Books that check all your boxes + what should Anne read next?

Keren Form [00:00:00] I don't think nerdism should be exclusionary, you know. As long as you've got like huge interest, really love boring people to death about it, then I think you're nerdy.

Anne Bogel [00:00:11] 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 the 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, first we want to tell you about and ask for your help with a fun episode we have in the works. Way back in 2017 in Episode 62, we asked for your recommendations for What I Should Read Next?, and you showed up in a big way.

We realized lately that it's been a while since we've switched the direction of the mic. So today I'm here to ask for your help in picking my own next read. In just a moment, I'll tell you about three books I love, one book I don't, and what I've been reading lately. Listen in, then leave us a voicemail at 502-627-0663 to share your recommendations for my TBR. Last time we did this, it resulted in so many amazing book suggestions. And I can't wait to be overwhelmed in the best way with your ideas.

[00:01:32] It's hard choosing favorites. Every week I ask a guest to tell me three books they love. And I feel kind of mean asking this question because it's so hard to answer. I'm reminding myself now and I remind you that this is three books I love, not my three tiptop favorites or the three very best books.

I'm consciously choosing books I did not just talk about on the podcast are in my best books of the year episode. And while I wanted to choose ones that are representative of what I love in my reading life, this can't represent everything I love. There's too much missing, too many themes, too many genres, too many specific authors. So with that being said, let's jump in.

[00:02:07] The first book I love is This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell. I have reread this at least half a dozen times, maybe more. At first, for this episode, I thought I might go with all rereads. But no, we're not doing this. O'Farrell herself describes this as a novel about leaving and arriving and what it means to belong to a place where a person. But it's most especially a portrait of a marriage, the forces that bind it together and threatened to drive it apart.

The marriage in this book is an unlikely but successful partnership between a floundering American professor and a British film star who hated the limelight so much, she faked her own death and disappeared. These two found love and happiness together. But then an unexpected bit of news, 20 years old, but newly discovered threatens to unravel everything they built together. And we watch what happens.

And we do that. reading a story told from many different viewpoints, many different characters in all kinds of voices. These interlocking scenes sprawl and aren't told chronologically. They occur between 1944 and 2016. After I turned the last page the first time, I had to go back to the beginning and read it again to pay closer attention to the structure and how O'Farrell unfolded her story for the reader. It's brilliantly done. And seeing how she did it just keeps drawing me back.

[00:03:20] It is real hard to pick favorites but I think Maggie O'Farrell may be mine—my favorite living author, at least. I've read all her works. I think she's consistently brilliant, particularly in her more recent works, beginning with This Must Be the Place.

The books after that, which I think it's fair to say you're more likely to have already read, are Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait. But choosing This Must Be the Place is my particular favorite here. Well, it was no contest. Something I learned about myself in reading The Marriage Portrait, especially which is a work I admire but didn't feel a deep connection to is that emotional resonance is the hallmark of so many of the books I truly love. And that's what I feel in reading This Must Be the Place.

[00:03:59] My second pick is Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones. I hesitate to pick this one as a favorite today only because I feel like I talk about it all the time. But you know what? That's fine today because I love it. Jones is Atlanta born and raised, and this novel, her third, is once again said there.

It's about the link between two African American half-sisters, one legitimate and one secret, one well off, one not so much, only one of whom knows the other exists. And I bet you can guess which one. At least that is the case until the secret of their father's second marriage starts to force its way into the open.

I love the way Jones unfolds this story for her reader. Rather than writing back and forth between the two perspectives of the two daughters. The reader encounters almost all of one sister's point of view in the first half followed by the others. The result is an absorbing coming-of-age narrative wrapped in a complicated story of family secrets. Who carries them? What does it cost to do so? And why do they seem to want to make their way to the surface?

This is sensitive and tender and gutting and interspersed with actual historical events drawn from Atlanta's history and sometimes the history of the broader south. And I really enjoyed that very concrete grounding in time and place.

[00:05:12] Finally—I thought about this a lot—I'm choosing Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal. I could have chosen any of her books. I love her so much. I just discovered that she does have one work that has been translated into English from the original French that I haven't read yet. So perhaps I should read that next.

Painting Time is the story of Paula, a young French woman who graduates from her secondary school and just has no idea what to do next until, almost by accident, she stumbles into her calling and enrolls in an apprenticeship program to study Trompe-l'œil or the art of illusion in Brussels.

This was the first book I read by de Kerangal. I feel like it was almost an accident that I stumbled upon it. And I was so struck by her style. It was unlike anything I'd ever read before, distinct, almost impressionistic. In this book, I feel like de Kerangal invites us to come alongside Paula as she throws herself into her craft and learns to paint in such a way that she can flawlessly imitate rare and expensive materials with her brushstrokes, like marble, tortoiseshell, the heart grain of oak.

As Paula finds work abroad as a decorative painter in studios and on film sets in places like Paris and Moscow in Italy, she wrestles with the meaning of her work and what to do about the relationships her work has brought into her life. I just finished reading her, I believe, more recent work, The Cook. And I know I've talked about the heart, sometimes called [inaudible 00:06:35] on the podcast. I think the way she writes about people at work specifically, is fascinating. It's distinctive, it's respectful, almost reverence. And I'm constantly scanning to see if she has any new books on the way because I want to read them next.

[00:06:51] A book that hasn't worked for me. You know, I can give you broad categories of what hasn't worked for me lately, but I really wanted to share a specific book with you. I know it's a hard question to answer and I feel like it'd be a cop-out for me not to have one.

So I finally landed on a book that many of you loved and adored, some of our team members loved and adored, my husband loved and told me to read it. But he didn't have to tell me because it was on my TBR from the minute I found out that it was on the way. And that is, I'm kind of ducking, The Storyteller by Dave Grohl.

I wanted to read it because years ago, I loved an episode of the Off Camera Podcast with Sam Jones in which he interviewed Dave Grohl about his greater process. And I thought it was completely fascinating. I thought about those insights all the time. So when I found out he had a full-length memoir coming, I was so excited.

I opted for the audiobook, I began with high hopes, and I will admit to being disappointed. I found the narrative to be meandering. I thought there were obvious gaps that were never addressed. And the prose just kept reaching for clichés that felt worn out. I didn't dislike this book, but it wasn't what I'd hoped for and it lacked the qualities that I know I enjoy and memoirs from well-known artists and musicians.

[00:08:04] For example, a few I loved: Brandi Carlile's Broken Horses. Viola Davis' Finding Me, even Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, which I didn't expect to like. And I think about it all the time. I know we've talked about it on the show. The Storyteller did deliver good moments. My son has synesthesia so I was delighted by a wonderful little anecdote about how Grohl sees his song snap in a place like Lego bricks in his mind. He writes of buying a Joan Jett Barbie for his daughters in London—completely endearing story.

