[00:00:00] ÉMILIE WEIDL: I really like this idea. And I like the idea of having this little project that I could sit down and really sink my teeth into.
ANNE BOGEL: Reading projects are fun. Hey readers, I’m Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that’s dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don’t get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we’ll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.
Readers, I want to tell you a little bit about what’s going on in Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club, where we have author talks, community conversations, and classes, and we have an especially exciting class coming up next week.
We are going to learn all about commonplace books, what they are, and how to keep one, also why you might want to.
[00:01:03] When you join us in Book Club, you’ll get to join in on this class and you’ll be part of the club for our 2025 Summer Reading Guide release in May. Our Book Club members get the digital guide, as well as an invitation to our virtual book release party, where I talk you through each title in the Summer Reading Guide so you can decide which books belong on your summer reading bucket list.
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Readers, when the world feels heavy, so many of us look to books for distraction, inspiration, or reassurance. And today’s guest has a unique spin on what she’s seeking right now.
Émilie Weidl lives in Wales, where she’s taken a year off before starting her PhD. When she’s not reading or volunteering, you’ll likely find her out for a walk or a hike, exploring the beautiful country around her.
Émilie has always had a good grasp on her reading tastes, but lately she’s found that the historical fiction she’s always loved isn’t working well for her, and she’s having a hard time reading nonfiction because the topics she’s been drawn to in the past feel harrowing right now, and that makes it a struggle to maintain her mental health.
[00:02:09] I loved Émilie’s approach to this dilemma. She sent in a request that she said was perhaps counterintuitive, but that what she really wants right now are absolutely gut-wrenching books. Émilie hopes that the act of immersing herself in a fictional story where she’s viscerally devastated for fictional characters will suck up a lot of her emotional bandwidth and distract her from her real-world worries.
I have ideas for Émilie, and I can’t wait to jump into this conversation. Let’s get to it.
Émilie, welcome to the show.
ÉMILIE: It’s so lovely to be here. Thank you very much for having me on, Anne.
ANNE: Oh my gosh, it’s our pleasure. Our team loved your submission. Thank you for sending it in. What compelled you to send that at this moment in time?
ÉMILIE: Basically, I was all of a sudden struggling to find books that were right in this exact moment for me, in this exact kind of… not necessarily season of life, which I know is an expression that you use, but in this moment in time, because I’ve been struggling lately mental health-wise a little bit, and I was looking for books that would be easily digestible for me right now and wouldn’t make myself feel even worse than I already was, and also for books that were going to distract me from what was going on in the world.
[00:03:30] Because I do spend a lot of time reading about what’s going on in the world and researching writing, and so at nighttime when I lay down and I want to read a book and go to sleep, I want to be not there anymore. I’d asked some friends even for suggestions of the right kind of book I was looking for, and nobody kind of had any ideas for me, and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to try. I’m going to send a submission in again to What Should I Read Next?” Because I have sent in submissions in the past. And I guess this time is the time that clicked, and yeah, I’m just looking for the right book at the moment.
ANNE: Readers, we are talking about the form at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest. And Émilie, let me just say timing is everything. Like we get I think usually dozens of submissions every week, but sometimes we put a call out and we get more like 100. But it’s very rare that we read a submission and aren’t like, I want to talk to that person immediately. And when we feel like they wouldn’t be a good fit for the show, it’s usually because a publicist filled it out and it’s incomplete.
[00:04:32] So we wish we could talk to everyone, and it’s just a question of getting the timing right. That makes it sound like something you achieve. It’s a question of the universe smiling upon us with good readerly timing. So I’m so glad you sent in recently, and I’m excited to talk today.
And I loved the direction you took your plea for books that would feel good to your brain right now. I think you used the word counterintuitive, and I love that.
ÉMILIE: Yeah, mm-hmm.
ANNE: Émilie, I’m really excited to get into all that, but I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. First, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? We want to give our readers a sense of who you are.
ÉMILIE: Basically, I’m actually in a little bit of a state of flux at the moment, or kind of like in between things. I was in university for eight years straight, which when I tell people a lot of the times, they’re like, How in the world did you do that? And I loved it. I was sad to leave, and that’s why I’m going back.
[00:05:33] I never planned to actually even take a break. Basically, I did a degree in poli-sci, and then I did dual law degrees. This is all back in Canada where I’m from. And then I came over to the UK to Oxford. I did a master’s degree in law, and my research focused on regional gender stereotypes and Russian family law, to put it very briefly.
And now I’ve taken a year in between, and in the fall, I will be back at Oxford for a PhD, still looking into gender discrimination in Russia. At the moment, I’m living in Wales because it’s beautiful here, and it’s also very cheap to live in compared to the rest of the UK.
ANNE: I didn’t know that.
ÉMILIE: Yes, it’s really, really inexpensive. My boyfriend is Irish, which is why we are still in the UK, because legally, I’m allowed to be here, still on my student visa, and legally, he’s allowed to be in the UK. So we chose Wales mainly because it’s cheap, but also because I love the sea.
