorable summer beach? Yeah, mine was just recently that I decided, even though I'm surrounded by beaches, I feel like it's really easy for me to realize the summer has come and gone and I haven't actually done anything summery. So I've tried to make it a point to at least do one beach day a year where that's the point of the day. And the first year I did it, I realized,
read uh one of my picks the uh an island princess starts a scandal which is like a very steamy sapphic historical romance and it was just like the perfect beach read like just lounging around on the beach eating snacks reading this like super fun yeah you gotta have snacks
You did say mouth sore causing pineapple. Yeah, drinking something out of a coconut and chips. Now we're talking. We are going somewhere. Yeah.
So that to me was like the perfect, you know, beach reading. And to just kind of dip in and out and like, okay, now I'm going to just close my eyes and sunbathe for a while. And then I'm going to read a chapter and then I'm going to jump in the waves and then I'll read a chapter. So wait, you can get in the water up there? The water here is so cold that I would never. You get in the water up there, Danica? What are you doing? Yeah, of course. Oh my God.
Really? Is it because you're Canadian and y'all are like, it's... No, it's nice. It's nice.
Okay. Such a foreign world. See, Eric and I grew up in places where getting into the river or lake in August was actually made you hotter. There was no relief to be had. It was terrible. And there might be something in the water. Right? There might be something in the water like a cotton mouth. Yeah. Something's going to suck your blood and stay on you. No, thank you. I'm staying here. No, thanks. I'm sorry. I've seen all types of things. I'm sorry.
Erica, how about you? Do you have a memory of a specific reading experience that happened not clearly in the body of water, but adjacent to it? Not in the water. Yeah. Yeah.
I tried to, I actually tried to do a beach reading thing last year for my birthday. I went to this book. I tried, I was like, Oh, thanks. People do these things. Like let me cosplay as a normal person. I know what you're saying. I tried to do it myself. I was like, beep, beep, beep. Let me pretend. Beach read. Beach read. Uh, it did not work. It was one step out of the internet. It's just one. And then I go back. Yeah.
It didn't really work for me. I was not, I'm not a beach person. I was trying to adapt to being on the beach. It's hard to walk on it. It was a lot of people. It was pleasant, but I was like, how do people read? So it didn't work, but I will say I did have like a couple of summers ago where I developed this like habit or tradition of like going to
on the weekend to the library during the summer. So that's as close as like a beach reading because I try to read at the beach. It didn't work. And that was a time I was reading a lot of, as I said before, kind of like these like slice of life manga. Um,
slash graphic novels i just found them really relaxing and it just also felt jeff to your point of like bright colors on the cover these this this works like the way of the house husband was one which is a really funny like manga about this guy who's like an ex yakuza gangster and he turns into a house husband it's hilarious and then this uh graphic novel called wash day diaries um
And that is just like very bright and colorful. And it follows like, I forget, like four black women who are friends in New York. And it felt like it felt like having like reading conversations I had with my friends. So that was like a really I read a lot of other graphic novels or just a couple of
That was like a really relaxing tradition. And when I think of beach reads slash summer reads slash vacation reads, I think of relaxing. I think of, like we said, airy, nice. Like these things have moments where it's like, ooh, got a little hot there. Got a little tense, you know what I mean? But it cools down and in the end, it's like affirming and calming. So that was my little, that's...
Going to the library. You know, that's a really – I hadn't thought about that because it's been a while since I didn't have work or school or teaching in the summer. But when I was a kid, really through college –
having a day or two to go to the library during the summer where I could pick whatever I wanted to read and you could kind of get a big stack of stuff and just try it out. My daughter is, there's seven days away from being out of school. Work is essentially done for her for the year. We went to Powell's last night to just walk around and start talking about what she wanted to read this summer. It was great. The freedom, I guess, maybe that's what we're talking a lot when people are talking about summaries. There's a freedom associated with it in so many ways.
Did you go to the library? Danica, did you go to the library for stuff when you were a kid to do summer reading? Oh my God. Yeah. I was always in the library. I'm very glad. I did a lot of summer, meant a lot of car rides. We moved around a lot and then would drive back home. Because Canada is just so big and there's nothing there. You have to drive so far. It's like six hours to the grocery store. What?
So it'd be these like eight hour car rides and I'd have just like a stack. And I'm so glad that I don't get motion sick. Cause I would spend. That was my curse. I wanted to read, we would drive from Kansas city to Denver essentially to see my grandparents. So it's like 10 hours in the way back of the station wagon. And if I so much as looked at a book, I would just like spew all over my entire family. It was terrible. So I envy, I envy you, uh,
greatly there. All right, let's do another quick sponsor break. Then we're actually talking about specific books at this point.
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Lady Bird. They've got some hit little joints on here. I'm not mad at it at all. All right. Check out Canopy. And thanks again to Canopy for sponsoring this episode. This episode is sponsored by Life is a Lazy Susan of Shit Sandwiches by Jennifer Welch and Angie Pumps Sullivan. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audio book provided by Hanover Square Press.
