What’s on Your Summer Reading List?
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From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrugal. Even in these times, summer retains its key features. Sun, long days, vacations, for some reason a hammock is coming to mind, and of course, a good book. So we're here to help with that summer book list for the season of pleasure reading. We'll talk to booksellers from Booksmith and Green Apple, as well as Oakland-based novelist Jasmine Guillory about what's going on in the world of booksellers.

what they're reading this summer, and we'll hear from you, of course. When you're not doom scrolling, which you shouldn't be, what's on your must-read list for the summer? That's all coming up next, right after this news.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal, and it is our summer books show. Each year, we spend some time considering what books you could or even should read during these warmer months. And this time, we've given our booksellers and our author here this morning some fun categories like...

Novels for the Newly Divorced. But we're going to introduce our panel and just start simple with the last book that they really loved. We're joined this morning by Jasmine Guillory, bestselling author. She's a novelist. Her latest book is Flirting Lessons, and she lives in Oakland. Welcome, Jasmine. Thank you so much for having me. We're also joined by Carr Johnson, who's the event manager at Green Apple Books. Welcome, Carr.

Hi, Alexis. Hi, all. And we have Camden Avery, co-owner and book buyer of Booksmith, an independent bookstore in the Haight. Welcome. Thank you. Hey, all. All right. Jasmine, what is the last book that you really loved?

So, "Stop Me If You've Heard This One" by Kristin Arnett. It is so funny. When I describe this book, people always give me weird looks, but it is a book about a lesbian clown-- - Is this a weird look? - In Florida. - A lesbian clown in Florida. - A lesbian clown in Florida.

Hang with me. It's so funny. Like, I dare anyone to read the first chapter of this book and not laugh out loud. And I feel like it is a perfect book for the summer, especially since I think of summer reading as being like a kind of immersive thing where you can just dive into a book for a whole day. And this book is how that felt to me. Like, I just wanted to live in there and keep experiencing that world. I love that.

Camden Avery, how about you? Yeah, this is sort of one from the vaults, but I finally read The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, who was a surrealist painter. The novel's from the 70s, and it's kind of... It's so fun and goofy and weird. It feels like...

an escape hatch from reality. We all need those. Yeah, very much. Nominally, it's about an older woman who gets farmed off to an old folks home by her kids and then ends up having amazing adventures and also it's the end of the world but kind of in a cute way. But it's great. It's like a brain rinse. It's like, yeah, reset.

how I feel about everything. It's great. Oh, that's nice. I have the opposite kind of end of the world book that I really loved last, which was I Who Have Never Known Men, reissued this French novel by Jacqueline Hartman where these sort of group of women wake up in a cell and eventually end up outside of that cell on this kind of world that is devoid of everything but them. Basically, they have the bare essentials for survival and nothing else, and it is...

It's just kind of haunting and strange and feels kind of like a Western set in some far future on a lesbian commune. No clowns, unfortunately, but you know. Car, how about you?

I think the last book I read that I really enjoyed was The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman by Nico Stratis. The Dad Rock That Made You a Woman? Yes, yes. It's a collection of music essays by this music writer and critic, Nico Stratis. She grew up in the Yukon Territory in Canada. Deeply, deeply masculine culture as she describes it. And being a trans woman growing up...

Gen Xer in that time and probably now still very difficult so she talks about the music that comforted her along the way which is dad rock is kind of loosely defined but as she defines it it's music that comes from a place of earnestness so is that what dads are? are we earnest? ask Nico embarrassingly earnest dads club okay

So, let's talk a little bit about some trends in publishing. You know, first Trump administration, it felt like there were, you know, a ton of books in the vein of, you know, how did we get to here? You know, I went on a listening tour to Appalachia and those kinds of things. Is there a trend so far that you're seeing this year?