And my favorite might be about the time weird owl called the Saturday Night Live Dressing Room for permission to cover Smells Like Teen Spirit. But ultimately, this was not the glimpse into the mind of the musician that I had hoped for, and thus a reading experience I found wanting.

[00:08:49] Now, for what I've been reading lately, it's mostly been all kinds of books for our recent spring book preview and forthcoming summer reading guide. Those are making up the bulk of my reading right now. But I've also made time for other works because that is how I stay satisfied with my reading life. Lately, that has looked like Bring Up the Bodies, the second book in The Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel, and Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn.

So, readers, what should I read next? Call 502-627-0663 to leave a voicemail with your book recommendation. Tell us what you think I should read and why. And please share your name as well so we can thank you. Our team will listen to these voicemails and we will share your recommendations in a special episode coming up in just a few short weeks. Again, to participate in this special episode, give us a call, leave a voicemail at 502-627-0663 to leave your voicemail. And please do so by February 24th.

[00:09:47] Now for today's guest Keren Form, a self-professed nerd and hosiery designer who has worked on licensed products including Marvel DC and Harry Potter. She's a dedicated board gamer and a fan of immersive science fiction, fantasy, and just genuinely loves fast-moving stories with big themes.

We have a blast today talking about enthusiasm and passion-led adventures on and off the page. While Keren has a particular love for sci-fi and fantasy, our conversation today is full of entry points for readers of all genres. We talk about a bunch of titles that will appeal to fans of historical fiction, YA romance, crime drama, or any good story with high stakes.

Listeners, you should know there's a brief mention of death by suicide in this episode. If that will be upsetting or triggering, take care of yourself, skip ahead about three minutes in the audio when I begin my second book recommendation for Keren.

This episode was recorded in 2019 as Episode 193, rolling the dice on your next read. And it's back today, thanks to our Patreon community who helped us choose which guest's favorite episode to air this week. Readers, something I love about this podcast and our readerly community is how it connects us, not just across the airwaves or on message boards, but in real life.

After we recorded this episode in 2019, Keren and I actually got to meet in New York City, not once but twice, before the world shut down when I was in town for Don't Overthink It obligations, and we've continued to stay in touch. I reached out to Keren last week to check in and see how she's doing these days. I have a fun report back from her that will either serve as the catchup you've been waiting for or a fun teaser for what we're going to touch on in today's episode.

[00:11:20] When I told Keren our Patreon community selected her episode, she said, "Omg, that's so exciting. I am so honored." I'm gonna go ahead and read you the rest of her email with permission. She says, "As far as updates go, the pandemic did wonders for my reading life. I've been reading more books a year than I have since probably before college.

Notably, I got into a lengthy Greek mythology phase inspired by playing a billion hours of the Hades video game. I also read through the whole Alice Oseman universe of books in comics, heartstopper, and those while stuck in London with COVID this past March. So that was fun. My husband kept going out to Waterstones to fetch me more books. I've also expanded my board gaming by moving online with Board Game Arena, which is great. We can now come play with our friends that are spread all over the country.

And as you've seen, I'm finally getting back to travel. We just got back from Portugal, home of amazing castles and tilework. I've attached a photo..." Readers, you can see that in our show notes. "You can see the new nerdy tattoo on my arm that I've gotten since we last spoke: icons from Avatar, The Last Airbender cartoon.

Otherwise, I'm still designing socks and slippers, same old same old. PS, every book you recommended to me was 100% spot on, and I just reread a certain trilogy last year." Readers, Keren named the trilogy, but I'm not going to give that part away just yet. She says, "It's now one of my top fantasy reads, and I recommend it to everyone." I hope that sets the right tone for today. Let's get to it.

Keren, welcome to the show.

Keren Form [00:12:49] Oh, thank you so much for having me. I am super excited.

Anne Bogel [00:12:52] We were so excited to get your submission. Our producer, Brenda, was the first one who saw it, and she said, "Anne, I'm really excited about this one. I think you'd have a great conversation with Keren, but I have no idea how to summarize her reading life succinctly for you." So I thought you'd get a kick out of that.

Keren Form [00:13:09] It is kind of weird, I guess.

Anne Bogel [00:13:12] Well, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Keren Form [00:13:14] I am a hosiery designer, so I design socks and slippers. I live in New York City in Queens with my husband and my cat. I'm a self-professed nerd of all sorts. I love sci-fi and fantasy. I play board games. I used to run a nerd bar trivia for almost 10 years until writing 40 questions a month got to be too much and we had to stop. That's me in a nutshell.

Anne Bogel [00:13:39] Keren, how does one become a hosiery designer? And does this have anything to do with a sock explosion that has happened in all the stores I like to patronize these days?

Keren Form [00:13:48] Well, I became a hosiery designer through a really circuitous route. I actually went to school and majored in psychology. And it just so happened that my first job I got through a relative as an office assistant in a lingerie design company, where I sort of learned the back end of fashion production. And then kind of forged my way into a design job doing a kid's pajamas and men's boxer shorts, and learn how to do graphic design on the computer, and have just designed multiple categories of apparel for years, and now I'm on hosiery for the past like... I don't know, since 2004. Not the usual route of going to fashion school and then getting a job.

Anne Bogel [00:14:31] What would I be surprised to know about your industry?

Keren Form [00:14:34] The fashion industry is not glamorous like everybody sort of makes it out to be. It's not a bad job. I actually really love what I do. But you watch all these high fashion things and it's like, "Oh, I want to be a fashion designer and make my own line and do everything I want." But it's a lot of hard work.

There's a lot of back end design work, there's working with all the people in the middle, with buyers and your salespeople and even just people above you on the chain having their opinions thrown in the mix. And you're making designs for a particular customer. You're not necessarily designing for yourself. So understanding other people and other people's shopping needs and likes and trend patterns is super-duper important. It's not all high end fun.

Anne Bogel [00:15:15] Are you fashion designer by day and nerd by night, or is there more seamlessness to—Oh, how do you like that sewing pun?—to what you do?

Keren Form [00:15:24] For years actually, up until this present job, I was actually mostly a licensed designer. So I would work with licensed products. I've designed for Marvel and DC and Harry Potter.

Anne Bogel [00:15:36] How did you feel when those projects came through?

Keren Form [00:15:39] It's super fun. The only issue with that is whenever you're in an office and everybody knows you're the nerd, everybody's like, "Well, go ask Keren if this is okay." "No, maybe we should have Keren do it because she really knows Star Wars much better than everybody else," which is all good and well. But my taste as a fan isn't necessarily the taste of, you know, Joe Smith in the middle of the country. We're two very different people.

Anne Bogel [00:16:01] Now, Keren, you told us that there's actually a version of What Should I Read Next? that we could play with you, but you would be the expert here. And that is What Board Game Should I Play Next?