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Today's episode is brought to you by Sony Pictures Classics presenting Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. So Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is starring Camille Rutherford. It's a new romantic comedy about a Parisian woman who dreams of becoming a successful writer and experiencing true love while attending a Jane Austen writer's residency in England. And it's a new romantic comedy about a Parisian woman who dreams of becoming a successful writer and experiencing true love while attending a Jane Austen writer's residency in England.
It is all types of like cozy, bookish, rom-com-y goodness. And I think, I feel like we need that right now.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is now playing in select cities and opens nationwide May 30th. For more information and tickets, visit janeaustenwreckedmylife.com. Again, that's janeaustenwreckedmylife.com. Thanks again to Sony Pictures Classics for sponsoring this episode.
I'm not exactly sure I got to sign my blurbs, to be honest. Does anyone know how we got to sign these? I got a task from Rebecca. It's like, could you blurb these? I'm like, okay, I read these. I'm sure someone did them. Maybe it was a Vanessa joint. I'm not really sure. Yeah. I remember signing up for a couple of them myself. And I got, yeah. So I don't even know. There's a whole bunch of them. We have contributors on here too.
let's just talk about some erica you want to start uh you know or danica just mention the one you did real quick you talked about the island princess which again sounds like yeah it's a little checker on a checker but there's island princess and erica we'll go to you next yes it's an island princess starts a scandal by adriana herrera which like i said it's historical romance it's set in 1889 paris
And the main character, Manuela, she is about to get married. It is very much a marriage of convenience. She's a lesbian. She doesn't particularly want to get married, but you know, that's,
That's the era she's living in. And she decides she's going to go with her two best friends to Paris to have one last debaucherous summer. That applies to the existence of previous debauched summers, which is also amazing. Just one last one. Yeah.
And she's kind of heard the stories about the gay side of Paris. And so that's why she's here. And she finds this woman who wants to buy her
her island. She has been left an island by her grandmother. Really tiny little parcel of land, but it's one that this businesswoman needs for a project, and they're kind of negotiating over it. Cora is the other woman, and Manuela said she'll agree, but only if Cora shows her kind of the underground queer scene in Paris. Oh, okay. All right.
sure she's like an Ann Lister twist my arm
So you can imagine how it goes from there. But it was just such a fun read. And yeah, a lot steamier than I expected from a historical romance. When I hear like 1800s, that's not what I expected. Oh, they were freaks, Danica. They were freaks. Come on now. Absinthe and the Moulin Rouge, you know. Okay. I've seen all these things. All of that. It looks like that was your most...
Let's do our more under-the-radar picks because I think all of us got a crack at some more familiar titles, which we can talk about for sure. Erica, do you want to talk about One Piece maybe? I guess that's certainly familiar to the manga anime crowd, but maybe for the general reader, it's not as familiar. So One Piece is like super duper perfect for summer slash beach things. It's literally a pirate manga. It takes place in this like very fantastical world. It's based around the seven seas, which sounds very piratey and fun, but it makes it, there are like these...
monsters and there's like this upper world in the clouds you can go to it follows monkey d luffy who is this like really zany kind of clueless character and he's very he's very sincere and earnest about becoming like the king of the pirates and so what's interesting about this is like
Well, I was going to I was like, that might sound shady, but I was about to say, let me self edit. Yeah, I will say some fans. Sometimes I think certain fans of certain things, they, you know, are maybe less tolerant. I say that. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Because this this story has a big like.
counter culture like anti-authority and it's it's very much focuses on found family he's looking for a pirate crew so he recruits these people who he thinks will help him get the one piece which would make him king of the pirates and all the while they're evading the police the navy
which is like, you know, the man, the authority figure. It's water. It's right there. That qualifies as beach, the water, the ocean, pirates. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, they pass by beaches all the time when they're on the water. It's just right there. Yeah. It's right there. So the one...
The one thing though, is they're always on the water. He has this like magical ability where he can like stretch really far. It helps him and he, and his little battles and stuff. It's a shonen manga. So it's geared towards kind of a younger crowd, but it's still fun. It's one of the most popular manga and it's anime adapt adaptation is super duper popular. There are many, many volumes of the manga, many episodes, people love it internationally. So if you want to get into manga, yeah,
If you want to sample something that's popular, see what the hubbub is about, I would recommend One Piece. I will say, one thing that makes it a little spicy is his ability to stretch and all that. Oh, he's taking no more. We can figure it out. Oh, okay. I have a...
have another okay i offered i offered to write a blurb for the da vinci code oh but rebecca took it from you i she did and i listen let me tell you this there was some competitions over some yeah there were there was and i only wanted to write it because in this like this is a precursor for where i am now in life when i was like 15 16 17 whenever this book came out
I read it because it was just like, as Rebecca mentioned in the blurb, it was everywhere. So I read it and I was still living in Tennessee with my mom. My dad lived in New York. So I would email him and call him and just do whatever like in our communication. So one day I email him as I would do. And I said all this other stuff. And then I gave him I gave him a full book review of the DaVinci Code. And.