Glad to see that we're seeing a lot more trans and gender non-conforming people and specifically trans and gender non-conforming people who are not

good, but are messy and are complicated, whole people that don't need to say, this is my coming out arc and I was this one thing and now here I am as a fully realized person. I was messy and made bad decisions along the way. So thank goodness for complicated people. Yeah, everyone should be allowed to be messy and make bad decisions. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Camden, how about you? What are you seeing in the shop? Any major trends among buying habits or anything? Yeah, I mean, I feel our shoppers are definitely like...

more of an appetite for the unknown, the wilder, the stranger, the stuff from super small, super local indie presses is really popping off. Compared to previous Trump administration, like you were asking, I think if there's an overarching difference right now that I could identify, it would be that

I feel like that moment was sort of a, like you said, sort of a reckoning, like what actually just happened, right? And I feel like what's imprint, what's really gaining traction right now, in our shop anyway, is more oriented around like tactical reality. Like what do we do? How do we change things? How do we connect with each other? How do we impact things directly? How do we affect change? Yeah.

I mean, Jasmine, your main genre is romance. Do you feel like in a moment like this, you have to have your character sort of like responding to the political moment or things that are going on globally? Necessarily think so. But I think it is in... I think...

It's in their mind, right? It's in the mind of the reader and in the mind of the writer. And like whatever, you know, when I'm writing stories and the books that I write are about people of color, I'm thinking about how they are feeling in this moment. And who knows?

who knows what the moment will be when a book comes out. But I feel like though we're going to be thinking about this for a long time. You know, I think, I think in the first Trump administration, we all kind of hoped it was one blip in time and now we know it's not. And so like, this is sort of a, this is what we're living with right now. This is what,

Mm-hmm.

We are talking about what is on, what should be on your summer reading list. We've got Jasmine Guillory, a novelist. We've got Camden Avery, co-owner and book buyer at Booksmith. And we have Carr Johnson from Green Apple Books. And of course, we want to invite you into this. What is a book you think people should be reading? The number is 866-733-6786. Let's pick up on the immersive experience. What's a book that is...

A really immersive experience for you that you want other people to have. 866-733-6786, forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, etc. We're KQED Forum. Of course, there's the Discord as well.

So a couple of categories. I wanted to get to a couple of categories here. I felt like last summer there were all these novels about getting divorced, all these books about getting divorced. So I thought, what better this summer than the romance novel for the newly divorced? Jasmine? So I have two good options.

on this one. The first is A Lot Like a Moor. It's by Alexis Daria. It is about a newly divorced woman who kind of has a fling with someone who is very different from her ex

She is the kind of oldest cousin in a very tight-knit family. She's always felt responsible for everyone, and this is her kind of, like, irresponsible fling. Is a rebound romance, is that, like, a special genre of romance? I think it very much is, yeah. But this one is, I mean, partly, yes, it's a rebound, but also she's been split up for her husband for a while, and this is, like,

her first real romance after that. And so it's very different than what she's used to. And she is kind of being courted for the first time in a while. She's feeling special, which she hasn't really felt in a long time. And it felt it feels like a really good. It feels like a really good romance novel for someone who, you know, needs to feel like there can be love again. Yeah, that's nice.

Camden, what do you think? That's a great question. I mean, what I tend to gravitate towards that I think of as romance or romantic isn't

generically romantic, right? I think for most people. But, I mean, my staff are also sick of hearing me talk about it. Mine is going to be All Fours by Miranda July. I thought for sure everybody had it, but it's still selling in paperback like crazy. So it is not a romance. I mean, it kind of is a romance. It's about how to fall in love with yourself. It's about being romantic with yourself. And it's also about...

you know, what are the mechanisms we have at our disposal for sort of blowing up our life in tiny ways and opening up some kind of new space for ourselves, right? I think that's really hot. Car, what do you think?

Absolutely 100% All Friends Are Necessary by Tomás Moniz. Deeply Bay Area novel. It's perfect for summer. When people think about the

Bay Area in literature, or I should say, people describe this book as too Bay Area, which is like, yeah, I mean, we can read 50 million novels about New York and no one will bat an eye, but you will find here things that you might recognize if you are from the Bay Area. But

But is best on top of that is that it's about the disillusion of a relationship after a trauma a long-term relationship after a trauma between the couple and it is also about finding yourself and about finding your community and it's really a fabulous book about Friends and coming to one zone. Oh, man. That's a great rec I actually I have been meaning to read that book too much a great guy and I would

I want to read it. So that's got, now that's going to the top of the TBR pile. I think we're talking about what should be on your summer reading list with car Johnson from green apple books, Camden Avery from book Smith and novelist Jasmine Guillory. We're also going to take some of your calls and your suggestions and

in the next segment of the show. You can just call 866-733-6786 or, of course, forum at kqed.org or the blue sky or the Instagram. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break. ♪

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. It is our annual summer book show, the season of pleasure reading. We've got Jasmine Guillory, who, of course, is a novelist based in Oakland. Her most recent book is Flirting Lessons. We've got Camden Avery from Booksmith, independent bookstore in the Haight, and Cara Johnson from Green Apple Books.