Keren Form [00:16:11] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:16:11] Tell me a little bit about that interest and how that began. And I have to tell you that what I have in mind is we went to Scotland last winter with friends who love board games. And they had ordered board games just for the trip. Will and I got to play all these new ones. And I just... you don't know what you don't know. And I didn't know that there were board game groups and board games stores and board game nights and board game message boards. Tell us a little bit about that world and your place in it.

Keren Form [00:16:37] I enjoyed board games as a kid, but you know, sort of the board games we all played: Monopoly, Scrabble, et cetera. And then I sort of fell off for years. And being a nerd, I knew there was a board game thing happening but just really wasn't paying attention.

And then when my husband moved into my apartment before we were married, he brought with him his 20 board games. And we just sort of started playing with the two of us and then with other friends and I got super into it again because board games are a lot of fun. We now own around 300 board games, which is-

Anne Bogel [00:17:12] Oh my gosh!

Keren Form [00:17:13] It's ridiculous. And no, I don't have enough time to play all of them. When I hear readers on your podcast all the time, and I know you do, too, you're like, "Oh, I travel and I go to a bookstore wherever we're traveling." We do the same thing for more game stores. Especially traveling overseas.

We are Euro gamers, which it's a particular kind of game. I believe they originally started in Germany. And they tend to be more like social, less confrontational type games with themes like building castles or making dresses, or going on a trip in Edo era Japan and buying souvenirs. So whenever I actually have to go to Europe for work or when we travel ourselves, we just search for board game stores where sometimes you can play them and sometimes you can buy them. It's fantastic.

Anne Bogel [00:17:58] Are these difficult to find or are they abundant if you are actually looking for them?

Keren Form [00:18:03] Nowadays, they're more abundant here. Even, I believe Target, carries a lot of the more popular ones, like Settlers of Catan, or Ticket to Ride. It's much easier now with the internet. I've ordered games from France when they're not available in the US yet.

The only thing is, some of them aren't the English language. So you have to do some research as to whether the cards or pieces involved are language dependent. Because you can usually download an English set of rules. But if you're looking at cards that have this paragraph's worth of description in German, it's not great because I only know very few words in German. Like the word for game.

Anne Bogel [00:18:36] Did you realize that there would be an issue with the language until you maybe bought your first game in French?

Keren Form [00:18:42] No. Because we're utter research nerds. And there's actually a website, boardgamegeek.com, that has every game in the world listed, and it will tell you whether it's language dependent. Wait, I'm really interested in what did you play in Scotland?

Anne Bogel [00:18:57] I mean, all these games I can picture but I don't know. So we played a lot of games that our friend read up about, I think on BoardGameGeek and message boards and things like that, that I didn't know this world existed. But we played Pairs. We played a game called Wear words almost like taboo-ish, where you're trying to guess a certain word. And we played a game I found very complicated at first, it took me a while to catch on, where there were racing camels around the board. You had to place bets about... what's it called?

Keren Form [00:19:30] Camel Up.

Anne Bogel [00:19:30] Yes! Yes, we played Camel Up. Also just small like... not board games. But also my friend who was actually on the podcast a long time ago, Mel Joulwan, she had a word game that was made by the people who do Bananagrams, but instead of the Scrabble-like Bananagrams. I don't know it's almost like Boggle back when I was in third grade where you roll out the cubes and the letters turned up a certain direction and you're supposed to form a like crossword. You're looking grid of words, but you're supposed to use all the letters, and whoever does it first wins. I love stuff like that. I thought it was super fun.

Keren Form [00:20:04] You know, I love word games, but I either have like the worst luck in the world or I'm actually really bad at them. I don't know. Every time I play Scrabble, I get immediately an entire like tile set of vowels, which is totally useless.

Anne Bogel [00:20:16] I'm fascinated by the people who play tournaments and know 100 words that use a Q with no U. But-

Keren Form [00:20:21] Oh, yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:20:22] That's not me.

Keren Form [00:20:23] Absolutely not.

Anne Bogel [00:20:25] Though I have actually played Scrabble in this calendar year?

Keren Form [00:20:28] I have friends that play cooperative Scrabble, where they together sort of put together words and just try to get the highest combined score they possibly can.

Anne Bogel [00:20:35] Which goes back to the Eurogamer roots, cooperative, collaborative that I didn't know about. So a favorite of mine that... Does it count as a board game? There's a board, there are pieces, but it's only two-person. And it's a fellow.

Keren Form [00:20:46] Yeah, yeah. That totally counts. 100%.

Anne Bogel [00:20:48] I haven't played that in a year but I do love it. 40 questions a week for 10 years, huh?

Keren Form [00:20:53] It was actually 44 because we had a question which it was the last question in the round. It was like the super, super hard question that if you got it you not only got like the point. And then we also made all these buttons with characters on it from nerd fandom that you could collect if your team got it right. And by the end of 10 years, we had people that were wearing necklaces of them, they had their backpacks covered. So it was kind of funny.

The writing question portion I am not sorry to see go, but we... I mean, we had people that were friends that came but we made friends with so many people through this game. People would show up because they heard about it, and then they would keep coming back. And now I have a couple new friend groups that I never would have had beforehand.

Anne Bogel [00:21:34] Oh, I love how common interests bring people together like that.

Keren Form [00:21:37] It's wonderful. And actually the weirdest nerd trivia story. My husband and I were on vacation in Cinque Terre in Italy, were on a tour. Which by the way, I would not have known about it-

Anne Bogel [00:21:46] Wait. hold on. Hold on. This is one of those words that... I've never been in Italy. I would love to go. I've only read about this in novels, Keren. You pronounce it how?

Keren Form [00:21:55] I think it's Cinque Terre. I called it Cinque Terre forever because I assumed it was fresh.

Anne Bogel [00:21:59] Yeah, me too. I've never had to say it out loud.

Keren Form [00:22:04] No.

Anne Bogel [00:22:04] It's one of those bookworm problems is that suddenly you need to say a word that you previously only read in books and you realize, "Wait, I have actually no idea."

Keren Form [00:22:12] I spent a long time as a kid thinking the name Penelope was Peena-lope, so...

Anne Bogel [00:22:17] I just read a book with a Peena-lope. This is when I read this in my head. I pronounced it Penelope. Okay, so the book was set in, I'm just gonna say Italy.

Keren Form [00:22:27] Yeah. Well, we went to Cinque Terre, because I played a board game about it. So we're like, "Oh, let's go travel there. It seems nice." We were on a tour and we had like taken this two-hour bus ride, and then they gave us food. And we're outside the restaurant about to do the rest of the tour and I'm tying my shoe, and these people walk up behind us and they're like, "Are you Jim and Keren from Turner Trivia?" And we're like, "What? What?" And there were two people from one of the teams that came that were on our tour in Italy.

Anne Bogel [00:22:53] Oh, that's amazing. Board games bring people together since.

Keren Form [00:22:57] Yeah, across the world.

Anne Bogel [00:22:58] Fascinating. Oh, that's so much fun. Keren, I love how you've made your interest not just something you do by yourself, but something you do collectively. Do you see that in your reading life as well?