And I was like, I read this book is really good, but there was too much talk of this and that.
I remember like giving him a full, he did not ask for it. It was unsolicited. And he did. And this is a very Nigerian man. I just want to lay that out there. He didn't know what to do with it. He never responded. He responded to everything, but the book. And I'm just like, bro, do you think you lost him at the sex cults? Do you think that, where did you lose him? Might have, might have been. Okay. He'd probably be like, ah, any guy don't know what you're talking about. This, that you're talking your mom.
You're like, let me ask your mom. Like, what are you into, bro? So I was just like, why did he disregard my book review like that? That's kind of wild. So talking about The Da Vinci Code, I saw it on the list and I was like, oh, flashback. I have a history with this book. Literally.
Listeners of the Book Riot podcast, I'd like to welcome you to the Erica experience. It's a wonderful journey every time. I had no idea where that story was going and I'm always delighted when the car finally stops moving and we get off the ride. Are you into Dan Brown ever since, Erica? Have you done the other ones or has this been your singular Dan Brown experience? I think around the same time because I was like, oh, I kind of like it.
I think I read one other book. They kind of all of us are the same. Yeah. And that was it for me with Mr. Brown. Okay. That's a lot of people's experience. You may have heard me. I'm fishing around. Rebecca and I are going to read his new one, which is coming out in the fall, the secret of secrets, which just incredible for words. So we're looking for someone to join us. If you're interested, let us know. We,
I might have to get in on that and I'll force my father to listen to the podcast. And he just will just not respond at all. He will just not respond to every single thing but that. My question, is that just a risk of being associated with book riot people? You're going to be told a
full book synopsis and review. I can't tell you how most days I'm telling my roommate, here's exactly what just happened and what I think about it, even though you're not interested at all. You didn't ask me this. You're getting this. There's also a period of kids' life when they start to read books, and my kids have gone through this, other kids I've known have gone through this, where they want to tell you about the book they're reading, but they don't know
how to differentiate between major plot points and really insignificant details. And it just keeps going. There was one time my son was trying to describe a book to me. It was one of these 140-page whatever. And I'm like, are the laws of physics suspended here? How is this still happening? No, they're using more words than the word. Yeah, right?
It's like it just keeps going because they just flatten out every word is equally important. And they just like the color of everyone's hair and what everyone eats. And they forget to tell you that everyone was vampires by the end. You don't know what's happening. It's nuts. Anyway. And a flashback, Jeff. I feel like this is probably my dad experience. And I think you should respond to your children's book reviews. Oh, I responded. I'm just saying. Oh, did I respond? Like enough already. That's how I responded.
My dad was, he didn't say that, but I think I probably had that same. The silence spoke louder. Danica, were there any books that you did that were on this list that you didn't get to blurb that you wanted to? This is your chance. I didn't think we could sort of settle assignment scores on this pod. Yeah, true. No, I got to blurb all the ones I wanted to. And a few that I was strong armed into a little bit. Okay.
I'll swing over to, I guess I got sort of the basic paperback favorites because I'm old, I guess. I wasn't getting like One Piece and Island Princess steamy historical fiction. But I guess the most under read of the ones, and again, it's Colson Whitehead, so it's not that under read, but Sag Harbor, which is...
auto fiction really about this community on Long Island called Sag Harbor that Whitehead and his family would vacation to in the summers. And so did other sort of upper middle class to upper class black families. And it has a lot of the trappings of like,
kind of movie I feel like Jesse Eisenberg would have starred in 15 years ago, but for black people, which is really interesting. And then you get Whitehead's writing, which really makes it special. I think this is very evocative. It's very cool. You get some of the race struggle stuff there, but it's also just about a 15-year-old hanging out with his family who he sort of loves, but also couldn't be bothered to talk to. And you have these aimless long days.
where the most exciting thing you might do is go get ice cream at 4.15 when the place opens, or you've got five bucks to go do it. I really like it. So it's not really a genre. It's more of a vibe than a story, but a vibe I'm very much into. So that's Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead.
All right, who's up next? Erica, where do you want to go? You did One Piece and you hermit crabbed yourself into Rebecca's pick. Where else do you want to go? Well, I could do Seven Days in June, which is spicy. Do it. Why not? Very steamy. I like this book. I like this book. Yeah. It gets a little dark, though. There's some trauma to untangle. You know what I mean? It's very concentrated and very...
And I don't mean like sexually hot, although yes, but like, I just, when I think about it, I think of the summer, it takes place during the summer. It's in the title seven days in June. It follows two black authors,
kind of in different lanes. There's Eva, who is like a supernatural romanticist writer. And then there's this literary darling, Shane. And they knew each other way back in the day when they were teenagers. And they had this like wild, shout out TLC, crazy, sexy, cool summer where they were just like, you know, all over each other.
And something happened back then that separated them. And there was some miscommunication because. No miscommunication in a romance novel. No. The third act. Right. No. So there was a miscommunication back in the day and they've always kind of like moved around each other. They kind of write about each other, but like secretly, they never really got over each other. Well, Ava had a daughter and, you know, life lifed for her.
