Great books you may have missed in 2022

Andrew Limbong: Ever since I was I think a teenager, I was just in love with American modernism. And all through college I studied Faulkner and Hemingway and Cecilia, like, all those dudes. And I was like, I was going to be the preeminent William Faulkner scholar, and that was the end goal. And it turns out that that doesn't pay that well. You know what I mean?

Anne Bogel: So many listeners are just groaning in recognition in their cars right now.

Anne Bogel [00:00:09] 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 busy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

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Here in January, I'm at what feels like a hinge point in my reading life. Looking back with gratitude and perhaps a touch of anxiety at the year gone by and looking ahead with great anticipation for all the good books on the horizon. Today, we want to stop and highlight some under the radar 2022 titles you fear you may have missed, as well as share a sampling of some of the great reads 2023 has in store. I'm so pleased to welcome Andrew Limbong to the show as my partner for this conversation. Andrew once thought he wanted to be the world's preeminent William Faulkner scholar, and you'll hear a little about that today. But, instead, he's now happily ensconced in the world of public radio, where he serves as a reporter for NPR's Culture Desk and hosts their Book of the Day Podcast. I'm so glad he's joining me today to talk about a host of great reads-- be they past, present or future. Let's get to it. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Limbong [00:02:01] Hey, and what's up? How are you doing?

Anne Bogel [00:02:03] I am so excited to talk books with you today. Thanks so much for coming on.

Andrew Limbong [00:02:06] Yeah, I'm pumped. I'm happy to be here.

Anne Bogel [00:02:08] All right, Andrew, you are a professional radio person. And I think by extension, because of the shows you do at NPR, we can call you a professional book person. Is that accurate?

Andrew Limbong [00:02:18] I mean, if we're going by titles, sure. Yeah, that works.

Anne Bogel [00:02:23] We only put so much stock in titles around here.

Andrew Limbong [00:02:25] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:02:26] Titles only begin to cover it. But tell us a little bit about what you do at NPR.

Andrew Limbong [00:02:30] So the funny thing about my public radio journey was that it was kind of an accident. The whole game plan was I wanted to be like an English professor. I wanted to be an English teacher.

Anne Bogel [00:02:40] We'd love to hear it, Andrew.

Andrew Limbong [00:02:41] Yeah. I mean, I didn't get there thanks to a couple of reasons. Ever since I was I think a teenager, I was just in love with American modernism. And all through college I studied Faulkner and Hemingway and Cecilia, like, all those dudes. And I was like, I was going to be the preeminent William Faulkner scholar, and that was the end goal. And it turns out that that doesn't pay that well. You know what I mean?

Anne Bogel [00:03:09] So many listeners are just groaning in recognition in their cars right now.

Andrew Limbong [00:03:13] Yeah. You can't go on Craigslist.com and be like William Faulkner scholars, let's see what jobs are open for that. And then I also think I completely goofed on the GREs and I was like, oh-- but, yeah. But meanwhile while I was chasing that dream, I had gotten into public radio and then I started interning All Things Considered. The short story of how I found out about public radio was that I was never one of those backseat baby type kids. I only found out about NPR I think I was like a junior in college or whatever. And then my buddy, they're like, I think I want to be like an engineer in public radio. And I was like, what's that? And they were telling me about it, what it was. And they're the sort of friend I was, like, I could do that better than you. For really no reason. You know what I mean? Complete like Oh, I just heard about this thing that you tell me about. I can do that better than you. That's just so stupid. And so I got an internship at All Things Considered. Again, this is only supposed to be temporary. The whole plan was to go back to, apply to grad school and do that whole thing. But when I realized that that wouldn't pan out, I just started producing more for NPR. I was a producer for a daily talk show called Tell Me More. And then after that show got canceled, I ended up at what's now called the Culture Desk at NPR. I started off as a producer doing a lot of like mixing of the pieces. So for non audio people, it's like the reporter will record the interview and record all the sound and stuff like that and work with the editor to write the script and all that stuff, and then I come in and take the producer's tracks, their voice recordings and all the sound that they recorded and make it all nice and neat and into the package. And so, yeah, that was my job for a while until I started becoming a reporter.

Anne Bogel [00:05:02] Andrew, one of the shows that you are, I'm going to say, responsible for-- but you can correct me-- at NPR, is the Book of the Day Podcast, something that, as you can imagine, holds great appeal for our listeners. So tell me a little bit about your role in that.

Andrew Limbong [00:05:16] Yes, I'm the host of the Book of the Day podcast. And we've been trying to think at NPR long and hard about how to make a sustainable books podcast. And the thing about NPR's coverage of books is that we have so many interviews. All of our hosts have all these different interests and their own sort of tastes, and the producers have their own tastes and everybody's sort of choosing their own thing. And so I'll be real, we produce a lot of content and it's kind of hard for me to even listen to all of it and so I can't imagine. I mean, there might be like-- God bless some of the die-hards out here listening to all Morning Edition every day, and ATC every day, and Here & Now every day. But I think a lot of times these interviews sort of get like lost in the shuffle. It's easy to miss. And so what we do on Book of the Day is that every day we like highlight one of these interviews that we do in the building and just make sure they get their due shine, and make sure that our listeners can really appreciate what they have to say. Because my favorite episodes of the Book of the Day Podcast are most of the time we'll talk about like the buzzy books of the day and especially any news related books. Politicians always come out with memoirs and people will have books touching out on climate change and all that stuff. My favorite stuff is when we go back to the archives and when we can find a reason to pull out an interview from like the eighties and the nineties or whatever, because I find that so illuminating and both hopeful and discouraging. It's sort of like, oh, things don't change. These problems have always been around with us. And then it's like, all these problems, we haven't solved this yet? We haven't figured this one out all these years? So the podcast is a great way of just sitting down with an eight minute or so interview that hopefully you wouldn't have heard anywhere else.