First community recommendation here. Martina recommends Maris Kreisman's debut collection of essays and criticism, I Want to Burn This Place Down. And she's actually at Booksmith on the 8th of July. Is that right, Camden? Yes.

Yeah, we're so excited. Maris is incredible. The pieces are like wide-ranging, fresh, exciting. Yeah. I think of her as, wasn't she like a books person? Like she was always kind of writing about books, reviewing books, and now she's sort of crossed over. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about the book before we move on?

Anything else you want to say about that book before we move on? No, we're just very excited about it. Yeah, it's amazing. Let's bring in Lisa in San Francisco. Welcome, Lisa.

Good morning. Booksmith and Green Apple are my two all-time favorite indie bookstores. Love them. So I would like to recommend a sleeper book that was written, I think, in like 1948 or 1950 by a hometown girl from Chinatown, Jade Snow Wong. The book is called Fifth Chinese Daughter.

And it's a memoir, but she's an unconventional...

just an astounding woman. She's trying to fit into her very conventional, traditional Chinese family, but she also is an artist, a ceramicist. J. Snow Wong goes on to pay for her own education at San Francisco State and Mills College, and she becomes a world-class ceramicist, but

Her perspective on racism and othering and just being a headstrong woman in a family where she's expected to marry and bow down and conform, it's astounding. It's a page-turner. You'll learn a lot about Chinatown history.

And I just love this book. I can't believe I didn't read it long ago. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, I actually I feel embarrassed. I haven't read this book described as I quickly Googled it as an early classic of Asian-American literature. And that sounds really good. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

Marina writes in to say, I have been enjoying The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong. I'm enjoying the strong character development between the main character and his relationship with Grazina, a senior woman with dementia that he develops a friendship with and the relationship with his coworkers at Home Market. I hope to read his prior book, which this is one of my all-time faves on Earth. We are briefly gorgeous. Kar, you did a big event with Ocean Vuong. I know that and Samin Nosrat. Tell us a little bit more about Emperor of Gladness.

Yeah, I think they really hit the nail on the head there. It's definitely a pretty spiritual novel about life and death and two people kind of on the brink of each of them but at different points.

in their lives. And I think it's really a book about coming to respect life and enjoy it as it is. And it's really a book about deep care and respecting one another. That's great. I have been meaning to read it. I have not read it yet, but I'm also excited about that one.

You know, Camden, in the last few days, the New York Times and Atlantic have both published stories about men, mostly straight men, and the fact that they are not reading fiction. Stories made the rounds, lots of think pieces. What do you make of this, the discourse around men not reading fiction? That's a really good question. Yeah.

I think it's partly hard to say because my store and we, like our local community exists in a really, like we're definitely like an outlier nationally in terms of like book related behaviors, right? You haven't been hanging out at Barnes and Noble just like checking the readership. Or any straight bars.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of... I'll just broaden the scope a little bit and say that I know that there's a lot of different conversations happening right now about lots of different people and different age demographics not reading, not engaging with books for different reasons. There's a lot of competition for people's attention. And I think...

I don't know. As someone who's been a bookseller for 18 years, my lens on changes in behavior is very broad, and I think changes at that level are really slow. So I'm not sure that I'm convinced that I personally see...

that people's behavior, at least in a bookshop, is super different than it was like 15 years ago. I think straight guys were maybe not reading and buying a lot of fiction 15 years ago either. John Madden's memoir or something. I think there are a lot of reasons for that. I think I'm totally just like spitballing here, but like it could...

has maybe a little bit to do with the perception that reading fiction is for pleasure, the idea, like what kind of pleasure it's meant to access, and whether or not it's useful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That's interesting. I mean, Jasmine, working in romance, a genre that I feel like has been quite pigeonholed as being only for women...

What have you found in your books? I mean, I've seen some of your book events, which I have to say are overwhelmingly women. But do you get emails from guys who are sort of like, "By the way, Jasmine, I read your books, but nobody knows." You know what? Occasionally I do. Sometimes I will find, especially in random places on my Facebook Messenger, which is kind of where you're like, "I'm not sure what this is going to be."