Keren Form [00:23:08] I mean, I definitely share books, you know, pass stuff around that I like. I have certain friends that obviously have the same nerdy interests as me and the same reading interests because they're not necessarily the same thing. We do book discussions. I'm not really like a book club kind of person but just more sort of individual discussions and whatnot. I don't know, I definitely brought it to trivia when I was doing it.

Anne Bogel [00:23:31] Now, I feel like there's something we need to explicitly unpack. And that is that you've referred to yourself as a nerd a lot. And I am sure you know that in the What Should I Read Next? universe, that is a term said always with great affection.

Keren Form [00:23:44] Oh, yes.

Anne Bogel [00:23:44] But when you describe yourself as a nerd, what does that mean to you?

Keren Form [00:23:47] It's such a weird question because nerd I feel-

Anne Bogel [00:23:50] Because we can all be nerdy in our own way, you know?

Keren Form [00:23:52] Exactly.

Anne Bogel [00:23:53] Because I would definitely describe myself as nerdy, but I couldn't do the Star Wars movies in order to save my life right now.

Keren Form [00:23:59] I think nerd might actually mean anybody that's really excited about one subject or a particular interest. So you can be a book nerd. You can be a sci-fi nerd. You can be a Star Wars nerd. You can be board game nerd or a bunch of those together. I don't think nerdism should be exclusionary. No. As long as you've got like a huge interest, really love boring people to death about it, then I think you're nerdy.

Anne Bogel [00:24:25] Were you to bore people to death about a specific aspect of your reading life, where might you run into trouble of getting perhaps a little long-winded if your audience didn't share your interests?

Keren Form [00:24:39] Definitely bore people to death about Terry Pratchett's Discworld, especially in trivia.

Anne Bogel [00:24:43] I hear that you have a physical marker of your love for Pratchett.

Keren Form [00:24:47] I do. I have a tattoo that I got the year that Terry Pratchett died.

Anne Bogel [00:24:52] Oh.

Keren Form [00:24:52] Yeah, that was my first tattoo. I was like, "Okay, I actually know that I want this permanently on my body and I'm not going to regret it."

Anne Bogel [00:24:58] Is it in a place where people can ask you about it?

Keren Form [00:25:00] It is. So it's on the inside of my left wrist, which it actually... I don't know, it's part of the description of the tattoo, which, when I'm asked casually by like a doctor or someone random that's like, "Oh, what's that mean?" way too long to go into the description. And I'm usually just, "Oh, it's so..."

Anne Bogel [00:25:18] So what do you say?

Keren Form [00:25:19] I say it's in memoriam of my favorite author. Then they're usually just like, "Okay," because it's small talk, and they really didn't want to know more. But actually, it's the sign... And we're gonna get super nerdy here. It's a dwarven mine sign from The Discworld mythology. It's The Summoning Dark.

In the book Thud!, it ends up on the inside left wrist, which is where mine is of my favorite character, Sam Vimes, and basically dwarves will draw the sign to summon a demon essentially to take revenge on people that have wronged them. And it ends up in Samuel Vimes, who's a policeman. And what the demon does is sort of picks a champion, plays with their mind and tries to get them to take revenge in honor of whatever has happened.

The interesting part about it is watching it play out in a character who has seen the worst of mankind and has overcome so many of his own demons that he sort of understands that push an urge and why it's wrong. I don't know, it's always resonated with me because it's very easy for everybody to just be cruel, you know, something bad happens to you to blame others, see people as other in times of like stress or wrongness. But the good in human kindness to overcome that urge. I've always loved that. And Terry Pratchett understands human nature like no one else I've ever read, like both the good and the bad of it.

Anne Bogel [00:26:34] Now, when Terry Pratchett died, and you thought, "I'm gonna get a Terry Pratchett tattoo, was there any competition or did you immediately know that it was this image from that?"

Keren Form [00:26:43] No, I 100% knew this. The moments from that book regarding this sort of struggle have just always had sort of deep emotional resonance for me.

Anne Bogel [00:26:52] That's really touching.

Keren Form [00:26:53] Thanks.

Anne Bogel [00:26:53] Keren, you said that was your first tattoo. Do you have other literary-inspired tattoos?

Keren Form [00:26:57] I've got one more and oh, man, if you want to go even nerdier... because it's a Tolkien-inspired tattoo in the way that... You know, everybody knows Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Mine is inspired by the Silmarillion, which is the book that Lord of the Rings nerds think is too nerdy to read.

Anne Bogel [00:27:16] I'm laughing because the first time I heard of that book because I didn't read these growing up and I didn't know, I was in my early 20s. And I remember one of my husband's co-workers was reading it, and he was really apologetic about it. Will was like, "Oh, I love Lord of the Rings. Should I read this?" And his nerdy coworker was like, "No, this is definitely too nerdy for you."

Keren Form [00:27:35] You know, my husband listened to it on audio and found it much more digestible that way, because you have somebody with a nice soothing British accent, essentially telling you a history story. So it's easier maybe to digest that way. You feel like you're in class, if you enjoy class.

Anne Bogel [00:27:53] It clearly means something to you.

Keren Form [00:27:55] Yeah, I love it. It's in the beginning sort of a creation story and then goes into like, oh, 20,000 years of Elvish straith and history. But it's just really awesome worldbuilding. There's a lot of striving through bad times that I just sort of resonate with. But yeah, on my arm, it's two stylized trees with some words between it and the trees are the two trees of Valinor, which, you know, the Lord of the Rings movies, when the elves are always like, "Oh, we're sailing into the West." That's Valinor, which is essentially their paradise.

And these trees used to be what was the sun in the moon in ancient times until they were destroyed by Morgoff, who was the ultimate evil of the day. The elves have pretty much never gotten over that, like one of the worst things ever to happen in their history.

In the middle of that is a quote in Elvish, that says, Aurë Entuluva" which means day will come again. That is from a later period in the history, which is something shouted by Húrin, who was a hero of men who shouted this while fighting off like a bajillion orcs so the rest of the company could get away. It was a hopeless fight.

It's a reminder to me that, I don't know, especially nowadays, when everything in the world seems kind of hopeless and everyone's really sort of disenchanted and upset that even if things are kind of garbage, you can't stop fighting for what's right or to help people because you always need to try to make a better world regardless of what's going on. I know it sounds super corny, and it's doubly corny on top of talking about tattoos, but it's a message that I always like in reading and any sort of media is people struggling to do the right thing, and hopefully persevering.

Anne Bogel [00:29:35] Did you design your tattoos yourself, Keren?

Keren Form [00:29:38] Terry Pratchett one is an exact copy of what's on the inside flap of the book. The tree one, you know, I found some reference online. I didn't draw it myself. But I found something that was stylized like Tolkien and found the words. And I actually have a friend who's a tattoo artist who kind of helped me lay it out.