Anne Bogel [00:07:00] Yeah, and I love that you're hinting at the importance and the enjoyment of going back to your archives, although that's a little further back than I expected. We're going a little back in time today.

Andrew Limbong [00:07:11] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:07:12] Andrew, because the nature of your work, you are in conversation with many of the authors who are writing books that we just love to read as What Should I Read Next listeners. Is there a conversation or a moment that particularly stands out that you've been a part of?

Andrew Limbong [00:07:26] Anybody who's done production knows that you have to be with your recording guys before the actual recording starts. On the one hand, you're just like making chit chat. And these are conversations that these authors probably would never remember. I remember I was like 20 something and this is still at my wanting to do the grad school Ph.D. thing, and I was producing an interview with Louise Erdrich. I guess this would have been from the Round House years, and we were just doing soundcheck and waiting for the host to come in. When you do soundcheck in radio you ask them either-- I like asking what their favorite shoes are or what their first car was or like what you had for breakfast and that sort of thing. And we just had a really pleasant conversation and I was just like starstruck she's just a person. She eats breakfast too. And I was like, oh, I'm going to ask her-- you know, Louise Erdrich about whatever it was. I remember there's an interview we were doing with Nikki Giovanni with the phone, and I think she was vacuuming.

Anne Bogel [00:08:33] That's so adorably relatable.

Andrew Limbong [00:08:35] I know. But then I had to be like-- just like a young production assistant, like, "Excuse me Ms. Giovanni, do you mind not vacuuming during the interview?" And of course she did. She was like, oh, yeah, totally. I obviously wasn't going to do this interview, but I was like aaw.

Anne Bogel [00:08:56] Our listeners always say any job with the word book or art in the job description is their dream job. And we hear things like, oh, if I could ask Louise Penny one question or Emily Henry one question, or Tayari Jones one question, what would it be? And it's so true, listeners, this is what we do at What Should I Read Next too when you're checking audio, it's like, "Hey, how's your day going? What'd you have for breakfast? What's your favorite thing about Tuesdays?" I mean, these are the conversations that we actually end up having. You can ask Tayari Jones one question, it's like, "So tell me about your mic."

Andrew Limbong [00:09:24] Yeah. And it's so funny because I don't know if you notice this with the interviews that you do that sometimes it's subtle, but their voice kind of changes sometimes once you hit the record. You know what I mean? Sometimes they'll be like one register and then they do the, okay, so here's my interview voice. And it's fascinating. I find my goal as an interim reporter sometimes is to try to bridge that gap. It's like, let's talk to the person from before we hit record. Is that guy available? Is that dude around?

Anne Bogel [00:09:53] So that you feel like you're talking to the person and not-- I mean, we want our authors to be professional, but yes, to feel like you can crack that veneer and have a conversation like two friends over coffee.

Andrew Limbong [00:10:05] Yeah, exactly.

Anne Bogel [00:10:06] Well, Andrew, your job is in a very real sense books, so of course I'd love to hear what is your reading life like these days?

Andrew Limbong [00:10:14] So I live in Baltimore. Before the pandemic, I used to commute down to D.C. every day, and that means I usually have to get up at five. So I figured that when the pandemic hit it was only going to be like a week, two weeks, like the rest of us knew what the hell was going on.

Anne Bogel [00:10:29] I remember those days.

Andrew Limbong [00:10:30] And I was like, I don't want to go sleep in. So I don't want to lose like my sleeping habits or whatever. Oh my God, my morning routine is going to make me sound like such an American psycho jock.

Anne Bogel [00:10:45] I can't wait to hear.

Andrew Limbong [00:10:47] I'll wake up, I'll do the dishes from the night before. I'll work out a little bit and then take a shower. And then I spend a half an hour to 45 minutes reading and that's my reading time in the morning. My wife and I will sit on the couch, we'll drink our coffee and sit and read our books until whoever gets to a natural stopping point first and then gets up and starts breakfast. That's how we started our day pretty much from the pandemic up until relatively recently.

Anne Bogel [00:11:16] I'm happy for you. That sounds amazing. And I'm also a little bit wistful for you because I know what's coming in your life. Okay, carry on. Keep talking.

Andrew Limbong [00:11:24] Two things sort of threw a wrench into that. I've had a marathon in the fall and so I just did some math about when I could run, and so I had to move out to the mornings which meant goodbye reading mornings for a little bit. And now, as it turns out, I'm going have a kid in like February. And so a lot of my mornings have been taken up by we got to get the room together. I've been painting a lot of these weeks. Apparently babies like their rooms to have heat, I hear. That's the word on the street is that the room should be warm, who knows? That's news to me and I got to figure that out now. And so my life has gotten like a scooch bit busier, and I imagine it'll only get busier in the next couple of months. I try to carve out some of my time reading for pleasure when I can.

Anne Bogel [00:12:14] Andrew, what are you drawn to as a reader?