But I've got messages from men who are like, I know I'm not your typical reader, but I have to say I really loved your books. Do you have ideas for other romance novels I would like? And I mean, right. I would say romance book events are...

Probably 95% women in general. Most of the men who come to my events are men I actively know or people I am related to sometimes. But I think one of the things that people get out of reading books in the book community and that I see in going to book events that are mine or someone else's is

And I think that is, you know, when we talk about kind of some of the stuff we're talking about men in general, right, like the male loneliness epidemic. That's something that I think men are missing is that community of people who come together over something that you love and can talk about.

You know, I was at a book event earlier this week for another author and like people in line were talking and, you know, talking about other books that they have loved and sharing things that they loved about the book event. And it's just such a joyful time. And this was not a romance event, but that, you know, I think that is something that I want.

more men to come to bookstore events and get that. Being in book clubs. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. No, I totally agree with you. Let's bring in another caller. Let's bring in Monica in Davis. Welcome, Monica.

Hi, hi, Alexis. Hello, dear guests. Thank you so much for having me. I would like to recommend a debut novel of already award-winning author from Davis, Jessica Guerreri. The book is called Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and it's actually set in Half Moon Bay.

It's very close in the Bay Area. And what I love about it, it's a book about motherhood, about addiction, alcoholism, loss and friendship and womanhood and leaving yourself behind and then finding the strength back again. Jessica, the author, is 12 years sober and a mom of three kids. And she wrote this fiction to really help women coming out of the pandemic to

to relate and to open up and to start the discussion about sobriety and getting help about something that we don't really talk about. So I would highly, highly recommend this book.

That's great. That was Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. You know, Cara, I think there have been so many good books about motherhood and sort of both fiction and nonfiction and these kind of deep investigations about sort of the changes that, I mean, you know, all fours being one of them. Are there great books you've run across about, you know, fatherhood? Yeah.

or parenting in general? Or is it really that motherhood has become a literary theme that just seems to have these kind of richer veins for some reason?

Yeah, I think the books that I've read about fatherhood are a little more unconventional. I can think of Emerson Whitney's memoir, Daddy Boy, which is not exactly about fatherhood. Is that about fatherhood? Not exactly, but I would recommend it. And I think...

Matthew Dickman is someone who writes about fatherhood in a really interesting way. He's a poet by trade. He's one of my favorites. And his last collection husbandry was about becoming a single father after a long time. And,

looking after his children in a way he hadn't expected to in this life. And the kind of, he, of course, is coming from a poet's lens, so he might have a little more tenderness. I think what I've been looking for in these fatherhood books is like interiority or something, right? Like there's a, you can read tons of stuff about man stuff,

But like actual interiority, like what are the changes that people undergo as they watch their children grow in a particular body and gender's position in this world? You know, like that's the kind of stuff I'd love to read. And I feel like it hasn't really been there. You could write one of those. Yeah, there you go. Next time you're going to be like, go on Rogan. Let's bring in Sangeeta in San Jose. Welcome, Sangeeta.

Hi, am I on? Yes, you are. Go ahead. Okay, so my question was, I have a young graduate in my house, a young adult, and she, like a lot of her other friends, are moving away to a new city where she doesn't really know anybody and trying to create her own community, her own life, almost from scratch. And if your panel has any reading recommendations for her and her friends. Okay.

That's a fun one like a a book that would get you sort of like exploring a city or sort of like excited about a new life. That's a fun one. Anyone want to jump in? I have a great one. There's a novel that a co-worker and friend of mine recommended last fall that came out recently. It's called The Anthropologists.

by Aisha Kulthavas. It's incredible. And it's about young people living as expats in a sort of like nebulous, ambiguously European city. That's probably Paris. I don't know. And it's very much about how to... It's set to the sort of cadence of the rhythm of your

your life with your friends and the kind of the made assembled communities that we find when we find ourselves in new places but it's also like working with and trying to understand like what does it mean to be um

Alive on the planet right now when no matter where you are and what your community is, there's a sense of rootlessness or, you know, we put our roots down where we are and we make our world and our families where we are. But we're all also untethered in this way by the scale of globalism and capitalism that we're living inside of.