[00:06:41] I currently work remotely for a law firm, kind of just, you know, just to survive at the minute in between my degrees. My boyfriend also works remotely, so we work remotely from home together. And in my spare time, I love to… obviously, I love to read, otherwise I wouldn’t be on this show. But I also knit quite a lot, and I do volunteer in the context of human rights activism, mainly in researching and writing for one specific organization in particular, but also I do a lot of research independently as well.
ANNE: Okay, thanks for the overview. My brain is going to all the Wales books we could talk about, but that’s not why you’re here today. Émilie, tell us about your reading life.
ÉMILIE: One of the things that I did mention in my submission is that I always have to have a system, especially for my reading life. Oftentimes, it feels more constraining, and it feels like I’m serving the system rather than it’s serving me, in the sense that I’m ending up reading books that I don’t really necessarily want to read. But because the system tells me that that’s what the next book is, that’s the next book that I have to read.
[00:07:52] And I’ve tried quite a few things. Originally, before, when I was a teenager, and even when I was in my really early 20s, I would just read books as I purchased them. But then I started having my own money and stopped asking my mom to buy books for me. And then I was able to buy a ton of books. And then I had this huge pile of books, and it was impossible to organize in that same way. So then the system kind of fell apart, and I’ve worked on different things over the years.
I also listen to a million-book podcast. So I’m constantly adding new books to my StoryGraph TBR, which is currently at almost a thousand books. So right now, what I’m doing is I’m going through my books from earliest added, and I’m reading two fiction and then one nonfiction.
And whatever books in the order are available at my local library, those are the books I read. But sometimes they’re not the books I want to read. I have been removing some books from the TBR when I’m like, I have no idea why I read this or why I added this but I still end up reading books that aren’t good for me at this moment in time, or that I just shouldn’t have picked up in the first place. Because just because I like a topic or something tangentially related to a topic doesn’t mean that I like every book ever written about that.
[00:09:13] I did previously read pretty much everything historical fiction that I could find. But I found lately, and by lately I mean the last couple of years, I found myself disenchanted with the more genre-esque historical fiction, I guess. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s impossible to categorize all books.
But you know the ones where there’s a woman facing away on the cover, and it’s the adjective “female now”. Like we could come up with a million titles right now. And then it’s always somebody in the present finding something from the past, and then you go back and forth between the two perspectives.
And I found that those books don’t work for me anymore. But my TBR is full of them. I guess I’m looking for direction right now. And that’s why I came to you, Anne. I don’t know if you can make any sense of that mess.
ANNE: Ooh. Like we bring our whole selves to our reading lives. Like there’s no line of demarcation. And whoever we are and whatever we’re working on and whatever is bringing us joy and or plaguing us, like it shows up in our reading lives.
[00:10:19] And that much I know, even though I’m not a psychiatrist or a therapist or anyone professionally empowered and sanctioned to give advice about such things. But also I am a reader who talks to a lot of readers and have seen how these things that we struggle with, we struggle with in our reading lives. So thank you for talking about this here with other readers. I know it’s a real gift to others to be able to hear their inarticulated thoughts and struggles named in a way that they hadn’t yet been able to do themselves. And that’s really valuable.
Émilie, I also love hearing you talk about your system as someone who really struggles to put structure in. My team right now is groaning like, Yeah, we know. As someone who really struggles to put systems into place in my life, but who really relaxes in the comfort of a good structure. So I’m glad to hear about your need for a system, but also your struggles with a system.
[00:11:20] What I’m curious about is what constitutes a system? Because it sounds like just that really simple rhythm of two fiction and nonfiction, it sounds like that could be a nice refiner of what to read next from all the possible choices. But then going back to your TBR, going back to the beginning and reading the fiction and nonfiction that is available from your library, so you have that other refiner as well, that you’re reading books that you don’t want to read.
But I’m wondering about stopping at two fiction, one nonfiction. Is that possible? Is that desirable? Is this something you’ve already thought about? And like, of course, Anne, but that’s not a system.
ÉMILIE: I think that is a system. But then I would also run into the problem of, well, okay, two fiction, one nonfiction, but what fiction? What nonfiction? How do I pick the actual books? Because I still have a thousand books and there is still a bajillion books. And if I just say any fiction book, how do I find the one that I want to read at the moment?
[00:12:22] I guess the system for me just spits out like a specific book and I just pick it up and read it. But my problem obviously is that a lot of the times it ends up spitting out a book that I don’t want to read.
ANNE: What is your systemic stress level to the idea of TBR bankruptcy? Delete that TBR and start fresh.
ÉMILIE: I don’t think I can. You don’t understand, Anne. You don’t understand. Like a lot of the times I’ll spend probably 20 hours a week listening to book podcasts and adding books to my TBR. And deleting all of that would be deleting a decade’s worth of listening time.
ANNE: No, I hear that. I hear that. And that’s useful information to know. How many years back does this To Be Read list go?
ÉMILIE: Well, originally it started on Goodreads and then I transitioned to StoryGraph. I think actually when I heard the founder of StoryGraph on the show is when I moved over to StoryGraph.
ANNE: Yeah, Nadia came on the podcast.
[00:13:23] ÉMILIE: She did. And I heard her talk and I heard about, you know, StoryGraph, and I just immediately moved over. But I think I started my Goodreads, it was back in high school, so that’s how long back this goes. Probably when I was on my way out of high school. So maybe when I was about 17 or 18 years old. A little over a decade ago.