Andrew Limbong [00:12:16] As a reader, my tastes lean towards the literary fiction side of things. I love stories where like a dude is sad, goes on a journey and then it doesn't fix it.

Anne Bogel [00:12:27] I love that description.

Andrew Limbong [00:12:28] You know what I mean? It's like, huh, me doing the stupid thing didn't fix my sadness. Huh, figured that. And then the end. That's generally my taste in books.

Anne Bogel [00:12:39] What is the quintessential a dude is sad book.

Andrew Limbong [00:12:43] The quintessential a dude is sad book, I think Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. I don't know if you've read it.

Anne Bogel [00:12:51] I have and pretty recently too, actually.

Andrew Limbong [00:12:54] Oh, really?

Anne Bogel [00:12:55] Yeah. I mean, Ishiguro is one of those authors that I feel like I really wanted to read in my lifetime, and I had only read Never Let Me Go. So I've been working my way through his catalog. So I just read that maybe three years ago, but it still feels really fresh because that one hurts. It sticks with you.

Andrew Limbong [00:13:10] Yeah, it's so good. My guy is like-- I don't even know if he's sad. He's just like, huh, let me just go on this road trip or whatever. You know what I mean? And he's just like wandering around and reliving his memories and realizing like, aah, oh, really? You know what I mean? I think that is the quintessential, like, dude is sad type of book. And I'm using dude in a very gender neutral way here. I love anybody being sad.

Anne Bogel [00:13:38] That is interesting to note. Andrew, one of the ways that we often get to know our guests on What Should I Read Next is through the lens of the books that they enjoy and don't enjoy. Like one of our common episode formats is something that we call literary matchmaking, where a reader tells me three books they love, one book they don't, and what they're reading now or just finished. And that's how we get some insight into who you are as a person, as well as what you're drawn to in your reading life. I would love if you could share three books that you love, one you don't and what you've been reading lately. You up for it?

Andrew Limbong [00:14:11] Yes, absolutely.

Anne Bogel [00:14:13] Andrew, what's the first book you love?

Andrew Limbong [00:14:15] I'll give you my sort of like the Mount Rushmore.

Anne Bogel [00:14:18] I love it.

Andrew Limbong [00:14:21] I guess there’s only three.Three book Mount Rushmore that have been very like formative in my life. I think my first book we got to take it back to Big Billy Faulks, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. Shadow Mr. MacMahon, AP English, Midwood High School holding my hand through dear life reading that book. First of all, I don't know what this guy is doing assigning this book to a bunch of 17 year olds. Could not have a more complicated book. But that class really helped me, teach me how to read kind of in a lot of ways. And I hold that book close to my heart because of that. And it showed me how complicated and weird books can get, because I think up until then I'd pretty much read like straightforward narrative books that I read just fine. But this book they showed me almost like a 3D version. Like I've been living in 2D and now I'm in 3D. And I was like, this is what you could do? You're allowed to do this? What? And I'd been obsessed with Off the Wall. I think when I read it, I was like in the middle of playing like Metal Gear Solid 2 on PlayStation 2, which is a really fun game by Hideo Kojima and he's another experimental storyteller. And reading The Sound and The Fury broke my brain in a similar way that playing Metal Gear Solid 2 did.

Anne Bogel [00:15:33] Andrew, you do not even know how relatable that is. I mean, minus the PlayStation 2, but The Sound and The Fury takes me straight back to Mr. Cobb's senior English class, and I can't remember if it was assigned to our whole class or if it was like an independent voice reading that I chose. But I just remember me at his desk going. "Mr. Cobb. Mr. Cobb."

Andrew Limbong [00:15:53] What the hell is going on?

Anne Bogel [00:15:54] Yeah.This is what I think is happening, but there's no way. I love it.

Andrew Limbong [00:15:59] I haven't read it in a minute. Have you reread it in a while?

Anne Bogel [00:16:01] I haven't read it since. I've read a little Faulkner since, but not in the past 10 years. It's been a long time, and I might have felt differently about Faulkner as a high school senior than I feel now.

Andrew Limbong [00:16:12] True. Yeah. Recently, I read Absalom, Absalom and it was good. It whipped. It rocked.

Anne Bogel [00:16:18] I remember trying that one in high school or college. I didn't make it through that one, Andrew.

Andrew Limbong [00:16:24] I have in those early pandemic months a big reading to do list tackling the books that I've tried and failed-- not fail, but trying to [Crosstalk].

Anne Bogel [00:16:34] Is early pandemic the right time for that? I mean maybe it is, but...

Andrew Limbong [00:16:37] I had some free time on my hands and all of a sudden my commute was gone. So I was like, all right, let me tackle this Absalom, Absalom book.

Anne Bogel [00:16:47] Okay. I love that since you are not currently the world's greatest Faulkner expert, that you at least are able to introduce him here. So thank you for sharing that title with us.

Andrew Limbong [00:16:58] Who do you think has that title now? I'm coming at you. All right?

Anne Bogel [00:17:01] It sounds like your days are pretty busy. You've got to get that baby heat.

Andrew Limbong [00:17:07] True, I guess that comes first. Okay.

Anne Bogel [00:17:11] Andrew, tell me about another book that you really love.