And they reconnect as these authors. And then they start to kind of untangle all those, the things that happened back in the day. And like I said, some trauma gets, you know, trauma gets untangled. Trauma is brought into it. People got some raggedy mothers. You know what I mean? And those seven days in June when they were teenagers, they kind of threatened to happen again because things get a little hot, a little caliente, a little spicy. Yeah.
But then, yeah, so you got to see what happens. I like about that book, and I don't know why it feels like vacation friendly, maybe because you go on vacation for a week, but that the main action happens in like two separate weeks. Like it's very concentrated. That's what I was saying. It's intense. And again, it does have, when we were talking about, when we were talking about like what
as a summary. Like it literally takes place in the summer. And I think that that concentratedness that you just mentioned, it helps it feel like, I think it's like an average length book. It's like 300 ish pages, whatever, but that concentrated timeline makes it feel like a summary because it's all happening just in this little time. And it kind of really pulls you in because you're like, okay,
where are these people about to go? They're kind of a hot mess. I want to see where this goes. Basically, that's Seven Days in June by Tia Williams. I mean, it's seven days in June. Like that's when most of us are in vacation for seven days in June. Danica, you wrote about the pairing, which kind of feels like the very model of a modern book riot friendly summer read. Because it's like someone put it into a lab and they came up with the pairing. You want to talk about that for a minute? Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think it's kind of the ideal summer read, at least for me, because it's another second chance romance story. It's about basically these two main characters. They grew up together. They started dating. They were inseparable until they were about to go on this food and wine tour of Europe. And they had this wonderful,
horrible fight on the plane there and they broke up and they went separate ways and they haven't talked to each other since and it's been I think like five years and when they broke up and obviously didn't go on this tour they got a coupon for like
But they couldn't refund it. It was like, you have to go on this tour in the next five years. And this is the very last chance. And they both happened to book it for the same time because they both waited until the very last minute. Just happened to. That's a millennial core. Kupong, yes, please. Kupong, last minute. I'm in the middle seat next to my ex. Exactly. I feel very triggered. They come
They kind of like make up a little bit. They're, you know, they're trying to be friendly so they don't ruin this whole thing. They're both bisexual. And I think the hook of like how this book was marketed is that they make a bet with each other of who can sleep with someone in each city that they visit first. Oh. Which is obviously, this is very seamy. Honor system, I would suppose. Yeah.
And that's definitely part of the... But it's not really the point of the book. I think it's such a fun reading experience because it's so decadent. You get all of these descriptions of the food and the locales. That's what I'm talking about. It's so beautiful. But also...
I read this interview with Casey McQuiston who called this like they were trying to write a Trojan horse trans story because in the, it's told in two perspectives, but the first half of the book is from one perspective and the second half is from another, which I haven't really seen before. Usually they flip back and forth. And yeah,
you find out that one of the main characters is non-binary, but because you're getting from their perspective, you're not getting their pronouns for the first half of the book. And it isn't until like the second half where you get the other character that it comes up. So,
So basically, Casey McQuiston said, like, can I pull some people in to pick up this book who might not have otherwise? And once they're in it, they're like, oh, this is a person. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is so smart. And I think it works so well. But it was very funny that like I read I love this five stars.
I read some reviews afterwards and I was thinking like, man, I love this main character could totally relate to them. And then I looked at the reviews and they were like such an unlikable main character. Oh no. Tell us more about yourself, Danica. What are you into in all those beaches? You know, that's one of those reader question, tropey kind of discussions that I'm completely immune to. Like the, the liking a main character is never really even something that
It doesn't matter to me. It could be fun to have a nasty character. Like, ooh, this woman is raggedy and trifling. Let me read more. It's so weird. That's a whole other conversation. Yes.
Why do you need to like main characters? Kind of a little basic. Yeah, they're not role models. No. Yeah. It flattens the... I feel like it flattens the market in a way. But anyway, that's a whole other thing. I'm much more sensitive to a boring main character than an unlikable one. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to go to this little unknown book called The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oh!
This was maybe an unusual pick. Finally, it'll have its time. I know, finally. Finally. Oh my God, I know. So my rationale here was, and I haven't done my homework about this, but like when did the beach read become a thing? I have no idea. I don't think they were rocking this in like 1890 when they're like, let's get in our petticoats and get out to Coney Island and do it this way.
But there's something about the Great Gatsby. It's, again, another Long Island pick. It's very summercore, and there's these big parties out on Long Island, and they're riding their Model Ts down the highway with, like...
open containers like it should be called the great open container really the great drinking and driving all over the place and it's so familiar and it's so sort of a almost a moldy chestnut of the 20th century American Canon that I think it's almost like under appreciate how messy and melodramatic it is spoiler alert this ends in a murder suicide because he couldn't get back with the girl he fell in love with when he was a kid and he becomes like a bootlegging Mafia
head honcho just try to win her back and they're like this drama and pettiness at these parties these people are all a mess and it ends up messily and it's not very long and the writing is really beautiful so it's like you can sit there on the beach but like it has issues of course of the day but at its core it is like a beach melodrama hmm
So anyway, I think the Great Gatsby, if you haven't tried it, it might be good when you're drinking something out of a pineapple at the same time. You saying that the B-tree is new reminded me that like three years ago we had a post on the state of the B-tree that was like the history of the B-tree. I do remember that. Do you remember what they said? It was apparently the term B-tree was coined in the 1990s, which seems way newer than I would have thought. Like I knew it was new. Yeah.