Anne Bogel [00:29:56] So you enjoy reading about people struggling to do the right thing. Is that a theme that we're going to hear reflected in your favorites?

Keren Form [00:30:02] I think so.

Anne Bogel [00:30:05] Well, Keren, after hearing just a little about your love for Terry Pratchett, Tolkien, I'm so excited to hear more about your reading life. Are you ready to dive into your favorites?

Keren Form [00:30:15] I am.

Anne Bogel [00:30:17] You know how this works. You are going to tell me three books you love, one book you don't, and what you're reading now, and we will discuss what you should read next. Was it hard to choose these favorites?

Keren Form [00:30:28] Oh, God, yes. Yeah. Everybody that comes on your show I think says, "Oh, I had a hard time. It's impossible." And it is. I've been reading for 40-plus years. I'm a huge reader. So a couple of these choices, I was like, "Okay, these are the ones I have reread the most discounting Discworld. So we'll put them at the top."

Anne Bogel [00:30:46] Okay, what did you choose for your first favorite?

Keren Form [00:30:48] The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I guess it's speculative fiction set not too far in the future. I think it was set in I want to say like around 20, 50, or so when time travel has been discovered. But it's really only used by historians to go back in time and study without really interfering with anything.

It centers around an Oxford University student. She is the first one being allowed to travel back to the Middle Ages, because it had previously been rated way too dangerous, for obvious reasons. Not really healthy time period. She gets sent back in time, but unfortunately, as soon as she arrives, she comes down with a virus and is so delirious, she's not sure you're supposed to establish where you are spatially, when you are timewise, etc.

And she was completely delirious and is unable to ascertain her surroundings, but is luckily taken in by a medieval family who cares for her and she comes to spend time with. At the same time back in Oxford, the tech in charge of sending her there has also come down with a virus and is unable to ascertain where or when she is.

So you have on either end of the spectrum, people trying to solve this mystery of what's happening, while in the present people are falling sometimes definitely ill with this virus. You're sort of putting clues together trying to figure out when and where she is, which is great.

And I really love it not only because there's a link in the actual plot narrative that's going on but Willis draws really good parallels between characters on both end showing that humans are kind of humans no matter what end of the time spectrum you're on. There's always selfish people. There's always people willing to help other people out. There's always people willing to go above and beyond. And then there's also just kids living their fun, happy life on both ends no matter what's happening.

I really love this because as I said, I've reread things like a million times. Every time I read this and the more I go through life learning about different periods of history, the more clues I understand that she has put in this book to help you figure things out along the way.

Anne Bogel [00:32:49] So it sounds like this is a fast-moving story with really big themes.

Keren Form [00:32:52] Definitely.

Anne Bogel [00:32:53] How did you find your way to this book?

Keren Form [00:32:55] I actually had a co-worker recommend it to me back I want to say around like 2000, 2001 or so. She was also a sci-fi reader, and she was like, "I think you're really going to like this book." And I did really like this book. They're not sequels necessarily, but she has a few others written in the same universe that are also great.

Anne Bogel [00:33:13] And this is the standout for you?

Keren Form [00:33:15] Yeah, because it was the first. And this one's like a mystery drama. The one after this, To Say Nothing of the Dog, I also really enjoy. But that one's of a lighter fare. It's set Victorian and it's more of like a farce/mystery. So it's fun.

Anne Bogel [00:33:29] I didn't know anything about Connie Willis as an author. But that is not what I expected based on the title.

Keren Form [00:33:33] It's really good. And that one makes a lot of references to Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, a lot of the mystery-type books that I grew up loving.

Anne Bogel [00:33:42] Keren, what's another book that you reread? I almost said constantly, but is that even fair? You're a huge rereader, but how often might you pick up a book that you come back to again and again?

Keren Form [00:33:51] So most books that I really love I'll tend to get to every year, every other year. They're my book hangover cure. When I'm like, "I'm never going to read something as good as this again," it's like, "Oh, you know what? Let me just pick this up. I know I love this. We can like breeze through it pretty quickly and then I'll get in a better mood."

Anne Bogel [00:34:06] That is a proven method for many readers.

Keren Form [00:34:08] And it's funny you should ask about next. My next one is Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, which I only read for the first time, I want to say, two years ago. And I've reread it like six times, which is sort of embarrassing. It's a YA novel.

Anne Bogel [00:34:21] Wow.

Keren Form [00:34:21] Yeah, I love it.

Anne Bogel [00:34:22] I'm not familiar with Doomsday Book but I have read Rainbow Rowell and Carry On specifically.

Keren Form [00:34:26] Oh, fantastic.

Anne Bogel [00:34:27] Wait, doesn't she have another one coming out in this universe?

Keren Form [00:34:30] Yes! In September. I'm so excited.

Anne Bogel [00:34:33] Okay, so six times in two years is intense. What is it about Carry On?

Keren Form [00:34:38] It's sort of a Harry Potter analog and it's linked to her book Fangirl. Did you read that one too?

Anne Bogel [00:34:44] I did.

Keren Form [00:34:45] So yeah, it's about the two girls who write fanfiction. So this is sort of the fanfiction that came out of this book. It is set in what would be technically like a series of books. But this one is called Simon Snow and the dot dot dot. It's sort of a classic Chosen One story. You know chosen one who's supposed to fight X evil, their prophesied, blah, blah, blah. But it completely turns the whole Chosen One concept on its head, which I really love. Because as a sci-fi and fantasy reader, there's so many of those.

Basically Simon Snow, his friend in his chosen group, his best friend Penny Bunts, which, by the way, one of the only and best representations of a platonic male-female friendship, which I love, it's so rare that you ever actually get that. They've been going through trying to save the world the whole time and fighting against Simon's roommate/nemesis, bass pitch. I don't know, there's a whole interesting twist to all those dynamics, which I don't want to ruin it for anybody.

The book is itself shows really fun relationships, takes what you're expecting, and turns it on its head. What I really, really like is that it shows... I mean, I'm 45 years old, but I think it shows teens closer to what they really are. I feel that when adults right teens a lot of times, and this happens on TV and in books, they're either all super smart, like way smart, and always making quips and just freely super self-assured, or they're all making really obvious mistakes just to sort of move the plot along, which drives me up a tree.

Anne Bogel [00:36:20] It's not just you.

Keren Form [00:36:21] Yeah. Rainbow Rowell in this book and in other books, I think she remembers that teens are simultaneously smarter and dumber than we remember being. They make mistakes because they're teenagers and they don't have the life experience And that's 100% expected. But they're also often more intelligent than adults in certain areas.

And it was funny, my husband actually pointed out that he really liked that he remembered how gross teenage boys are. That like people are drinking out of milk cartons because that's what happens. It's also got a nice love story in it in a really good deserved way.