Andrew Limbong [00:17:13] This one I read in my twenties, it's Edwidge Danticat, Krik? Krak! It's this beautiful short story collection that I think unlocks a lot of thoughts in my brain about immigration and why people leave their home countries and things like that, and the disconnect of what they're leaving. And it also as a bit of form, I think the short story collection sometimes gets short shrift. And I think this one was like so thematically cohesive in a similar way from like The Sound and The Fury showed what a short story collection could be. It doesn't just have to be like, oh yeah, here's the stories that were published in like The New Yorker and The Paris Review from like '97 to '08 Or whatever. It can be like a much more thoughtful and cohesive book. And it made me just appreciate the form of the short story quite a bit.

Anne Bogel [00:18:09] Yeah. I'm so glad you chose that. What's the final book that you love?

Andrew Limbong [00:18:13] The final book that I loved and we had talked about before, it was The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro. That book got me out of a pretty harsh reading slump I was in just because life gets in the way and stuff like that. I'd been reading pretty much only books for work. And I was not reading that much for myself. I think this might have been after he won the Nobel, possibly, that I decided to pick him up actually give him an honest go. And like I said, it just hit all of my buttons and I've since gone through most of his bibliography. I think I've still got one or two left to knock out. And it's just such a masterful way of looking at memory. That's like the big theme of his work, is looking back at the past and stuff like that. And in a lot of ways you could say the same thing about Faulkner and Danticat, all these people are examining what a previous life looks like and how that impacts them today. And now that I'm thinking about this now, maybe that's also why I love listening to the Book of the Day episodes when we go back to the past so much because history rhymes, right?

Anne Bogel [00:19:23] It's got that wistfulness for the time gone by.

Andrew Limbong [00:19:26] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:19:27] And they're all so beautiful and so sad.

Andrew Limbong [00:19:31] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:19:31] Which sounds like that's your jam.

Andrew Limbong [00:19:33] That does, yeah. I think we were just watching Ramy, this season that’s just came out, with my wife and we were just like, is this pretty much all we watch-- just wistful and sad downers? And I was like, yeah, it's either that or Love is Blind. I think we're just like two sides of the same coin, I guess.

Anne Bogel [00:19:52] It's good to know what you like. Andrew, tell me about a book that didn't land for you.

Andrew Limbong [00:19:56] So after I read The Remains of the Day, I went through the Ishiguro back catalog. And I've loved most of everything that I've read. One I didn't like was Never Let Me Go. So I'd like to hear what you thought about it, because like a part of me I feel like it was a literary writer giving sci fi a shot and not respecting the genre. But I don't know if that vibe fits. It's been a minute since I tried it.

Anne Bogel [00:20:23] I really enjoyed that book. Which speaking of works that are devastating and sad, it's one that I read when I was young and then revisited for our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club recently. And more than almost any other book I've read, that's one where I want to say listeners you do not want to know how the story unfolds until it unfolds in front of you. Usually, I think a spoiler can actually sometimes clue you in to the reading experience. You know what to expect and--

Andrew Limbong [00:20:48] That makes you read more consciously about what goes on.

Anne Bogel [00:20:50] Right it helps you read more closely on your first pass, which might be your only journey through a book. But you don't want to know what's going in there. I hear what you're saying. I can hear that there could be a real argument there that this is an author who's playing at sci fi, but not really respecting the way the genre ought to function. And also, as much as that book got to me and I don't really wish to revisit it anytime soon for that reason, I really love that reading experience.

Andrew Limbong [00:21:14] All right, maybe I'll give it another shot. I've been apprehensive without trying out his other forays. It's such a blurry line. I feel like talking about book genres kind of sometimes feels like talking about music genres. I hate when people when like absolute loser nerds like me are like "That's not post-hardcore. That's actually like indie rock." It's like, bro, who cares? The feelings about Never Let Me Go has had me on pause about reading like Klara and the Sun or The Buried Giant. But maybe I should just do it.

Anne Bogel [00:21:45] I feel like you should just do it. Not because of all the works that you have to choose from Ishiguro is definitely at the very top for you, but because you just said 5 minutes ago that you're really interested in making your way through his entire catalog. So, Andrew, they're waiting for you. Do it! Do it!

Andrew Limbong [00:22:00] I know. All right. Fine.

Anne Bogel [00:22:02] Well, and I also think it can be really instructive. Maybe Never Let Me Go is one that's just not right for you. And when we love an author's works on the whole but there's one book that just doesn't work for us, I think we have the opportunity to learn so much about ourselves as a reader.

Andrew Limbong [00:22:16] Are you a big reading the full bibliography type person?

Anne Bogel [00:22:19] Only occasionally. I had a project in 2022 where I did aim to read through the complete works of some authors I loved. But that was mostly for my own enjoyment not because I have a compulsive need to tick all the boxes in that particular column.

Andrew Limbong [00:22:33] Who are the authors?

Anne Bogel [00:22:34] Well, the ones I was going to read were Elizabeth Strout, Maggie O'Farrell, Tayari Jones, and Dolores Kearns Goodwin. So I did Maggie O'Farrell, love her. Didn't love all her works equally, so that was extremely illuminating for me. Dolores Kearns Goodwin writes these 600 to 1000 page biographies, and I realized I don't want to read those all in a year. I want to read one of those a year. I can read them faster than she can write them and I'll catch up eventually and that I'll be happy. But I still need to finish some Tayari Jones and Strout just a little. I think I have one more book for each.

Andrew Limbong [00:23:08] I feel like you learn a lot more about what you like and what you don't like when you're just bouncing the ball off the same wall. You know what I mean?