But like the idea of kind of reading by the seaside was like mid 1800s apparently, but they were reading like poetry. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You've got Shelley and Rossetti, like going out into the beach and like writing to the moon and stuff like that. That's not. Yeah. Which I think is a little different. That's not what we're talking about. Yeah. Romantic poetry where you may jump off the cliff is after you're done writing about it is what we're talking about right here.
Where are we going? Erica, are you up next? Whose turn is it to go? I am. I think I have a... I think my last one that I wrote about is one of those that's on Demon Time, like you were talking about earlier. You know, I kind of get that. Anyway, go for it. I kind of get that. I feel this. So it's The Secret History by Donna Tartt. If you're a dark academia girl, if you like, you know, like that whole just, you know, collegiate... It's really...
It really is like a super fall friendly book, but it works as a beach read. I feel like because although it's like 500 pages, it's one of those over 500 really. It's one of those books that like pulls you in.
So the premise is there's this guy, he goes to this small liberal arts college and he is studying classics and he kind of gets sucked into this. Well, not sucked into, he wants to join this very like eccentric kind of. He's ready to be seduced. He's ready. Like he's primed himself. No one has primed him. He gives himself to this.
And they're just like a very intense group that's led by this very eccentric and kind of weird professor. And they commit a murder. But you know that from the beginning and you know who they killed. The reason the, the question is more so why and how. So like, we know from the beginning, they killed this guy.
And they start talking about it. So then like, you know, the next chapter, like the first chapter, we see this person alive and they're all cool. Everyone's chummy. We're talking about classics. We're doing this and that. And then it's like, okay, so why did y'all kill him? And so that's the part that sucks you in. I think that is,
It being an intense like murder mystery. That's like Paige Turner with beautiful writing. And also if you want to get, if you like classics, if you like reading about that, if you want to feel kind of a little frou-frou, let's be real. You're a little frou-frou on. You're like, oh, I'm by the beach. I'm reading about classics. This is like such an intellectual read. Like, oh, you know, you can do that if you want. You're on vacation, live it up. You know what I mean? So that's a part of this book.
That's the quality of this book that I think makes it a summer slash beach read. I agree with you. This is one of the great fall books. Again, the dark academia that
was God tier before we even had the term for dark academia with this book is doing. But I think you're right. You really can get lost in it. And because it's long, like you can while away your long weekend in the Catskills or wherever it is you're going to go for a little while too. And that point you made that it is elevated. So you get a little more sort of cerebral cortex stimulation than maybe you get from some of these books, which again, no shade, but they look like if someone said, can you make a bag of Skittles into a book cover?
And that's what, so as you're, as you're like killing your brain cells, you're also building them back. Like with the daiquiris. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. It's sustainable drinking. That's how we're thinking about this. The kind of book you want to be seen reading. Oh, exactly. I said proof. Exactly. And it's also like literally 560 pages. So you can be like, I polished that off this summer. I have a slight rating. Yeah.
I have a funny story about this book because Michelle's grandparents, when they were alive, they lived in the Hot Springs, Arkansas, which in August, let me tell you, is hot. Is it hot? And so mostly we sat around inside watching golf and reading books and napping between barbecue-induced comas. You live my life. Right? What I want. Yeah.
Listen, they were retired. They knew what they were doing. They knew how to live. And I had gone through all the books I had brought with me because this was pre-Kindle or whatever. And for whatever reason, they had the secret history in hardcover on their shelf. And I had never heard of it. This is 20 years ago. In hardcover? Yes. I have it still. I know, right? I think it was mostly holding the furniture down. I don't think it actually was a reading experience.
And I read this book and I'm like, what in the hell is this? This is so amazing. And I read it like the course of 48 hours. So like, it's like has a summer reading. Cause that's what I did it that way. It's one of those books that people constantly like this and the night circus people are constantly like, what's a book like this? And you're like, I don't know, man, you're on your own. The talented mystery Ripley is when I've given before. Cause it's like,
There's a murder in it. It's the summertime. There's a group of friends that you kind of want to be, but also you hate them at the same time, which I feel like is very Secret History Core. Right.