ANNE: Émilie, what do you think about the idea? And these are just ideas. These are not prescriptions. But if you preserved the history, but created a new working TBR that you populated however you wanted, but something that was more like, I’m gonna say given… the fact that it sounds like you like the quantity, you like the ideas, you like the possibilities, but more like a hundred titles instead of a thousand titles that you have, in a sense, pre-approved to read now, as opposed to one day in the hypothetical future.
[00:14:24] ÉMILIE: That does sound like a great idea. And I do love the idea of having a little bit of homework and having to sit down. Again, I’m like, what would the system be of making this list? That is my first thought. But I do love the idea, especially if it was like a spreadsheet or something.
ANNE: Oh, that sounds like fun to me.
ÉMILIE: Yes.
ANNE: Is this something that… I’m wondering how you might create it. Would you go straight from memory? Would you scan your list? You don’t have to delete anything. That can be the history of books that sounded good to Émilie at a moment in time. But that can be very different, especially for the reason that brought you to the podcast today.
You’re saying that you’re looking for a certain kind of book to meet you where you are right now. And you were not in that place when you added all these books to your TBR. So it’s no wonder that you’re not enthused about reading some of them.
Some of them could actually be a very bad fit right now because of some of the things I know you’re looking to avoid in your reading life. They’re suggestions from past you, not edicts.
[00:15:25] ÉMILIE: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I really like this idea. And I like the idea of having this little project that I could sit down and really sink my teeth into.
ANNE: Reading projects are fun.
ÉMILIE: Exactly.
ANNE: And also can put your brain to work on something that feels good. I don’t know, it feels like akin to the therapeutic powers of a jigsaw puzzle to me. Let’s put all the pieces in place in a really pleasing way.
How would you go about doing this if you did? Also, at some point we got to question the two fiction, one nonfiction. I don’t want to take as a given that that works for you right now. But I am noticing there’s a lot of freedom in that.
ÉMILIE: Yeah, I think the way that I would begin it is by looking at my StoryGraph. And I think I would give myself permission to do a purge, not necessarily delete the whole thing. Because there obviously are some books that I’ve added within the past few years that I still, if I actually saw them and if I had the opportunity, I would still love to read them.
[00:16:22] And recently, going through my current system, there have been books that I found that I’ve loved and that have been right for me at this moment of time. But I think that I would give myself permission to do a purge. And then I would just scroll through and maybe see what kinds of, I don’t want to say that I’d be looking at the covers, but I would be looking at the covers, and I’d be thinking, what looks good to me right now?
ANNE: I hope so.
ÉMILIE: I mean, not just looking at the covers, but that’s how it would begin is I would look and see maybe titles that I recognize still. Because if I’ve added something seven years ago and the title I still remember it, or it still rings a bell, that must mean that it actually meant something more than me thinking, Mm, that could be good, and more so, oh, I really want to read that, if that makes sense.
ANNE: Yeah, it does. I keep thinking about what you said about how you’d like a system that serves you. So maybe you know reflexively, but maybe it would be beneficial to sit with the idea of what would serve spring 2025 Émilie, who is actually going to be reading these books right now?
[00:17:34] And how can the system contribute helpfully to that instead of working against what you know you need right now?
I feel like I need to add the caveat. Like, Anne, you’re always saying like surprise and delight. What? But you said that you are burned out on a certain kind of historical fiction. So you don’t need to prove anything to yourself by choosing to read those books in a season that has been really mentally stressful. But they can wait. You can keep your StoryGraph TBR, and they can wait, and they can be there for you at a future date when you decide, you know what, I want to revisit those kinds of books that I used to love. But what do you want right now is the question, I think.
ÉMILIE: Yeah.
ANNE: And if the system isn’t contributing to that, then yeah, I’m glad you’re recognizing that the system is not serving you. Okay, but two fiction, one non. What do you think? Take it or [inaudible 00:18:33]?
[00:18:33] ÉMILIE: Originally, for many years, it was one fiction, one nonfiction. And I’ve only recently given myself permission to edit that and to increase the proportion of fiction because I’ve been struggling so much. And because looking through my TBR in the way that the system has existed for the past few months, all of the nonfiction books that I’m seeing are ones that I’m like, I can’t read that right now. Or alternatively, they’re no longer relevant because they were contemporary, they were commentaries back in 2017, which it’s no longer relevant at all, right?
And a lot of them also are about topics that I can’t read about right now and that I don’t want to subject myself to reading about at the moment. There are some areas of nonfiction that I’m totally comfortable with reading about at the moment and at all times. I’m going to mention a linguistics book when I talk about my favorites.
ANNE: Ooh, can’t wait.
[00:19:34] ÉMILIE: Or books about nonviolent true crime. I think about a year ago I read a book about [a?] heist, which I really enjoyed. And those kinds of nonfiction that don’t have the potential to upset me or to keep me up at night.
But there is the question of how many of those actually exist on my TBR that I can call to this new and improved and refined TBR. Also, I guess, why do I feel like I need to be reading that much nonfiction if it’s not what I’m gravitating towards at this moment in time?