Anne Bogel [00:23:15] Yeah, I think that's very true. Oh, gosh. I'm a liberal arts major, Andrew, which I know you're not shocked to find out, but fiction is so infinitely variable, and yet it feels like you're controlling for more variables than you're typically able to do with especially fiction. Andrew, what are you in the middle of right now?

Andrew Limbong [00:23:30] I'm now like lowkey embarrassed about how dad I'm about to sound right now.

Anne Bogel [00:23:34] Andrew, you're about to be a dad. That's okay. Let's hear it.

Andrew Limbong [00:23:38] I know. I am in the middle of Robert Caro's The Power Broker. Like every other DC Dockers wearing dork in the world. I hit 30 and got really interested in city planning. Unfortunately, I'm not cool anymore. I'm washed and I'm into reading about this dude building roads.

Anne Bogel [00:24:04] I have to tell you something. My one nonfiction nerdy niche deep love is urban planning. Although I haven't read that book yet, I think Walkable City by Jeff Speck is my personal favorite. Yeah, all the books about roads and sidewalks and safety and community, I gobbled them up.

Andrew Limbong [00:24:23] Yeah, I think it was only because I got a YouTube video recommended to me by some city planner and my YouTube algorithm is like how to paint rooms and how to fix cities.

Anne Bogel [00:24:34] We should compare playlists.

Andrew Limbong [00:24:40] Yeah. It’s like ‘How to paint rooms’ and like, ‘How to fix cities.’ You know what I mean?

Anne Bogel [00:24:41] If you see anything good that can address the crosswalk situation in my neighborhood, just send them. Send them, and I'll just forward them to my community people.

Andrew Limbong [00:24:49] Yeah. Now with this kid on the way, because I live on kind of a busy intersection, I'm just like, do I go and join a neighborhood committee? Oh, brother. Oh, boy.

Anne Bogel [00:24:59] I mean, reading him leads you to dangerous places. It is true.

Andrew Limbong [00:25:02] Yeah, exactly. I've been chipping away at the Power Broker, and so when I'm in between books I revisit it. I am in the middle of the Power Broker, and I feel like I will be in the middle of it for the foreseeable future it looks like.

Anne Bogel [00:25:15] That is a big book.

Andrew Limbong [00:25:17] Yeah, I'm trying to take it in chunks. But, yeah, it is.

Anne Bogel [00:25:20] Andrew, you have already mentioned that you enjoy going back in the archives of your NPR Author interviews. Well, our listeners are incredibly enthusiastic about reading backlist titles and hidden gems that fly under the radar. And this is in market and often stated contrast to feeling like they see the same titles cropping up on Bookstagram every single day and they feel like they want to seek out the books that really are worthy of their reading time and not just the one getting the big publicity push. So, Andrew, I would like to stop at this not quite hinge point, but close between 2022 and 2023, to talk about some of the wonderful 2022 releases that we really don't want readers to miss.

Andrew Limbong [00:26:04] I'd be remiss not to mention NPR's books we love. What I like about it so much-- and I'm not just being like a company person here-- is that it's not us coming down from on high and be, like, here are the 10 books you need to read in 2022. Instead, it's like 400 plus books that you can use these filters to sort of pick what you like and then find it from there. And also very helpful is that it goes back to like 2013 or whatever. So there's a wide breadth of books to pick. Is that not every book is going to be for you on the on that thing, but everyone should find something to read, especially stuff that's not like long listed for the NBA or whatever, which I like. And so, yeah, one of the books I want to shout out is this book called Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi.

Anne Bogel [00:26:51] No, are you serious?

Andrew Limbong [00:26:52] Yeah. Why?

Anne Bogel [00:26:53] Because that's on my list. I love it. I love that we both chose this. Okay. Tell us about Diary of a Void.

Andrew Limbong [00:26:58] Okay. It's a book by Emi Yagi, I think she's an editor at a women's magazine in Japan. And this book just got translated and published here in the States in 2022. And it's about this woman who works in an office, and she gets so annoyed and fed up by doing all of the unspoken and unpaid labor women often have to do in offices. It's like taking notes at meetings or cleaning up after everybody and stuff like that. And so she just tells everyone that she's pregnant to get out of it. And it's very funny. It kind of actually lowkey reminds me of like Office Space a bit in this sort of like "quiet quitting" that she does. But then I think it gets weird. I've been telling people that I think that she falls for her lie a little bit too hard. But I'm curious about what you think.

Anne Bogel [00:27:48] It gets so weird. It gets a little bit like magical, fantastical.

Andrew Limbong [00:27:52] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:27:53] Yeah, I like that description.

Andrew Limbong [00:27:55] But like I said, it does remind me of Office Space where it's actually very funny and I definitely laughed out loud at a couple of the lines.

Anne Bogel [00:28:01] I love how the premise feels on the one hand a little bit far fetched, but on the other it's just so relatable. I can 100 percent buy that in the moment, telling everybody I know I can't clean your dishes again because I'm pregnant. And like, y'all, your stuff reeks; I can't handle it. Like, completely relatable.