But that's a great, that's a really fun pick there. What else do we want to mention? We can keep going. We can stop. Anything else you want to talk about? I wanted to say, because Erica, when you mentioned your unsuccessful beach reading, I wanted to say, I feel like people don't talk about that actually beach reading requires a lot of preparation. You can't just. Yes. Oh, I see more. Yeah.
beach read. Well, first of all, as we covered, you need snacks. You need drinks. But also you need shade. If you don't have shade, reading and usually you're not going to find a patch of shade on the beach because it's a beach. So if you don't bring anything, it's...
at least to me, painful to read after like three minutes. Well, I'm 47 years old. I need structure. You can't pull up a bare patch of grass or sand and be like, let's have a great time for six hours. That's not happening. I need back support. When I tried to read on the beach, a guy came up and he had to help me with my umbrella. He was just like, you look like you're struggling. He didn't say that. He was very nice about it. And I was on the phone with my friend. I was like, oh, this guy's coming up. He's like, we're trying to talk to you. I was like, no, he pities me.
He pities me, Isaac. He's helping me with my umbrella. And
Then his wife and kid came up and the kid was like, girl, you are helpless. I may have let go a string of cusses at a beach chair in Hawaii over spring break that I don't know why they construct them to not fold. Like just fold. Yeah, just your whole purpose. That's your whole purpose. I don't care if there's sand and water in you. You're a beach chair. You got to plan for these things. Like Danica is telling us. Anyway, Danica, what else do you got to have sunscreen? You got to have sunglasses. Yes.
Yeah, well, this is the thing is that it actually becomes quite like if you want to have a really good beach read. Yeah, that's a lot of preparation. And like if you're at one of those beaches where you have to drag all of yours, I don't know where your beaches are, but sometimes you gotta kind of hike through the woods for a little bit before you get to the beach. If you're trying to haul a cooler and your chairs, like it's,
I don't know. And let's say you had two children with you that are not helpful. You have to drag all their crap.
Yeah. It takes more work than you would think. And when you can pull it off, it's perfect. And you want to just be trained for like six hours, but it's, yeah, I feel like it takes more effort than we give it credit for. Yeah. That's why I failed. I had some of those things. Cause I was like a beach. What is a beach? And I was like, Oh, I'm going to people today. And,
and you know read at the beach as one does and i had some of those things it was a bit of a trek i didn't like walking in the sand it made me walk slower i know this that's a basic statement but again i'm not a beach girl so i was like that's why i need flip flops again to make sure that your feet don't get too well i had to i had a lot of pool slides yeah i didn't know that i was just failing at b i see i should have called you in canada to tell me yeah how to beach read and that's my fault
Danica, I got a printable Beach Read supply checklist that people can get from us. We have, you're the, you're the, you are. Yeah. I have something. I didn't write this book.
write this book. I didn't write the book either. I didn't write the blurb. You didn't write the book. You didn't write Sula by Toni Morrison? I did. Unfortunately, like, oh my God, a dream. That would be a dream of mine. But I didn't write this blurb. Sharifa did, but it's for, it's on the list and it is The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. Yes. I,
I do write our In the Club newsletter, which is our book club centric newsletter. And I remember I had dubbed it the book of the summer because I was seeing it in all of these, you know, chosen for all these book clubs last year. And it takes place during the summer. It's been a while since I read it. Summer camp, right? It's like summer camp. In the 70s.
and so it kind of goes back and forth with different characters from shows different characters perspectives like a girl goes missing she's from a very affluent family in the small town they own the camp the camp employs like a lot of the people in this small town and they're kind of weirdos they're kind of like if we're like like calling back things they can't
it kind of give me like great Gatsby people, but like in the seventies. Yeah. Yeah. They're very highfalutin and also maybe would kill you for the ring you're wearing or something. Absolutely. Would actually kill you. And then like not talk about it and then just go drink. Um,
Um, yeah, so that's the family this girl comes from. And she's like a teenager. She disappears. So it's like show some of her perspective. It shows some of her friends perspective, who was also, you know, just another girl at the summer camp. It shows one of the detectives perspectives, who is this lady detective, and that's not super common back in the 70s. And so it's one of those
shifting perspectives, shifting point of view books that I actually like because I feel like
Like I can count on one hand how many times that works for me in a book, but it's done very well here. So this girl goes missing, but the gag is her brother went missing like 10 years. Oh, you hate to see it. Yeah. To see all the kids missing. So this book is like 500 pages, but it's again, it takes place during the summer, summer camp, like,
Like that is so quintessentially, you know, I mean, summer camp is, well, it's kind of like a bygone thing now. I don't ever really hear too much about summer camp, but takes place during that. It's this really riveting mystery. It's well-written. It's well-paced even, you know, with its 500 pages, um,
And also, it's one of those books that's actually pretty squarely a mystery. I feel like a lot of days, a lot of times these days, I should say, sorry, I feel like mysteries will be like, have a little taste of thriller. But this is like just straight up mystery, historical mystery. This is a
fun one to read and it was really interesting to peel back the layers and I think I mostly listened to it on audiobook and it was really good. I had a good time with it. It's good of kind of a sense of place mystery you're going to find. I think one of the things that makes it stand out, and I remember talking to Shinsky about this when it first came out, is I
I don't know how she does it necessarily, but I felt like I knew the layout of the camp extremely well. So when she talked about moving from place to place, I could really follow it. And if I had more time or as a different kind of person that was like interested in teaching writing, I'd like, I'd like to look and see how that happened because it's, it's pretty unusual because it was important to know that this building was like downhill of this other building and like face the other way. And like somehow that all, that all made sense here. I was going to talk, what was I going to talk about? Oh, yeah.