ANNE: Okay, so that’s worth exploring.
ÉMILIE: Now I just feel like I posed you a question about myself.
ANNE: Oh, I mean, you know, we quote Rilke at the end of every podcast and there’s a Rilke quote that applies here about living the answers to our questions. So you’re the one to answer that question, but the reflection is really valuable.
Also, again, not a therapist, but I do feel like any good therapist would point out how frequently you have used the phrase giving yourself permission. And I just wonder what lies beneath that question. That’s not necessarily a question for you to answer today, but I wonder if it’s a question worth contemplating.
[00:20:56] ÉMILIE: I think that I like the idea. I definitely like the idea of having a project and sitting down and picking a hundred books. And maybe doing that project would answer the question of should it always be two fiction, one nonfiction? Because maybe I’ll look through my list and I won’t be excited about any nonfiction or maybe I’ll only be excited about a couple of them.
And then I won’t even have the opportunity to be constrained by that because looking at my list of a hundred or so books, I won’t be able to pick that many nonfiction books. And then that part of the system will become redundant possibly. Does that make sense?
ANNE: Yeah, it totally makes sense. And I love the flexibility you’re talking about, giving yourself permission to implement here instead of a rigid system that may or may not serve you to look at the books you’re actually working with and thinking about what you actually want and seeing what makes sense to move forward. I love it. How’s that feel? Does that feel doable?
[00:21:55] ÉMILIE: Yeah, it does. Not to abuse this phrase, but coming into the show, I gave myself permission to be as flexible as Anne wanted me to.
ANNE: It’s important to know what matters to us and it sounds like that matters to you.
ÉMILIE: Mm-hmm.
ANNE: Okay. I am eager to hear how this plays out for you. Émilie, do you want to talk about your books?
ÉMILIE: Yes.
ANNE: So you know how this works. You’re going to bring me three books you love, one book you don’t, and what you’ve been reading lately and we’ll talk about what you’re looking for right now and what titles might fit the bill.
How did you choose these?
ÉMILIE: I thought about what books have stuck with me over time. And I also didn’t want to choose three books that are very close in theme or in structure or anything like that. So I wanted to also choose three books that represented different facets of my reading life that regardless of how much of a flux I’m in right now, there are three facets that I know I don’t want to change and I want to keep the same in my reading life.
[00:23:05] ANNE: Ooh, okay. I’m excited to hear how these sync up. Émilie, what’s the first book you love?
ÉMILIE: Babel by R.F. Kuang. I honestly don’t read a lot of, I guess, genres, what you would call it. It’s kind of fantasy, but also very literary, which makes me sound a bit pretentious. But it’s a fantasy kind of novel set in Oxford, which is one of the reasons that I loved it. And everybody in my house last year also read it. So it was a good bonding kind of thing between us.
Basically, the protagonist, whose name is Robin, he goes to Oxford. This is set about 100 years in the past, I think. And there’s this kind of mystical art of silver working that he is placed in the program for it in the Tower of Babel, which is one of the only buildings that doesn’t actually exist in Oxford that exists in the book.
[00:24:04] Basically it’s through magic and translation. It’s this idea of creating through words that don’t have a direct translation in other languages. So you put two words together on a piece of silver. And whatever is the missing link between those two words that’s lost in translation, that’s what that piece of silver does.
So in this world, a lot of the world is powered by this magic. And he’s in the program of working to create this magic. So it’s a very important place that he’s given.
But then he realizes as time goes on that he’s kind of found himself working against his own interests and that he’s working for the colonizers who are creating a lot of issues and doing horrible things back in his home because he’s from China. And he basically has to choose between the forces of good and the forces of evil. And then there’s a lot of machinations between him and his friends and people choose different sides.
[00:25:10] It’s basically like… the central point of it is can he make changes from within the Tower of Babel, the institution, or is he going to join the revolutionary group? And is he going to become violent, I guess?
ANNE: I do want to know, what does this book represent in your reading life?
ÉMILIE: What I loved about this book is it’s… well, first off, it’s a big book. I like long books where I’m able to get really acquainted with the characters and when there’s a lot that happens within the book. I do enjoy short books as well, but sometimes they leave me wanting more.
Also, and this will become a theme again later on, I love languages. I love linguistics and I love learning languages. And so the use of magic and language together, I found really interesting as well. I loved the little footnotes throughout the book as well.
Also, I loved his struggle for justice. So what this represents in my reading life… I guess I love a saga. And I feel like this was kind of a saga. I do love books that straddle kind of literary and genre. I know I said, I don’t read a lot of genre, but I do read a lot of the literary genre, which is again, making me sound really pretentious, but it’s true about me.
[00:26:31] ANNE: Okay, that’s Babel. Thank you. Émilie, what’s the second book you love?
ÉMILIE: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. This is set in Ireland. This is historical fiction through and through. It’s set over the course of like very few days. So it feels kind of claustrophobic in the sense that the main character is also working in a hospital during the height of the Spanish flu in Dublin. So at the end of World War I.
And there aren’t many characters. There are very few people involved and we really get to know the main character a lot. There’s a love story that doesn’t end up working out in the end for reasons of fate. It’s a sapphic love story. It’s the early 20th century. So fate kind of pulls them apart.