Andrew Limbong [00:28:20] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:28:21] Yeah. But then she really lives into her lie. She wants to make it real. She wants to sell it. And, yeah, it goes into interesting places. I'm so glad you chose this. So, readers, we have tried to do our part here in What Should I Read Next for this not to fly below the radar. We talked about it in episode 336, which is called the Find Your Audiobook Formula. But Andrew, I'm so curious to hear why you think readers may have missed this one. Well, one, there were so many amazing titles in 2022, this huge backlog of pandemic books was being published. There really are more titles available. And also I think that readers either don't pay attention to or are intimidated by works in translation.

Andrew Limbong [00:29:01] Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Translated literature I think has like an uphill fight to climb to get to like the attention that I think could use your help.

Anne Bogel [00:29:10] Yes. And I think that so many readers find it so worth it because Diary of a Void is not like any of the other books you've read this year. And books that really stick with us, that are really memorable are those ones that do have the ability to surprise and delight. So I hope that some of these books in translation and also some of these ones we're calling out today are ones that you will consider putting on your priority to be read list. I can't believe I'm sharing this one, but Lark Ascending by Silas House is one that I have been really surprised to not see and for the sales numbers to be a lot lower than I would have anticipated. And the reason I'm saying I can't believe I'm sharing it is how could you miss a Silas House book? But this one came out in late September. It has serious echoes of The Dog Stars and The Road. It's dystopian. It has a young protagonist who, Andrew, is telling this story as a wistful old man, looking back over this tragic and also beautiful time. But this is dystopian. It's very similar I think in feel, though not in the specific story, to Celeste Ng's new book, Our Missing Hearts, which is selling a bajillion copies. So if you read that and you think, well, now what do I want to read next? I love that vibe. The answer might be Lark Ascending. It's set in the dystopian not too far in the future United States, where fires have ravaged everything. And Lark, this young man, is one of the last teenage refugees to flee Maine where they have sought shelter and enjoyed a really lovely few years to try to find refuge in Ireland, one of the last countries rumored to be accepting refugees. But when he gets there, terrible things happen. So he's just got this beautiful, wistful prose. This is also an LGBTQ+ love story. There's a dog in this book who will steal your heart, a beagle named Seamus. I wouldn't want the reader who's thinking that sounds amazing. If you're thinking that right now, I really want you to check out Lark Ascending.

Andrew Limbong [00:31:11] Yeah. Do you find that there's been a lot of recent not too distant future dystopian novels?

Anne Bogel [00:31:17] Yes. It's been really interesting to me to see how some of the authors I've read for a long time are responding to current events and how that's impacting their fiction.

Andrew Limbong [00:31:26] Yeah, exactly. Because I feel like dystopian novels usually would be like in some far off distant future. And now that timeline is shrinking and shrinking. It's like, "Oh, so like tomorrow."

Anne Bogel [00:31:41] It does make me think sometimes that if I'm going to read dystopian, I want it to be completely unrelatable please.

Andrew Limbong [00:31:49] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:31:50] All right. Your turn, Andrew.

Andrew Limbong [00:31:52] This next book I've got is a philosophy arguments book. It's called Elite Capture How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò. It's one of those leftie books, I think is from Haymarket Publishing. Yeah, Haymarket Books. I picked it up at my-- shout out, Red Emma's. It's at the local radical bookstore where I live. It's a sort of philosophical take on how the language of marginalized people so often gets co-opted by powerful forces to use against said marginalized people. And I think you can see this pretty much everywhere, especially like after 2020 and the protest after George Floyd. And then you see some like major company try to some sloganeering that's like, oh, interesting. But the argument Táíwò makes is that this is almost a pattern that's gone on all throughout history and it's not surprising, but once you start seeing it you can see it everywhere. And I think sometimes philosophy/politics/argument books can be hard to swallow. It's not like a spicy thing to be like, hey, read this kind of a lecturey book. But it doesn't come off as a lecture, I promise. It's a pretty easy digestible read that poses some interesting questions.

Anne Bogel [00:33:10] I love that you chose something from a small press because those books are so easy to miss. They don't have the budget for big publicity. And unless you hear about a book like this from another reader interest or from a bookstore or other outlet you pay attention to, you're going to miss it completely. So I'm so glad you shared that today.

Andrew Limbong [00:33:27] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:33:28] Okay. I want to share-- got to go in a different direction. How about historical fiction? So readers who read a ton of books often love historical fiction. So let me try to slide one end that you might not be familiar with. This is Catherine J Chen's new novel, Joan. It came out in July, and this is the story of Joan of Arc, which Chen obviously has her historical material to work with. And it's interesting the way that she incorporates those more trusted historical narratives into every chapter of her book. But she also gives Joan a really powerful back story here to show why this young woman was able to present herself to her ruler and say, "Majesty, you're saying what you need. I can fight." And what she gives her is a really difficult childhood. Like an abusive father, her sister is sexually assaulted by English soldiers when they enter a village on a raid. And they give Joan this, I would say quiet anger. They give Joan this anger and determination. And Chen really shows how that origin story really impacted her. I thought it was so interesting that this book was blurbed by Hilary Mantel, and I only put so much credence in those blurbs. But I feel like those Wolf Hall titles are such a good comparison here, because they both have just gorgeous, lush, descriptive prose that gives you this immediate visceral feel. You feel like you are right there in the story that happened centuries ago. Yeah. I don't want readers to miss this one.

Andrew Limbong [00:34:59] Yeah. It got, you think it got overshadowed a bit?