I think a good follow on that. It's also fun and sexy, by the way. That sounded so serious, but it's a total blast. I was going to say Ross Gay's books. Yeah. Like The Book of Delights. The Book of Delights. So joyful, yes. I mean, so joyful. And also just as a way of kind of turning your eyes on to seeing those little things around you in the city and wherever you are that kind of make you know you live there. You know, I have...

the Book of Delights a couple times and the Book of Mordalites and they're just... I want to live in that world

the consciousness, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I actually have a suggestion that's a romance novel. It's called At Her Service by Amy Spaulding. It is about, it's set in Los Angeles. It's about two women who are sort of, you know, younger. One is kind of, has moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest. She's an assistant at a job and is kind of

wondering how do I make friends like what do I you know I have this job I moved from far away to be here this was my dream and now I'm not sure what to do with it and so it is you know it's about finding romance but it's also sort of about finding your place in the world the her the love interest works at a gay bar and it's about you know finding a community there and I really loved it

Kar, any others on the things that make you want to be a young person in the world with the wind blowing through your hair on a bike in New York City? Sorry, that's just a little fantasy of my own.

I think that visualization works really well. I was thinking of actually two graphic novels that I think might suit you for a quick weekend read. I was thinking of Gaijans by Mike Corrado, which just came out recently about building queer community for BIPOC people in Seattle, if my memory serves me.

Yeah. Correct. And then there's also the contradictions by Sophie Yano that I was thinking of that came out a couple of years ago. And it's about studying abroad as an introvert and how to make friends as a deeply internal person. Can't relate, but I understand. Yeah.

Camden, I wanted to ask you about Booksmith's decision to pull Harry Potter books. Tell us about that. I hear there's been some great feedback from the internet. The internet usually does great things. Definitely reading the comments over there. Yeah, you know, sure. So let's talk about it.

I think, first of all, I just want to say that I think it's kind of like wild to me that it has become something that's like a news item. Partly because just to like set up the context, right? Like our store carries 25,000 titles at a time. Right?

store our size pretty standard, the US publishes 400,000 new titles every single year. I review and actively make decisions on about 60 to 70,000 of those and bring in maybe 4,000 new titles a year and the rest of the stock is everything else that's ever been written all over the world through time.

Not having something on the shelf is a very ordinary bread and butter kind of book selling choice. In this case, what we were actually like putting forward was is a PSA saying like these books are great if you want to buy them without lining the pockets of someone who's dedicated her money publicly to beating up on trans folks.

You can buy a used copy, you can get it at the library, you can ask a friend. Don't go without. They're amazing books, we all love them. But there are also a lot of other books that are operating in that space that are cool. What would you say? What would an alternative be? Totally. So we actually have a whole list of recommendations on the website, and that's going to be updated and changing all the time. The Earthsea Books by Ursula Le Guin, The Golden Compass Books by Phil Pullman, The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix. It's more than a trilogy now, but...

I think of it as a trilogy. Nevermore by Jessica Townsend, The Shades of Magic books by V.E. Schwab, Heroes of Olympus. Are you saying we're not running out of fantasy books? Unfortunately. There's not just one fantasy series? We're not hitting the bottom of the barrel yet. And I actually had a few other titles. Please, yes. The Marvelers series

I'm going to write this down. It's a series by Danielle Clayton. It's like a magic school. So if people want kind of a more recent kind of series for kids set in a magic school, that's a great one. The Witchlings by Claribel Ortega is also a great series, a middle grade series for kids that's fantasy and fun in that same kind of way. Yeah, it's perfect.

Hey, it is our summer book show, and we are joined by three people with vast knowledge of the world of books. Jasmine Guillory, a novelist. Her most recent book is Flirting Lessons. She lives in Oakland. We've got Camden Avery from Booksmith, and we've got Carr Johnson from Green Apple Books. This is your chance to get an individualized recommendation from an esteemed panel. You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-7000.

6786forum at kqed.org. I'm Alexis Madrigal, staging for more right after the break. I think you're on mute. Workday starting to sound the same? I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn Job Collections, you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits, like FlexPTO or hybrid workplaces, so you can find the right job for you.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We are talking summer books. We're joined by Carr Johnson from Green Apple, Camden Avery from Booksmith, and Oakland's finest, Jasmine Guillory. She is a novelist and writer, and her latest book, of course, is Flirting Lessons. Let's get to one more fun category, and then we're going to go back to the phones and comments and things.