And I also really liked the magic system that she's created with all of the often used phrase have really high magical powers. So like clean as a whistle will get something cleaned up off the floor, etc.. I feel the characters are super well rounded whether they're good characters are evil characters. Nobody is just that. They're all well-rounded. You can understand bad guys' motivations. You can understand good guys' motivations and bad people do good things sometimes and good people do bad things sometimes.

Anne Bogel [00:37:19] Okay. And you like that complexity?

Keren Form [00:37:21] Yes, absolutely.

Anne Bogel [00:37:22] Why did you choose to round out your favorites?

Keren Form [00:37:24] My final one is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's a speculative fiction book. It's pretty much historical fiction with just some slight elements of technologically advanced things, though it was 1999 when this book came out. So some of these slightly advanced things have come to fruition since then, which is pretty funny.

The story is switching point of views between World War II and current day. In World War II, you have one character who is a cryptanalyst who is working on breaking the Germany's enigma code. Also, back in World War II, there is a US Marine, who while they're breaking all these German codes, they have to make sure that the Germans don't realize they've broken their codes.

So there's this Marine who's part of a detachment that goes out and sort of fakes up things so the Germans don't realize what's happening, pretends they've spotted a convoy, or leaves clues to think that, "Oh, no, the code hasn't been broken, you know, someone actually saw that happening," etc.

And on the other end, you have the modern-day grandson of the codebreaker who has discovered links to Nazi gold and sort of an unbroken code from his grandfather's days. Really super interesting. It's Neal Stephenson, so it's highly intricate and has a lot of math stuff in the middle of it.

And I've recommended this to a lot of people. And there's certain things in there that if the first time through the parts where he's diagramming math things, you can skim through it, it's cool. It won't like ruin your experience of the book.

Anne Bogel [00:38:56] So if you wanted to nerd out about that, you totally can, but it's not essential to get the story.

Keren Form [00:39:00] It really isn't.

Anne Bogel [00:39:01] Okay. That's gonna be really empowering to a lot of readers.

Keren Form [00:39:03] I gave it to my mom to read because Steve expose more nerdiness in my family. My parents are World War II and Civil War reenactors. So I was like, "Mom, you have to read this. It's World War II." She was like, "Well, it's got these..." I'm like, "No, no, just breeze through that. Read the rest of it." And she loved it. She thought it was really great.

I know people always describe writing as, you know, "Oh, it's got beautiful prose to it," which is not usually my jam. But he does something similar, which I don't know, in my brain I think of it as textual prose. You know when you eat a dessert in a restaurant, and it's really creamy, but they've added some crunchy bits to it because it sort of will bring out the creaminess and the juxtaposition of those two textures-

Anne Bogel [00:39:46] I love the crunchiness.

Keren Form [00:39:46] I feel his writing's like that. There'll be like super intricate, weird math stuff, but then he'll go off on a tangent about eating Captain Crunch cereal in the perfect temperature milker, it gets too mushy.

Anne Bogel [00:39:58] It's so true.

Keren Form [00:39:59] Yeah, right?

Anne Bogel [00:40:01] I mean, I've eaten that since I was seven years old and I still know it's so true.

Keren Form [00:40:04] 100%. He actually goes off and on a whole thing in Cryptonomicon describing the main modern-day character through a token lens, saying like, "Oh, Randy is a token dwarf. He's hardworking and does this and that." He talks about him being stuck at a dinner party with his girlfriend and her pompous academia friends and says that "Oh, Randy is a dwarf and he's stuck at a table with a bunch of hobbits complaining about stuff," which just immediately solidified exactly who these people were in my mind.

Anne Bogel [00:40:33] I love the way you describe it. And I also love that it sounds like readers who maybe wouldn't naturally pick this up, like your mother, also really enjoyed the story. That's telling.

Keren Form [00:40:41] It's actually a decent gateway book. I also have a friend at work who was like, "I don't really like sci-fi." And I'm like, "Well, there's lots of different kinds of sci-fi. I know you like this kind of story. So try this." And she also liked it.

Anne Bogel [00:40:52] I'm glad that she had a reader like you in her life who could help her see that it's not all what maybe the stereotypes have led her to believe. Keren, you had a difficult time choosing your favorites. Was it as challenging to identify the book that was not right for you?

Keren Form [00:41:06] Oh, no, no, no, no.

Anne Bogel [00:41:09] Tell me about it.

Keren Form [00:41:10] I'll probably make some nerds mad about this. But-

Anne Bogel [00:41:14] It just wouldn't be fun if we all agreed.

Keren Form [00:41:16] That's why there's so many things. We all have our own opinions and likes and stuff. I really, really disliked The Name of the Wind and also Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss because so many people told me that it was good. I read the second book, hoping it would get better. These books made me-

Anne Bogel [00:41:31] It's been a favorite on this podcast.

Keren Form [00:41:34] Yeah. You know what? I have friends that love it. And honestly, I'll never knock anybody for liking something I don't enjoy because we're not the same person.

Anne Bogel [00:41:41] No. No, no.

Keren Form [00:41:42] My biggest gripe with this is that the main character is a Mary Sue, and that kind of character drives me up a tree. I don't know if you know what a Mary Sue is. Basically a character that can do nothing wrong. Like they are perfect at every single thing.

Anne Bogel [00:41:57] Oh! No, I didn't know that. But I love that now.

Keren Form [00:42:00] I think it started with fanfiction maybe but I'm not sure. He is the best at every single thing he does. He's like, "Oh, I play the lute better than everybody. Oh, I'm going to magic school. I am immediately better than every one of my teachers. And I am like 14 years old but I speak with the eloquence of a 45 year old Duke. I am outsmarting every single person around me." There's no like tempering of what's happening. I mean, first of all, the bragging of it is really obnoxious.

Also, just people aren't like that. There's nobody that's perfect. There's nobody that's all good or all evil. It doesn't make any sense. Also, I found these books so sexist, every female character seems to be there for him to have sex with, or to mansplain how to do something better. And the main quote-unquote, "romance" seems so emotionally abusive, and is touted to be romantic. And that's just something that drives me up a tree.

I read them a few years ago, so I don't remember all the ins and outs but that sort of overshadowed any of the worldbuilding. I seem to remember there was some interesting things in there, but I would read some stuff and then be like, "Oh, just kind of ruined it."

Anne Bogel [00:43:06] Keren, what are you reading right now?

Keren Form [00:43:07] I recently finished the Broken Earth trilogy, which I got from your recommendation on a recent episode. I think the post-apocalyptic one. I read all three books in a week.

Anne Bogel [00:43:16] Oh, wow. They're not short.

Keren Form [00:43:18] No, they're not. I just couldn't stop reading them. It's my favorite. I think epic style sci-fi since Dune, which is actually very similar. The planet in both of those is a character, which is just great. It was such a good story. I think when you described it, what I really liked was you were talking about how there's all this history, like history upon history upon history of the world. And that you needed a glossary, which actually was like a high point from him. Like, "Oh, I definitely have to get this."