the future of the beach read because I feel like Emily Henry, like she wrote a book called Beach Read that is about people writing beach reads and I
Where do we go from there? There's nowhere else to go. There's nowhere else to go. Can you do that? I didn't know you could do this. It just seems very... It's on the cover. And it is the platonic ideal or stereotype or however you want to do it of what a beach read looks like in this age of the...
cutout commercial romance book cover, which I don't know if we're getting away from. I'm calling Peak Beach Read for Beach Read by Emily Henry. I'm calling it right now. Here's my prediction. Beach audiobooks become their own thing. Waterproof earbuds. That's true. You just lay down. You can lay down and do your book at this time. Or you can go swimming listening to your...
I know they're supposed to be waterproof Danica, but I grew up in the 1900s and we didn't take electronics into the water. This is why I think it's the future. I think it will be coming. The headphones I can trust in the water that I don't need to have my phone. Oh, I've got something to add to Danica's beach checklist printout for especially if you're doing audio books and you lay on your stomach.
Watch out for the bottom of your feet because the worst burn I ever got was falling asleep on the beach and burned the ever-leavened tar out of the bottom of my feet. And that would have made Erica's sand shuffle look like Baryshnikov compared to what I was trying to do to get back to the house from the beach with sunburned feet. That's terrible. Oh, my God. Anyway.
So, yeah, I've never had a sunburn. I don't know what that means. I mean, look, I'm just saying if you're out there and you've got sunscreen on, you lay on your on your on your belly for a while. Just do yourself a favor. Just put some I know it feels weird, but it's going to be way better than. Yeah.
That's terrible. All right. Any other Beach Read thoughts? Anything you want to shout out or observations or recommendations or anything else that's Beach Read? We did a good job. I think we did good work today. We helped some people with their Beach Read. We did our part. I did a list of like my favorite queer Beach Reads with like a few more. And in that one, I talk about how like I have this whole formula for a Beach Read. And yet last time I went to the beach, I ended up reading Cleopatra.
Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White, which is a brutal white thriller. Like so gory. Another demon beat read. That's demonic. The worst part is that I had it on my tablet. Like it wasn't even an e-reader. I'm squinting at it in direct sunlight. But I was just so in it that I was like, I can't read these romance paperbacks. I got to finish this one. Sometimes the formula doesn't work.
The converse of the platonic ideal of the Beatrice because I don't know if Sharifa picked Sula or she got assigned it. I love Sula. I love Toni Morrison. But I think that is a wild pick for a Beatrice. I thought the same thing. Yeah, I thought, I don't know who chose that. I still have not read Sula. It's a deep reading goal of mine to read everything by Toni Morrison. I've already started. I have not yet reached Sula. I still was like, now is that...
Is that a beach read? I mean, listen, read what you want, but not to talk bad on our pal Sharif. No shade. No shade, Sharif. But I was like, wow. I mean, if you're going to pick a Morrison, I would pick Shula for your beach reading. I would say that. But because it's Morrison, it's dense, and you want to pay attention, and so much is the language, and so on and so forth. I guess my theory of the beach read is,
It's okay to be distracted in the middle of it and go back. Because I have the Martian on here, which is told in these journalistic entries. It's super light, easy to dip it back in and out of. Morrison, a lot of times you have to work to even know what's going on. I've got to wave down the waiter, man. I can't be worried about what is this metaphor doing and who's actually talking and where am I in time. I think that's a tough one. Have fun if you want to do that, but it's not what I would pick.
When you're on the beach, like you're not generally there alone. There are children screaming. Gotta make sure the children aren't drowning. That's super important. Music playing. Jeff can't walk. I'm on the sand. Shuffling on his knees. We're both shuffling. He's crawling back. I'm shuffling. Like, how can we get into Morrison with all this? You know what this sounds like to listeners? If there's any pickpockets in the audience, I think you've got some marks. Yeah.
Seriously. Well, Sharifa's blurb does talk about friendships and like within the Sula blurb. I will say maybe I could see this being a beach read for someone who like
It's like, okay, I want to read a classic by, you know, really like an American literary icon. I'm going to use my big piece to check something off my list. Exactly. It's not too long of a book. Right, right. You could also throw The Great Gatsby in there as a beach read. Although I do think The Great Gatsby is more of a beach read than Sula, but...
It's like based on what I know about Sula, but I could see it from that perspective. Yeah, that was the only one on the list that I was like, huh? Yeah. You know, I love Toni Morrison too, but I'm not sure I'm going to pick it if I'm at Jones Beach or something doing that. Yeah, we're testing the boundaries. Erica, where can people find you?