I think it was really, really well written. I felt like I was really there with the characters because of how closed off it was.
[00:27:31] ANNE: And what does this book represent for you?
ÉMILIE: This just represents my love for historical fiction. I learned a lot about the Spanish flu and about the way that medicine was working at the time. She was also working in the maternity ward. So I learned about that as well. It gave kind of a character of Call the Midwife, which was a book and also a show that I really enjoyed as well.
So this just taught me a lot about that particular moment in history in that particular space. I love reading historical fiction novels that teach me something new about a location or a period in time that I had no previous knowledge on.
ANNE: Émilie, what’s the final book you love?
ÉMILIE: So the final book I love is Wordslut by Amanda Montell. This is a feminist linguistics book. I read it when it first came out. So that was about five or six years ago. And I followed the author on Instagram too. I watched all of her videos at the time.
[00:28:31] I really, really love this book. I love reading about linguistics. And as somebody who does… I do study gender discrimination. This was kind of a confluence of the two. So it gave me a lot of things to think about. I read it four or five years before I actually began my career in research in gender discrimination.
So I don’t know if I would give it the credit of inspiring me for my future career, but definitely I thought about it a lot when I was writing my thesis, which means that it meant a lot to me. There was a lot in and about gender stereotypes and how they’re reflected in language. And that was something that I came back to in my thesis as well.
I really love reading about language and reading about the ways that language is used to discriminate and also to combat discrimination. I guess I’ll share one of the things that I took away from the book because it’s a nonfiction book, so it’s hard to describe. There’s not really a plot.
[00:29:29] But one of the things that I found most interesting was that when I was reading the book, it was one of the things the author talked about was that studies have been done on conversational patterns, the differences between the patterns that women have and the patterns that men have, not to divide everybody, but this is how the study is done.
Basically, the conclusion was that when men are having conversation with each other, it’s almost like a board meeting that one of them speaks, they pause, the other one responds, they pause, and it goes back and forth. But when women are having conversation, a lot of the time it’s more like a jam session where they’re talking over one another, they’re providing support, they’re saying, oh yeah, that’s true and they’re, you know, interjecting. And not in a rude way, in a way that that’s how the conversation flows.
And that really spoke to me because at the time I had just begun Zoom School of Law, as we described it, because when I started law school, it was 2020. And I hated talking over Zoom and I hated having conversations and socializing over Zoom.
[00:30:25] And I realized that one of the reasons that is, is because Zoom is designed for male conversational patterns. It’s so that one person speaks and if another person tries to interject, their audio cuts out and you can’t talk at the same time as one another. And that works if you’re talking like you’re in a board meeting. But if you’re trying to socialize, if you’re trying to interject, if you’re trying to have a jam session, it doesn’t work.
I actually, I messaged the author about this and she was like, oh my God, you’re so right and I never thought of this. That’s part of the reason why this book has stuck with me is because it helped me to understand something in my life and to put words to why I was so annoyed by the way that Zoom works. So basically what we learned is that Zoom is the patriarchy. And that’s what I’m telling you right now, Anne.
ANNE: I love how you read this book and it had very practical implications that helped you understand your own experience better. And also I did not deduce from looking at your list of books, though I can see it now that you had this fascination with language and linguistics. So I’m glad you caught that out.
[00:31:30] Émilie, change of pace. Tell me about a book that wasn’t right for you. And also why not? Was the timing wrong? Did it not align with your taste? Was it the wrong topic for right now? What did you choose?
ÉMILIE: So I chose Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee. I read this book actually quite recently. And the reason I read it is because I had heard a million times on multiple podcasts that it was an amazing book. It was 10 out of 10. It was the best thing ever. This is a masterpiece. You have to read it. And I’d been hearing this for years.
And then I went to the bookstore with a new friend and I thought, “I don’t know what to pick up. I don’t know what to read.” And this is one of those times where I was like, I’m not even going to listen to my system and I’m just going to read this book because I’ve heard it’s so good and it must be a hit and maybe it’ll ignite something in me and I’ll get on a bunch of good books at a time.
And then I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t know if that was partially probably because it didn’t live up to expectations. I found that the writing style was kind of confusing. It was hard to follow.
[00:32:32] I found myself wishing for a cast of characters because of how many characters there were. But there wasn’t a cast of characters at the beginning of the book. There was no kind of guide. It is a saga. And I know I said I love sagas and I love long protracted narratives, but I couldn’t really follow it. And I found myself not even caring to follow it.
Also, it’s one of those books where it’s a man who wrote from the perspective of a woman and it’s obvious that it’s a man writing from a woman’s perspective in the sense that she’s thinking things, you’re like, this is just not realistic. You just don’t know how to write women. Not to be mean to the author, I’m sure he’s a lovely man.
And I got through it, but I found myself thinking, “I was misled,” when I finished reading the book, which I guess might be a lot of pressure to put on you.
ANNE: By the book or by the things you’d heard about it that led you to form a certain set of expectations?
[00:33:33] ÉMILIE: By the expectations.
ANNE: Okay. Not the experience you were expecting from that book?
ÉMILIE: Mm-hmm.