But I like that you're sort of thrown into this world and are slowly piecing together both what's happened in recent history and then 25,000 years ago. Oh, it's got a wonderful main character. Very representational of all types of people. And I just, I don't know, can't say enough good things about that book. I actually also saw N. K. Jemisin a week or two after I read it at BookCon. I saw her speak.

Anne Bogel [00:44:07] What?

Keren Form [00:44:07] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:44:08] What amazing timing!

Keren Form [00:44:09] Right?

Anne Bogel [00:44:10] I mean, jealous, first of all. But what amazing timing! I didn't get to meet her. But she was on a panel and they were talking about how they came up with ideas for their books. And she said she had had a dream about an angry young woman floating a mountain behind her. And she had to know what that was all about.

Anne Bogel [00:44:25] Oh, that is fascinating. Is that one you'll be rereading?

Keren Form [00:44:28] 100%.

Anne Bogel [00:44:29] I love the zero hesitation.

Keren Form [00:44:31] And then I also recently read Strange Weather in Tokyo because it was recommended so many times. I was actually in Tokyo on a train, between Tokyo and Kyoto and needed a quick book to read. And I was like, "Oh, well, now's the time." That was kind of perfect for that time in that place.

Anne Bogel [00:44:48] Well, that's very different from the other books we've talked about today.

Keren Form [00:44:51] Yeah. And I don't know if I could have read that in a different time and place, but I liked being immersed in the place I was reading something set in the place I was. Because I'll get inspiration from reading books anyway for traveling... which, oh, I forgot to mention because of Cryptonomicon, I actually traveled to Bletchley Park in England, and then got to see where Alan Turing's desk was and where they broke all the codes. And the same thing with like Cinque Terre, going there from playing a board game.

I do the same thing with books. I get excited about something and I want to read, see and do everything involving that. It was fun to read about someone snacking on Japanese food and Japanese restaurants while having done it myself.

Anne Bogel [00:45:29] Oh, I'm sure. When you say you'd like your books to be immersive, you mean it.

Keren Form [00:45:33] Absolutely.

Anne Bogel [00:45:36] I'm really excited to talk about what you may enjoy reading next.

Keren Form [00:45:39] Me too.

Anne Bogel [00:45:40] Because we definitely have consistent themes here. And I noticed that you haven't talked about the writing style much at all. Like you want it to serve the story and you'd like it when it's good. But you do not want the writer to call attention to, "Look how pretty my writing is."

Keren Form [00:45:54] No.

Anne Bogel [00:45:54] Or "Isn't this especially poetic?" Like, just stay in your lane, dude. That's what I hear you saying.

Keren Form [00:45:58] Yeah. Yeah, pretty much exactly.

Anne Bogel [00:46:01] And while you do especially love sci-fi, there's lots of different ways that's expressed. Like we have a YA novel, we have some books that are really plot-driven, we have some that are more character-driven, they move at different paces, they are different lengths, but they all go into great depth to really sink you into the world and really show you the characters.

Keren Form [00:46:23] Absolutely. I'll read anything. If you hook me with the characters, I don't care if it's horror, or sci-fi or just literary fiction. I'm all in.

Anne Bogel [00:46:33] All right, Keren. The first book I'm thinking of is one that really does interesting themes with the Chosen One trope. And that is The City of Brass by S. A Chakraborty. Is this a book you know?

Keren Form [00:46:44] No.

Anne Bogel [00:46:45] I really do not want to give too much away. But I will say that the author who I think writes this perspective that I think you would really appreciate, what was important for her to know, what she wanted the reader to take away, and how she wanted it to feel timeless. And I'll explain that more in a second. I think these are all promising things for you.

Keren Form [00:47:06] It sounds good.

Anne Bogel [00:47:07] She sets you up to believe that something is happening. And you're not wrong exactly to think so. And I don't think that you will feel tricked. Because I hate feeling tricked as a reader. And I know that I am not alone in that at all. She's doing something perhaps more interesting and less obvious and common than the reader may at first think.

This is a new book. It's just come out in the past couple years. It's lengthy enough, it'll give you the kind of hefty story that strange weather and Tokyo aside that you seem to gravitate towards reading. It's a little over 500 pages. This is actually the first book of a promised trilogy. So if you do love it, you will have more stories to look forward to.

Keren Form [00:47:47] I like it.

Anne Bogel [00:47:48] This is a fantasy. It's got really excellent worldbuilding. You've said that word a couple times and I know you care about that. And it features an 18-year-old. Her name is Nahri. She makes her living as a con artist and she's saving up for something important to her. So I think you will appreciate the themes here. Like what you said about some of the books you really enjoy is characters are complex, and you see good people doing bad things and bad people doing good things. And that is certainly true of Nahri.

So she has no family. She has to make her own living and she does it as a con artist. But one job goes horribly awry and she accidently conjures a mischief and also handsome djinn that completely wrecks her life and ends up transporting her to the magical city of Brass. It's a city from Middle Eastern folklore, the brass walls are impervious. They mean a lot to the city and a lot to the plot itself.

What happens next is fun and fascinating. And she's such a great, strong female protagonist. She's independent. She's feisty. She's on hunt to figure out what is going on and what her role in it is. And again, I really liked what this book does with the Chosen One theme.

Chakraborty is Muslim. And it was really important to her that she use symbols from Islam. And she do it faithfully. And the way she does that in this book, it's not a coincidence that she sets it in the early 18th century. I highly recommend looking at her interviews and reading her author's notes that explain these things.

Something that works really well in this book, because of the way that she's definitely situated it in history and symbolism that has existed for centuries, if not millennia, is that you can read it and feel like it's representing certain areas that you are familiar with. She said that she's had readers read it and say like, "Oh, this sounds exactly like Israel and Palestine," or "Oh, it sounds like the Persians and Arabs 1,000 years ago," or "Oh, is this about Iraq and the United States?"

I think the way readers react to that speaks to the way that she portrays universal human themes and struggles that have been constant over time. I think seeing that portrayed in this high fantasy setting can be really satisfying to you as a reader.

Keren Form [00:50:10] This sounds amazing. I really like what you said about, again, the Chosen One story being subverted, but not being tricked, because I love when something is not what you thought it was and suddenly, you know, the world shifts and pieces become clearer and you're like, "Whoa." But not that like, M. Night Shyamalan thing at the end, like, "Oh, no, it was really this the whole time," where it's not paid off at the end.

Anne Bogel [00:50:35] I do like to have my mind blown sometimes.

Keren Form [00:50:37] Yes, every once in a while.

Anne Bogel [00:50:38] I mean, it has to make sense, you know, to have the feeling be, "Oh, of course," and not, "How dare you author?"

Keren Form [00:50:44] Exactly. Exactly. I also love the idea of her being a con artist because I love a good heist. So that works really well along with all the fantasy and sci-fi.