On BR and otherwise. Yeah. I do the BIPOC lit newsletter called In Reading Color. In the club newsletter, I'm on the Hey YA podcast. I'm on Blue Sky. I hop in and hop out at Erica-EZE. You can find me a few places. I'll put links to all this in the show notes. Book Riot.com. Listen, Danica, where can people find you?
Yeah, you can find me at the Our Queer Shelves newsletter and the Read Harder newsletter and also my book blog, because of course I have to have my own book blog called Lesbrary, L-E-S-B-R-A-R-Y.com.
Wow. You know what? I just remember too that I started my first book blog the week before I went on that coconut vacation where I read His Dark Material. So I was like running to the lobby to like update the blog at the same time. Maybe I, you know, maybe I would have started a book blog if my dad had read that book review. If he'd gotten any support. Exactly. I'm just going to listen to the last few minutes of this podcast. I tell you what.
Were you texting him? I emailed him. You sat down with your human hands and you sent emails to your dad? Sometimes. A book review, Jeff. It was 2007. That's all we had. I called him also, but he responded to the other things in the email. Gosh darn it. Wow.
Wow. That explains a lot. Emails feel like penning a letter now.
like that's what emails sounds like passenger like a passenger tablet of some kind him a pigeon book review passenger pigeon book review and he did not respond and maybe if i'd had that maybe i would have had a book well the problem was the pigeon died because your reviewed was like 300 pages long it was about every blow for blow yeah because i couldn't i couldn't self-edit as kids cannot do yeah yeah
Speaking of self-editing, I think that's our show. Thank you guys so much for joining. This was close to the chaotic. For some reason, we had a sense that we might be a little nutty today. Thanks, you guys, for joining me. Great time. Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of Life is a Lazy Susan of Shit Sandwiches by Jennifer Welch and Angie Pumps Sullivan, provided by our sponsors at Hanover Square Press. When things go apeshit bananas, Pumps is my phone call, my partner in crime, my rudder in the storm.
If there's one thing I've learned from my years on this planet, American culture has unrealistic expectations about happiness and balance. We live in a fractured society in which social media filters and AI create a false front. Everyone looks happy, perfect, smooth, and forever young with something the internet calls glass skin.
The messages we internalize, that we should be hotter, richer, more fulfilled, only increase our feelings of inadequacy. The relentless drive toward wellness counterproductively serves to make us feel unwell. The search for total happiness leads to unhappiness. The quest for total balance leads to imbalance.
You know that game people play when everyone goes around the table saying what they would do if they won Powerball for a gazillion dollars? I hate to break this to you.
But even if you won the lottery and paid off all of your student loans, your car and your mortgage, then went on an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Maldives, you might only be happy for a nanosecond before a whole host of other problems cropped up. You'd be in one of those thatched huts over the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean thinking,
I want to be on a yacht in Bora Bora. As soon as you attained that one thing you thought you had to have or die trying, your mind would create a new void with other unattainable wants and desires.
Because that's how the human mind functions. It wants more, more, more. The latest designer handbag, a bigger house, and the latest iPhone. Hotter sex, new clothes, different spouse, different lips, different face.
But so many things in life are out of our control. We get crow's feet. Our parents get old and die. Our children grow from sweet, sweet babies who hide behind our shins and call out for us at night to teenagers who answer, "K," when we text, "I love you." Adulthood is the ultimate bait and switch. Our dream jobs turn out to be staring at spreadsheets and answering endless passive-aggressive emails or attending Zoom meetings that could have been emails.
The bills, disappointments, and crushed expectations rained down on us like a monsoon.
When I was growing up in South Oklahoma City, my mother had a Lazy Susan, a rotating circular device that holds food, spices, and condiments in the kitchen cabinet. Lazy Susans are famously prevalent in Chinese restaurants where food is set on a turntable and served family style. Some people think Thomas Jefferson brought the concept of the Lazy Susan to America from France.
or invented it for his daughter Susan, who complained that she was always last at the dinner table to get her chicken and gravy. Some say the name comes from the 18th century moniker for servants called Susans. I used to picture adult life as a lazy Susan, a rotating smorgasbord of options and choices, nothing fancy, just something fun and easier to handle and digest.
I don't know why I thought this. My parents never modeled a perfect marriage. My dad, like many men of his generation, most likely had untreated PTSD from his tour in Vietnam. He could be angry and withdrawn, and my mother never found her footing in an intellectually fulfilling career. But they seemed happy enough. My mom read voraciously.
And my dad raised racing pigeons in the backyard. On TV, I saw a lot of mothers who smiled as they joyfully slid pot roasts in and out of the oven. Every show seemed to depict couples who modeled breezy conjugal contentment. I don't know what I thought marriage was supposed to be. Was it Mike and Carol Brady? The kooky antics of Lucy and Ricky? My parents rarely drank.
Yet somehow, Angie and I both married lawyers who turned out to be married to drugs and alcohol and, in Angie's case, sex workers. No matter how I spun it, my life became a lazy Susan of shit sandwiches. The wheel turned and turned, and I always got a grilled turd.