Anne Bogel [00:35:01] I think there was just so much coming out that I don't feel like I saw it. I don't think I heard readers talking about it. And, Andrew, our job is to have an ear to the ground about what readers are actually reading. So I hope today we're able to share some that not as many readers are actually reading yet. Do you want to do one more each?

Andrew Limbong [00:35:18] Yeah, sure. My next pick is Kate Beaton's Ducks. It's a graphic memoir. When it came out, there were heads calling it the best graphic novel of 2022 and stuff like that. But I think it's just straight up one of my favorite books of 2022. Full stop. Kate Beaton she did that comic, that webcomic called Hark of Vagrant back in the day. But this is a graphic memoir about her time after college, mining in the oil sands of northern Canada. And it's such a beautiful tale about the economic forces that push people into taking these kind of crappy jobs that, A, are bad for the environment, B, are bad for the land that didn't belong to them. And C, she was there surrounded by men and a lot of heinous and hard stuff happens to her. But Beaton is super empathetic about it. She doesn't excuse and she doesn't forgive, but she gives you a deeper understanding as to why everything like this happened. It's a book that really, really stuck with me ever since I'd read it. And I didn't think easily, like number one with a bullet, my favorite book of the year. And I hadn't seen it on anything like the big lists that people were putting out, and I just want to make sure that get shouted out too.

Anne Bogel [00:36:37] Well, that's exactly the kind of thing we want to hear about today. Okay. The one I want to share is Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe. This is a debut coming of age novel. Andrew, I think it would have been so easy for me to miss this one, because this is a book I was drawn to 100% because of the cover. It caught my eye, picked it up and thought, that sounds great, but I only read so many books and the cover is something I only put so much credence in. But I'm so glad it caught my eye. I mean, it's not that long ago. It's not historical fiction, but it almost feels that way because it feels so much of a different place in time, and that is the housing projects of 1990 Chicago. But this is a wistful-- well, we have a theme going here, a sad and wistful story. A woman who has grown to some degree. (I mean, she's probably our age) is looking back over everything that happened over the course of one summer when she was 11. So there's this group of three girls in the housing project. They formed a comfortable trio and they spend their days double dutching on the hot concrete while their neighbors are all watching. But everyone is about to be displaced because their buildings are being torn down. And if they're lucky, they will be officially transferred to a different apartment block. But a new girl joins the friend group, and that is just the beginning of everything getting massively disrupted, not just in their community that was already happening, but also in their individual friendships and families.

Andrew Limbong [00:37:55] And it's debut.

Anne Bogel [00:37:56] Yeah. And it's small and short. It's 200 pages. Readers, you could have an exquisite reading experience in a economical amount of time.

Andrew Limbong [00:38:07] I love a short book, dude.

Anne Bogel [00:38:08] I love a short book. Some of my favorites of 2022 are long, but a book that feels exactly as long as it's supposed to be. I think it hits you differently if you can read it in a sitting or two on the couch, I think that might make for a stronger emotional impact.

Andrew Limbong [00:38:24] I absolutely agree, yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:38:26] But this one has impact. Andrew, it's true that we don't want readers to miss the great books from 2022, but also I can't not be excited about all the great books on the way in 2023. Are there a few titles that you're especially looking forward to?

Andrew Limbong [00:38:43] Yes. Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:38:44] Yes, I like that.

Andrew Limbong [00:38:47] We'll see if I get to that come this year. But one of the books I'm super excited to read is this book called The Ringmaster by Abe Riesman. Abe Riesman wrote a pretty great biography of Stan Lee a couple of years ago. I think she comes from like New York mag, where she also wrote a really great piece on Steve Ditko, who's the co-creator of Spider-Man, who's kind of like a low key shadowy libertarian. Ringmaster is a biography of Vince McMahon and his influence over the WWE. And I find, I'm not even like that big of a wrestling person, but I find the world of wrestling so fascinating and how its influence in America, in American politics, American culture is pretty apparent and pretty obvious. And just tracing McMahon's rise to power, I think is a fascinating prism or fascinating lens to look at where we are in America today.

Anne Bogel [00:39:46] Do you know when that's coming out? March. It's coming out in March. I have another March release for you, which is actually a nice follow up to Last Summer on State Street, even though the tone is completely different. This is another Chicago story. It's the new novel from Ann Napolitano, the author of Dear Edward, which readers I know many of you loved. I was too terrified to read because it is a plane crash novel. But this new one is called Hello Beautiful. And this is the story of an Italian-American Chicago family. There are four daughters, and Napolitano has said this is an explicit homage to Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women. I just finished reading this last week. I did not want it to end. I loved it so much. This is a family story. And it's not just about the family, we meet a lot of other interesting characters who wander into these sisters’ paths, but I just thought this was so well done. If you're looking for something along the lines of a complicated family story with a lot of emotional resonance-- Andrew can you tell what my jam totally is?-- This is a great pick to keep your eye out for.

Andrew Limbong [00:40:46] Well, that's why 2020 was such a big year for you. I feel like there was tons of intergenerational trauma family books.

Anne Bogel [00:40:52] Yeah, a family is sad. That might be my [Crosstalk].