ANNE: Okay. Émilie, what have you been reading lately?
ÉMILIE: So I recently read The Miseducation of Cameron Post and I absolutely loved it. I know it doesn’t really make sense with what I said about how I don’t want to read anything that’s, you know, about injustice. The main topic of the book is that this young lesbian growing up in Montana ends up in a conversion therapy camp, which is, you know, the epitome of injustice.
But there was a lot of hope and there was a lot of joy and there were other themes throughout the book. So it wasn’t constantly just horrifying injustice staring you in the face, because a lot of it was also about her grief in being recently orphaned.
I absolutely loved it. I loved the characters. Obviously, I was reading for the main character the whole time. And I really loved the way that it showed how she was dealing with her grief and the way that she was dealing with what was being done to her and the complex relationships she had with the people who were, you know, mistreating her, but who thought that what they were doing was right.
[00:34:45] And also with the relationship she made with other people that she met there and the friendships that she had. And I left it being like, I want to watch the movie. I definitely want to watch the movie. It’s a really, really good book. I highly recommend it. It’s very well written.
ANNE: I’m glad that worked for you. And it’s interesting to hear you point out an exception to something you’re teasing out about your reading life. That’s helpful to hear you process. Émilie, we’ve hinted at this a little bit, but what are you looking for in your reading life right now?
ÉMILIE: So basically, and this is going to sound counterintuitive, which is what I also said in my submission, at the end of the day, when I’m reading, I don’t want to keep reading about injustice. I don’t want to keep reading about unnecessary suffering done to people, you know? That’s what we read about, what we hear about all day long, especially if you work in human rights, if you research human rights, as I do.
[00:35:41] And when it’s time to go to sleep, I want a little escape and I can acknowledge that I have a privilege in being able to do that. But I do have a reading life, right? And I do want to choose books that make me feel mentally better rather than mentally worse.
The way that I’ve decided and the way that I think would work for me is if I could read books that are about something really horribly sad, but in a way that’s not related to injustice at all. So, for example, if there’s a horrible breakup or some kind of grief or something that happens that doesn’t speak to injustice in the world that I feel called to correct or that I feel like something needs to be done about this. But if I could obsess over a horrific breakup or just a couple being kept apart by fate, that would, I think, keep my brain occupied in a very particular way.
[00:36:37] I was trying to come up with examples of this to add into my three books I love, and the only example that I can come up with, I’m not going to name the book because I don’t want to spoil the book. But if anybody has read the book, they will know what I’m talking about, which I mean I’m throwing in a bonus book here.
ANNE: I’m here for it. Tell me more.
ÉMILIE: At the end of it, we find out that somebody had taken the fall for another character because they were in love. He’s been in prison for a decade in order to keep the actual perpetrator who he loves out of prison. He finally gets released only to find out that the person he loves was so guilty that he ended up committing suicide. Or so we think. It’s kind of ambiguous.
It’s so sad but also, it’s not because of any external pressures or anything. It was all because of interpersonal relations that ended up happening and that it was so upsetting. That’s something that I can obsess over in my brain and think about before I go to sleep and be like, oh my god, it’s so sad. But it’s not going to keep me up because it’s just a really sad love story. And that’s what I want.
[00:37:48] ANNE: So fictional problems are cathartic in a way that real problems are not. That’s my theory.
ÉMILIE: Thank you. You’ve put it so well. I’ve been practicing how to express it and you were just able to do it immediately.
ANNE: Okay, so we want some fictional heart-wrenching drama. Actually, I think the phrase you used in your submission was gut-wrenching books.
ÉMILIE: Yes, gut-wrenching.
ANNE: Okay, we can work with this. Okay, here’s the thing I don’t understand. You asked for books along these lines and came up empty. Do lots of people avoid sad books?
ÉMILIE: No, apparently so. I don’t know. I asked some friends. The only thing I came up with was Normal People, which I ended up reading, but I didn’t find it sad enough. And then I heard that the show is better, so I’m going to watch that. But I think I prefer a little bit of a slow burn and it didn’t deliver on that. So I didn’t feel anything that much for their relationship.
ANNE: Okay, wow.
[00:38:53] ÉMILIE: I feel like I’ve created a lot of stress for you.
ANNE: No, no, no. What I’m thinking is, is it’s a different way of coming at this topic than I usually do. Usually, I’m very concerned about the question, is this book too sad? And now I’m in the unfamiliar position of asking myself, is this book sad enough? I don’t know if that’s happened before.
Okay, Émilie, you loved Babel by R.F. Kuang, The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue, and Wordslut by Amanda Montell. Not for you, The Queen of the Night by Alexandra Chee. Your expectations were not in a place that allowed you to appreciate this book at the time you read it. And you talked about how recently you loved The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Émilie Danforth, even though it had strong themes of injustice, which you thought you might not want to read about. And we are looking for these gut-wrenchers.
I’m also really noting your love of sagas, of books that focus on language and linguistics. And I gotta say, my brain is generating all these language and linguistics ideas, but I don’t think ones that are also emotionally devastating to the degree that you are looking for.
[00:40:00] I’m kind of wondering about nonfiction for you. Just one. There’s actually just one nonfiction I’m thinking about.