This would be best books for the person who wishes they loved the outdoors. Doesn't love them, but wishes they loved the outdoors. Jasmine? Well, I have to say, this really describes me. I love the outdoors in pictures. Maybe as like the backdrop of your computer. As the backdrop, yeah. I'm like, oh, that's a beautiful place. I wouldn't...

I won't go there. But I love reading outdoorsy books and thinking, wow, that's dangerous. I'm never going to do that. And I feel like one book that I find that really makes you think about and respect the outdoors is The Last Fire Season by Angela Martin.

It just came out in paperback. And I feel like it'll resonate for a lot of Californians. It is about the fire season of 2020. The author lived in Sonoma County and had to evacuate. But it's also just like a reported book about fire in general and sort of how how fire works.

along with our ecosystem and what we have done both good and bad about fire. And it just kind of really makes you think about the outdoors, about trees, about where who we are in this kind of place in the world. And I really loved it. That's so good. I have one of these. It's actually a trilogy of books. Peter Godfrey Smith is sort of like a

philosopher, cognitive science guy, and he wrote these incredible books, Other Minds, Metazoa, and Living on Earth. And they're all basically about, I don't know, how we think, why we think, what we know about thinking, animals. But there's these incredible descriptions of encounters with wildlife.

Like in Other Minds, you get a lot of octopus descriptions, you know. So it's just like these incredible moments where this guy's like swimming around Australia and then just like meeting an octopus that's really weird and does stuff that's inexplicable. And so I don't personally want to swim in these shark infested waters of Australia, but to hear about those encounters is really fun. All right. To the booksellers. Car, what do you think?

So hear me out. I think I there are plenty of great nature writers. If we think about, you know, the secret life of trees, et cetera. If you think Lulu Miller is another person that comes to mind. I think that if you want to.

to figure out how to do something. If you're trying something, this is for the person who wishes they love the outdoors. You should see how a poet does it. So poets are exceptional observers of nature and they can think of Forrest Gander, Camille Dungy. But I wanted to talk about As She Appears by Shelley Wong. Shelley is also a San Francisco poet and she's fabulous. And I think her collection, As She Appears,

It's organized by season. It's a great entryway if you're like, I love the outdoors. I want to observe it. And I also want a quick retreat back into air conditioning. So you're going to see some sequoias very up close, very reverently. And then you will be at a dance party.

Floor very quickly. So you want to touch into nature? It's a good one for you. Like literally just touch grass and retreat. That's perfect. Yeah Camden any last one? Yeah One I would recommend is one of the one of the last books I've been really obsessed with Olivia Lang's latest book is called the garden against time and

And she's one of my favorite thinkers in general about anything, but in this case she's using her thoughtfulness to understand gardens as a human space, as a social space, as a site of different kinds of socioeconomic histories.

Really, like, in a way related to, like, Jenny O'Dell's How to Do Nothing kind of, like, sensibility as a garden, as a way of, like, accessing, like... Other times, other ways of being. Different calendars, like, an experience of time that's, like, loopier and cyclical and not attached to, like...

the tax year, you know? I am going to give that one another go. I bounced off it twice in two different formats, but it seems so extremely up my alley that almost might be, you know, like too much. Like it's like an arrow hitting another arrow right in the center of the bullseye, you know?

But I'm going to try it again. Okay, here we go. I'm going to play a little game with you all, which I just invented right now. We have a bunch of single recommendations from Instagram. And here's the game. You only get to pick one of these books to read. Okay? Here we go. This is just going to be a list of recommendations.

Cycles by P.M. Kester, a fantasy book. Our Song by Anna Carey. That's a romance. Understanding Octavia Butler by Kendra R. Parker. King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby. Tony at Random by Dana Williams, which is a Toni Morrison biography.