Andrew Limbong [00:40:59] My next book, this is another very extreme. I guess I'm just like all my dad's stuff right now, you know? Another nonfiction book, It's by James Risen. It's called The Last Honest Man. It's a book about a U.S. senator named Frank Church from Idaho. And he's a guy who was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War, and because of that he got targeted by the surveillance state apparatus in the country. So he was just like out here exposing the NSA and FBI surveilling civil rights leaders. And he was out here showing plots from the CIA to assassinate people and all these other abuses of power from the government. And I'm hoping to get my hands on it. I'm just interested in the world today in which we talk about conspiracy theorists and how unhinged they can be. I think it's easy to forget that, yes, some people out there pulling some shady stuff. And all of that stuff is backed up by rigorous reporting. And it's hard to find yourself like-- I don't know. When people talk about conspiracy theories in a condescending way, sometimes a part of me is, like, well, it's not like they're-- you know what I mean?

Anne Bogel [00:42:17] It seems like there's lots of material for a really juicy nonfiction story here.

Andrew Limbong [00:42:21] Yeah, exactly.

Anne Bogel [00:42:23] I really love that you're bringing these kinds of books that you're jokingly calling dad books.

Andrew Limbong [00:42:27] I mean, they are, right? I feel like I'm about to be-- I don't know. It's like all of a sudden my reading tastes is leaning towards like historical dad stuff that I normally would poke fun at and be like, oh, who wants to read that? Boring.

Anne Bogel [00:42:45] I love that you can share those today. Okay. This is not a juicy family story; another book that I cannot wait to read and I have not read yet is coming May 16th from R.F. Kuang.

Andrew Limbong [00:42:55] No, get out of here. I'm going to screencap my screen right here because that was going to be my next book to pick.

Anne Bogel [00:43:01] Really?!

Andrew Limbong [00:43:02] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:43:02] I love it. I love that we're on the same wavelength there. Now, she's the author of Babel, which just came out in August. And talk about a book that did not fly beneath the radar in 2022. I love to see how many readers are gobbling that up. Like that book has burned through our entire team. There's so much to love about that book, but this new book coming in May is completely different. This one has the same kind of writing and insight that so many readers have come to know and love and trust they can expect of R.F Kuang. And this book is set in the publishing industry. It's about two friends (listen to me, use that word with hesitation) who were at the same year at Yale. Their debuts came out the same year in publishing. So when one girl dies, her friend impulsively thinks there's a beautiful manuscript there that's never going to get published, so maybe I should just snag it and maybe I could do something with it, and maybe I'll just use my own name. And I don't know. I can't wait to read it. Andrew, what would you add about this book?

Andrew Limbong [00:44:05] So I think it reminds me two things. It reminds me of light spoilers for season one of Mad Men. But it did give me big like Dick Whitman, Don Draper energy of taking an identity and running with it and seeing what can happen there which I sort of like love that sort of stuff. And also sometimes I like reading negative reviews on Good Reads. And I read I think it was like a two star review on Good Reads that called this book like-- what was it? It was like "Hilarious to anyone who ever needed to close book Twitter and touch grass." And I was like, oh, that sounds like actually a plus in my book. I imagined it's funny like somewhat insider, sort of like if you know, you know type vibe. But I'm just excited to read it. Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:44:51] Well, Andrew, I can't wait to hear what you think about Yellowface. As our send off, Andrew, what book will you be reading next?

Andrew Limbong [00:44:59] Well, I've got a copy of this book called Baby 411. That's like all on my bookshelf right now. In case, like, this baby is like turning a weird color; is it time to panic now or whatever? You know what I mean? Hopefully, when I have some actual reading time, I've got Laura Lippman's book Lady in the Lake sitting on my bookshelf. She is a cultural icon here in Baltimore, which I haven't read yet, and I've been excited to dive into her bibliography. I think they just wrapped up filming the TV show here in Baltimore for Lady in the Lake.

Anne Bogel [00:45:33] I didn't know about that. That's fun.

Andrew Limbong [00:45:37] And hopefully I can get through the book before the show comes out. I'm actually been trying to make a concerted effort to get into more sort of like thriller type crime novels stuff. Just because person being ponderous and sad, it's like if I'm in between feelings, I feel like I need something more like propulsive plot wise to keep me going. You know what I mean? And so, yeah, I'm hoping to read somewhere like crime thriller stuff.

Anne Bogel [00:46:02] What's on your radar?

Andrew Limbong [00:46:03] Joe Ide Books, right? That I've been meaning to read. I've been reading, to read. Like, get through Lippman. I think she's. She's got, like, an absurd amount of books under her belt.

Anne Bogel [00:46:12] She does. I think I've read maybe four of them.

Andrew Limbong [00:46:15] And so I think that might be my vibe this coming year.

Anne Bogel [00:46:18] I love it. Okay, Andrew, thank you so much for talking books past, present and future with me today.

Andrew Limbong [00:46:24] Yeah, thank you for having me.

Anne Bogel [00:46:31] Hey, readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Andrew. Follow Andrew on Twitter @andrewlimbong and while you're at it, Andrew, suggests following your local public radio station as well. We are sharing the full list of titles from today's conversation on our website. That's at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/364. If you are not yet on our email list, pop over to whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter to sign up for our free updates and make sure you're following in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to give us a boost here at What Should I Read Next? headquarters. Thank you. Please give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews help spread the book love and make it possible for more readers to find our show. Thanks in advance. We are so grateful. Tune in next week when I'll be talking with a British reader and bookish professional who is looking for some titles that will make her laugh out loud and give her the lighthearted distraction she's looking for in her reading these days. Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski and Studio D Podcast Production. Sara Aeder is our Community Manager. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah! how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.