I’d like to start with a fairly contemporary British novel that is about a couple kept apart by fate. Can we do that?
ÉMILIE: That sounds perfect.
ANNE: So this book is only 400 pages. I mean, when you said saga, like some of the books that come to mind are very, very long. In comparison, this one feels like finish in an afternoon.
But it is about two British teenagers who, I wish I could tell you the town, is an American reader that did not lodge in my brain the way that I bet it would for you as a reader. Let me start by saying one of my daughter’s friends asked recently, like, “Hey, Mrs. Bogel, you got some books around here. I need a, like, super extra ultra-angsty emotional read. What do you got?” This is the book I gave her.
[00:41:12] It’s called Talking at Night by Claire Daverley. This is her debut, though she worked in publishing for a really long time. And maybe that’s what she still does. I don’t know. I do know that I keep Googling going, Is there another book? Because I’d like to read it right away.
ÉMILIE: And I read this last month.
ANNE: Oh, was it good? Was it right for you?
ÉMILIE: Yes and no. I didn’t fall in love with both of the characters. But I see where you’re coming from. And I think you’re on the right path, for sure.
ANNE: You want to fall in love with the characters?
ÉMILIE: In this instance, I do. Because I don’t think that I can feel the sadness if I don’t care about them, if that makes sense.
ANNE: Ooh. That does make sense. That does make sense. I have to tell you, I also feel like I can’t get ahead of myself. That might be the wrong phrase. But I’ve read so many gut-wrenching books for this year’s 2025 Summer Reading Guide that I was playing… I’m not doing this. At least, I don’t think I am at this moment in time. But I played with the idea of having a category of heartbreakers because there are so many books that are so good and also so, so sad.
[00:42:22] ÉMILIE: That sounds perfect. I hope you do do that.
ANNE: You know what? I’ll just tell you they’re going to break your heart, even if they’re not nicely grouped into a little cluster with the heading that says, proceed with caution. But maybe this is exactly what you’re looking for right now.
Okay. But heartbreaking sagas. Have you read any Wally Lamb?
ÉMILIE: I have not. But I’ve heard him mentioned in the podcast multiple times.
ANNE: Oh. So no stranger to What Should I Read Next?. But it’s been a few years. I think as a writer, he’d be good for you because he tells largely family dramas that unflinchingly explore terribly difficult things. Illness, mental illness, abuse, dysfunctional families. Just lots of hard stuff. Total candor.
The one I would begin with is I Know This Much Is True, which was a Netflix series with Mark Ruffalo that I have not said. When I say Netflix, I mean streaming. I’m not actually sure what platform it was.
[00:43:26] But this is a juicy saga. And I think many readers have… I know that I came to care about these characters deeply. It’s 900 pages, if I haven’t said that. It has one of the best endings I have ever read in fiction. Actually, the title comes right from the end of the book. And I don’t believe it’s giving anything away to read it to you. I have a note in my journal here.
The protagonist says, “I am not a smart man, particularly. But one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own and my family’s and my country’s past, holding in my hands these truths. That love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness. That mongrels make good dogs. That the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I figured out. I know this much is true.” And he comes to those conclusions after the end of a decades-long, wrenching story.
He is an identical twin. And the story begins with a tragedy committed by his twin. And so this loving brother is left to make sense of what is happening to his twin, who is suffering from mental illness.
[00:44:41] And he loves his brother so much, and also, the protagonist is trying to figure out how to hold his own life together as he attempts to care for and really caretake his brother. And they were born into a big, messy, complicated family. So much angst. So much drama. So much pain. You see the protagonist, whose name I cannot recall, but you will tenderly, I think, for years, struggle with the truths of his past, the pain in his present.
You watch him try to navigate relationships in his own family of choosing. There’s some terribly painful scenes with his wife as he’s trying to navigate terribly difficult things. How many times have I said terribly? Pain. Challenging. Difficult.
This is an emotional and challenging read on many different levels. There is so much pain and trauma in these pages. But I thought it was so well done and so thoughtful. And I feel that Lamb’s gift is to really put you in the mind of someone in an extreme situation and really help you appreciate what that might be like in a really… I think, in a way that pushes so many readers toward thoughtfulness and contemplation and reflection.
[00:46:02] Lamb is also really good at kind of having little mysteries that he puts into the book that kind of make us wonder, like, where is this going? He is really one for dark humor. There’s some really shocking plot turns along the way. But the way he writes about families and the unwitting propensity to repeat the wrongs of the past in our own presence is really striking. How does that sound?
ÉMILIE: This sounds perfect. I looked it up while you were talking about it. And before you mentioned, I saw that it was 900 pages. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into that.
ANNE: Sink your teeth in. Okay, I like that. I’m wondering about a short book. But do we want to do a short book? I’m going to tell you about a short book. So you have options unless you object.
ÉMILIE: Well, I mean, the Wally Liam is long enough that I feel like adding another short book would still average out to like two and a half books. So I think that works.
[00:47:07] ANNE: Okay, let’s talk about a short one. It’s a debut. It came out 2020, 2021. It’s called Last Summer on State Street. And this book is very Chicago. I know you’re Canadian. Now you’re in Wales. I don’t know what you know about 1990s Chicago. But this is a coming-of-age novel set in the housing projects of that time that just unfolds over the course of one summer.