Plus Size Player by Danielle Allen, a rom-com by a black woman. Darth Plagueis, which I believe is a Star Wars novel. And Waiting for Britney Spears by Jeff Weiss. Okay, in this book draft, I'm already drafting Understanding Octavia Butler. There you go. Oh, man. We can all read it. It's fine. It's a book club now. Well,

What, anyone want to pick? I'm going to take Tony at random. Oh, yeah. Jasmine. I'm really excited for that one. That was close. I got to jump in and say Waiting for Britney Spears. Oh, man. It's such a trip. What a fascinating re-evaluation of a pop cultural character. I've been really spun by, it's like having my childhood reinterpreted in that way has been very strange. I got to say, did you read her memoir? No.

I listened to the audio book and it's I mean it's short and really juicy and really interesting and it makes you just feel so bad for her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was really glad she got her voice out. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Car any are we are we reading understanding Octavia Butler together that. Yes. Wonderful.

Let's see. Let's go back to the phones here. Let's go to Sean in San Jose. Welcome, Sean. Hello. I've got two. Seducing and Killing Nazis. Hany, Teruse, and Freddy. Dutch Resistance Heroines of World War II. Wow. Is that an academic book or like a romance novel? It's not a

This is not a novel. This was written in partnership with one of these resistance fighters. Incredible. Wow, wow, wow. And what was your other one? What was your other one?

The other one is the second of two books written by a local author, D.M. Rowell, Silent or the Dead. It's about a Kiowa tribal member who has built her professional life in Silicon Valley, has to go back to the res in Oklahoma when a family member disappears. It's written...

by the historian of her Kiowa clan who built her professional life in Silicon Valley. For an author's talk, she brought her grandfather's grandfather's painted deerskins

that he used to teach history and culture to children. And their recorded history predates our use of the Gregorian calendar in America, and it's been verified through their interactions with the U.S. government. Wow. Wow. Sean, wow, some deep cuts. Really interesting. I can't even remember to bring a Sharpie to book events, and that is...

Fascinating. Thank you so much. Let's go straight to Peter in San Francisco. Welcome, Peter. Yes, hi. Thanks for the program. The book I wanted to recommend is...

called the Tech Coup, C-O-U-P, How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley by, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing the name correctly, Marietje Schake. And she's talking about the tremendous power that has...

sort of engulfed us through tech and the dangers to both personal and social interests.

aspects of society, including democracy here and elsewhere. Yeah. The tech coup. And for those who don't know, and I don't know if I'm saying it right either, but Marietje Schake was a member of the European Parliament and was sort of explicitly kind of up against passing legislation trying to deal with the effects of technology companies in Europe. Really, really interesting thinker through time. Future...

Few other recommendations here one listener says I heard Alexis mentioned Northwoods by Daniel Mason So I'm now listening to him only a few chapters in but I'm already hooked the writing is lush and gorgeous the story Captivating I can tell this will be one of those works I will not want to end and they haven't even gotten to the Beatle romance which occurs quite late in that book Yeah, yeah, hot Beatle romance That's right. That's right

How about let's do one more category round the horn. Let's maybe do a graphic novel to convince you that it's a genre that's not just for kids. Car, what do you think?

I have one that I absolutely fell in love with this year. It's called Land of Mirrors by Maria Medem. It's translated from the Spanish by Alicia Jensen and Daniela Ortiz. It really feels like a fever dream. The colors are so lush. It is about a person who is

is tending to a flower alone in a desert. And that seems to be her life day in and day out until a traveling stranger comes through and introduces her to what could be. But the art is...

so exquisite and so rich you're gonna want to hang it in your home and It really feels cinematic in in that way it the scope is so large and the art is so beautiful That's beautiful

Do you want to, Camden? Yeah, there's a new book that came out this spring called Tongues by Anders Nilsson. And it's a large, large format graphic novel that sort of reboots the Prometheus myth. And it's just completely stunning, gorgeous. Like, again, you'll see it and want to have it forever. And it's doing some like really like complex, elaborate, gorgeous storytelling. Yeah.

Do you read them? I read them occasionally. My recommendation for this is Good Talk by Mira Jacobs. It came out during the first Trump administration and sort of is a good callback to our earlier conversation. And it's basically a conversation with her son.

She is she's Indian and is married to a white man and sort of a conversation with her son about like, these are why certain people in America may hate you. And and it's about her childhood and her.

him growing up in New York City and some of her husband's family who voted for Trump. And it's just kind of like the conversations that they had and the questions that he had for her. And I think it's a great book for adults and kids and for adults to read with their kids.

I am going to recommend a book, which is a kid's book. It's put out by First Second Books, which is so... They put out so many great books. This book probably is the book that has made me cry more times than any other book. It's The Prince and the Dressmaker. It's so good. This is a great one. It is so good. And it's like...

You know, we were doing a show just recently. Maybe it was this week. What is time? That was, you know, about the way that some it was been an oral history of, you know, trans and non-binary people. And one of the great components of that book is the way that parents, even 30 or 40 years ago, sometimes really showed up for their kids. It wasn't all, you know, trans.

"Out of my house, we're Catholic." It wasn't all that. And this book is in that realm, the whole dynamic where you're like, "Oh no, the parents are gonna find out." And then the parents find out and actually it's totally awesome and wonderful. Let's see, round robin, we've got a couple of other seeking recommendations.

Maritza writes, I'm blessed to be bilingual and love to find gems in other languages. My favorite author is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Any recommendations from the panel with world perspectives with a good solid translation as a summer read? While you're thinking, I will say that I have seen this book in every cool independent bookstore on the calculation of volume. It's like seven novels. Yes. I have...

I keep being like, what is this book and why is it? It is in translation. It's Solveballe, I think her name is, the author. But that seems to be one that, at least in a lot of cool independent bookshops, is flying off the shelves. Yeah.

That's definitely blown up, and it was shortlisted for the Booker. Booker. Yeah. One of the ones that's blown up for us recently is You Dreamed of Empires. So good. Yeah, exactly. Wow, what a cool book that is. And then- Recasting, by the way, of Cortez's entrance into Tenochtitlan. Yeah. And trippy. Yes. And everyone is frying on mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Importantly. Yeah. Yeah.

Any, Cara, how about you? Yeah. I just read a book called I Gave You Eyes and You Look Toward Darkness by Irene Sola. What's that?

It's translated from the Catalan and the translator's name. It's important to say the translator's name if you know it. Mara Fae Lethem. It's out from Grey Wolf now and it takes place over the course of a single day, kind of, where a woman is, a very old woman is dying.

in a hundreds of year old house, a very old house, and all of the spirits of all of the women who have ever lived in that house for the last 400 years are preparing a meal for when she crosses over into their realm.

And you learn all about their lives and everything in exquisite, sometimes really disgusting detail. And I absolutely loved it. Cara, just the pitch gave me goosebumps. Yeah. Hand sold. What's the title again?

I gave you eyes and you look toward darkness. I was about to say I thought the romance novelist had the best titles. But I want to make sure I get to our producers recommendations. Producer Grace Wan recommends for a book published this year, Isola by Allegra Goodman. Historical fiction based on a true story of a French noblewoman stranded on a remote island in Canada in the 16th century. Sold, Grace.

Perceptive and soulful, immersive in the best way that historical fiction can be. And also she wants to second my recognition of Northwoods. Producer Jennifer Ng writes, I'm excited to read The Great Cities duology by N.K. Jemisin and reread

The first two installments of the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. And also, folks love books. KQED's got a climate book club. They're currently in the middle of Climate Stewardship by Adina Maren Lender. And they're discussing the book on Discord with a rap event happening on July 17th.

I just want to thank our wonderful guests here. Thank you so much for sharing all that you know. Jasmine Guillory, of course, novelist. Her latest book is Flirting Lessons. Thank you, Jasmine. Thank you so much for having me. Camden Avery, co-owner and book buyer at Booksmith and independent bookstore in The Hate. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Carr Johnson, event manager with Green Apple Books. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Alexis. Thank you all. Thank you so much to all of our listeners for your calls, your comments, your book recommendations. We'll compile them. We'll put them on a webpage somewhere. Just want to let people know we are off for two weeks here on the 9 o'clock hour of Forum. We have an amazing lineup of archival shows. There's going to be live music from LaRussell, August Lee Stevens, Sid Sriram, to name a couple, and some shows that really feature Bay Area legends like Ruth Asawa and Sly and the Family Stone. So,

Thank you so much. Stay with us. We'll be back live in July. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

Hey Forum listeners, it's Alexis. Did you hear that Forum is launching a video podcast? It is true! Each week we'll drop a video recording of a recent Forum episode on the KQED News YouTube channel. We can't wait to bring you into the studio for our conversations on Bay Area culture, California news, and beyond.

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