And in it, we meet three young girls. They’re all about age 11. And they form this comfortable trio of friends. And they spend their summer days double-dutching on the hot concrete under the watchful eyes of their neighbors, who’ve all been alerted that everyone who lives in this residence will soon be displaced. And if they’re lucky, they’ll get moved to a different apartment block. And if they’re not, they’ll have to fend for themselves and find new housing on their own, which feels daunting to so many of the residents.
But then, gosh, this speaks to dynamics that are familiar to many of us who have ever been middle school girls. But the setting, the place, these specific characters make it feel very unique.
[00:48:09] A new girl joins their friend group, and instead of the circle expanding from three girls to four, instead it’s broken, and all of their lives are just disrupted in really painful ways. And they’re largely left on their own because of this rupture to deal with the escalating threats around them, which feel imminent, so much bigger than any 11-year-old girl should have to handle, and overwhelming.
I thought the writing here is really beautiful. This is a short and succinct heartbreaker. That’s Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe. How does that sound?
ÉMILIE: It does sound really good. And I have briefly been to Chicago as a child. But also I’ve watched Shameless US four times. So I do have a soft spot.
ANNE: I don’t know what that is.
ÉMILIE: You don’t know what that is? It’s set in Chicago.
ANNE: Uh-uh.
ÉMILIE: It’s set in Southside Chicago. And I’ve watched it multiple times. So I do have quite a soft spot for the city and for fiction set there.
[00:49:11] ANNE: Okay, I’d be curious to hear what you think about that. Can we go nonfiction?
ÉMILIE: Yes, please.
ANNE: Okay, I’m going to tell you about this one and you can tell me what you think. The book is by Kelsey McKinney. She’s the co-creator of Normal Gossip, the podcast, which I’ve listened to season one of and loved and haven’t listened to anymore. I don’t believe that’s a barrier to this book. But it’s called, You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip, which I think may appeal to your interest in language and linguistics and injustice and the struggle to find justice. Because this book went places I did not expect.
It’s got a really fun tone. It’s very, very chatty. Like you kind of feel like you’re talking to a friend. But it’s also very, very smart and clearly well-researched. But we’re talking about gossip. And so many examples are drawn from history, sometimes history going way back to Alice Roosevelt. But also we talk a lot about the Epic of Gilgamesh, but also modern-day pop culture.
[00:50:14] I have to tell you, I handed this book to my daughter because she started watching Gossip Girl recently but then I had to roll back and be like, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like the first sentence of that chapter spoils who Gossip Girl is. Proceed with caution. If anybody needs to know that, and you haven’t seen this old, old show, proceed with caution.
But there’s lots of funny personal anecdotes as well. So it feels both scholarly adjacent and also just like you’re talking with a friend. But what I like about this for you is it truly deepened and expanded the way I think about gossip and gave me a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding.
Some of the things I think are so interesting here that I wasn’t expecting is she talks about gossip and power. For example, she talks about whispered networks and who benefits if you’re not supposed to talk about the leadership as part of a company’s enforced policy.
[00:51:14] Those issues were not new to me, but to have them like deeply explored in the context of gossip was fascinating. I mean, she also talks about gossip and friendship and lots of gossip and power from everything to like Mean Girls and its burn book to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, who would like listen to the whispers in the neighborhood to solve her crimes. And she talks about lots of literary things like Elena Ferrante’s anonymity.
This is smart and funny. Like I laughed out loud a lot while reading this book. But she’s also talking about very serious things. This is not Wordslut, but I wonder if your interests would make this book interesting to you right now. What do you think?
ÉMILIE: This sounds so interesting. This actually sounds like exactly the kind of nonfiction that I’m looking to read at the moment. Definitely want to read this.
ANNE: I’m glad to hear it. Again, I’ll be interested in hearing how your system develops and how nonfiction fits into it. But I’d be curious to hear what you think if you fit this title in.
[00:52:20] Émilie, okay. Of the books we talked about today, they were I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe, and then we ended with You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip by Kelsey McKinney. Of those books, what do you think you’ll read next?
ÉMILIE: You Didn’t Hear This From Me sounds like it’s calling me the most. I’m currently reading a bit of a chunky book at the moment. I’m reading The Last Samurai right now. So I don’t know if I want to jump right into I Know This Much Is True right off of that. I might want a little bit of a palate cleanser in between. And You Didn’t Hear This From Me sounds like the right thing to do that.
ANNE: Oh, I’m so glad to hear it. Okay, well, I can’t wait to hear what works out for you. Please report back.
ÉMILIE: I will.
ANNE: Émilie, this has been a pleasure. Thanks so much for talking books with me today.
ÉMILIE: Thank you so much for having me on, Anne.
[00:53:19] ANNE: Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Émilie, and I’d love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Émilie on Instagram @EMWeidl. That’s W-E-I-D-L. We’ll have that link in the show notes along with the full list of titles we talked about at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.
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[00:54:15] Thanks to the people who made this episode happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Productions. Readers, that is it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” Happy reading, everyone.