Anne Bogel [00:50:54] Stephenson is no stranger to a good conspiracy. So you know, we can see that in your history.

Keren Form [00:50:59] Yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:51:00] Keren, how do you feel about a left turn towards a really popular contemporary sci-fi thriller?

Keren Form [00:51:06] Sure.

Anne Bogel [00:51:07] I feel like maybe you'd be seeing this everywhere and you don't need me to point it out to you. But I can't not mention the new time travel novel of Recursion by Blake Crouch. Do you know it?

Keren Form [00:51:15] No, I don't. I'm so excited though. I love time travel.

Anne Bogel [00:51:18] We can see that in the Doomsday Book and I'm glad that's not a coincidence. I like this because it's time travel. And the time travel isn't gratuitous, or "Hey, maybe people would buy a time travel novel." But it's essential to the story.

Also, something you see in this time travel novel is you talked about Terry Pratchett and how you see in some of his work a call to be your better self. And something we have in this book is people struggling to be their best selves, and also to make sacrifices of what they really want for the sake of humanity. This was a brain-bender. I had to read some pages like three times with "Is what I think is happening happening?" Because as the characters travel back in time, they keep rewriting history. And it changes things.

In the opening pages, there's an NYPD detective and he's been summoned to a top floor of a Manhattan high-rise because there's a woman on the ledge who's threatening to jump. And she says, "Don't come near me. You can't save me. I have false memory syndrome. Life is not worth living. And going down, you do not need to come with me. And I don't want you to catch it because it's believed that false memory syndrome is contagious."

And she tells him that the reason she can't go on is because she woke up one day, I think the week before and all of a sudden she has all these memories. They're not normal memories, though. It's like she's seeing them in black and white. She calls them shadow memories. But she remembers this whole past life she had. Her husband and they had a wonderful marriage and she was in a different profession than she is now. And she had a son.

And it's the images of the son that really killed her. And she thinks, "That could have been my life. But here's what I'm stuck doing now. And it is not okay." And she tells the detective specifically, "This is the man I was married to. This was the situation." So after she jumps, not a spoiler it happened on like page six, he looks them up in the phonebook and goes to visit him out on his house on Long Island. And the guy is protesting at first. "I don't know what you're talking about. That's ridiculous. How on earth could someone have like false memories? You've got to be kidding. Leave now."

But he has second thoughts and says, "Okay, detective, false memory syndrome is not what you think." And gives them an address for a shady hotel, where detective Barry gets strapped into this chair, a gutsy female scientist has been working on in an ocean in the middle of nowhere for a philanthropist/scientist who might have questionable motives and starts to find out what is going on, that was originally intended for good, but how it's much more likely that it's going to destroy humanity.

Wrapping my head around what was happening when you start messing with space and time in this novel, it was a doozy. But it was lots of fun. So this is a high-stakes novel. You've got a procedural because you've got a detective on the case. You've got a save-the-world thriller. You have a love story, which really took me by surprise, but lots of readers have really enjoyed, at least because it's so unexpected. Time travel thriller. How does that sound?

Keren Form [00:54:23] That sounds so, so good. The minute you said that you had to keep going back and forth to a page being like, "Wait, what?" that got me. I always feel like a good novel if I'm like, "Wait a second. Did I read that right?" I love procedurals as well. And New York. Three wins.

Anne Bogel [00:54:37] Check, check, check. Okay. Because I've seen that you really enjoy books that are creative and inventive with their plots and that also put a twist on something you feel like you know, and show it to you in a whole new way, the book I'm thinking of was first introduced to me by a reader who said, "You know, this isn't the kind of book I usually picked up. Read it. I know you'll love it." And that is a YA fantasy, fairy tale retelling, which I mean those have some built-in strengths and also kind of weaknesses. It's Brigid Kemmerer's A Curse So Dark and Lonely.

Keren Form [00:55:14] I love a good retelling of a fairy tale.

Anne Bogel [00:55:16] Well, this one is Beauty and the Beast. Kemmerer has said that she is kind of obsessed with. It was her favorite. She watched the Disney version over and over and over. But of course, this isn't your ordinary Beauty and the Beast. She has a modern-day 17-year-old girl. Her name is Harper. She's in DC, and life is not going well. Her mom is dying of cancer, her dad's long gone, her brother's in trouble.

So she's on the streets of DC when something happens to transport her to the woods of Ember Fall, which is a very tail world ruled by a prince who is the beast we would know from Beauty and the Beast. And this poor guy who is not sympathetic in many ways, but in others he is because he has been cursed by the evil Empress, to live this year of his life over and over and over again. And he's done it 300-something times I think.

At the end of every autumn, he turns into a monster. He eats everyone in sight and he has to begin again at the beginning. And the only way out is to fall in love.

So of course we know this is how the story goes. But the way that Kemmerer imagines the story is really interesting. So she comes in, she meets the prince who's reliving the fall of his 18th birthday 300 times now. It always ends badly.

And there is definitely some dark stuff here. I mean, there's stabbing, you know, people being eaten. The Empress, she's scary lady. But the 17-year-old girl, her name is Harper, she's funny and snarky, and she's kind and courageous.

Oh, also worth mentioning is that she has cerebral palsy. And what that looks like for her is she has a limp. And something that I really liked about the way Kemmerer handled this in the story is she does have a character with a disability. It's important in the story, but it's not the main point of the story, even though it's very much part of her identity because people underestimate her because of this.

Harper is vulnerable but also really strong, very relatable. There's also a little bit of a love triangle element that readers are very split on. There's a sequel coming in early 2020. So if you're like, "Ah, what's going to happen next?" you will not have to wait long. How does that sound to you?

Keren Form [00:57:32] That sounds like a lot of fun. I really, really like fairy tale retellings. Like I love Marissa Meyer's Cinder series.

Anne Bogel [00:57:39] Oh, yes. My kids just blew through her newer series that starts with Renegades.

Keren Form [00:57:45] Yeah, I just read those through.

Anne Bogel [00:57:46] I feel like a lot of readers have a cinder-shaped hole in their hearts, and they're just trying to fill it up.

Keren Form [00:57:52] And it sounds different to what has been done before. So kind of excited about that.

Anne Bogel [00:57:57] Well, one of the potential challenges with fairy tale retellings is it's very easy for them to veer into melodramatic territory. But I think Kemmerer treads lightly and handles this really well.

Keren Form [00:58:06] Awesome.

Anne Bogel [00:58:07] Okay, Keren, here's what we talked about today. The City of Brass by S. A Chakraborty, Recursion by Blake Crouch, and A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. Which isn't that a great name for beauty in the beast?

Keren Form [00:58:20] It really is.

Anne Bogel [00:58:20] I mean, come on. Of those three books, what do you think you'll read next?

Keren Form [00:58:24] Maybe I'll start with Recursion because I don't know if there's something about it being set in my home city that right now is speaking to me. But they all sound really good. And I'm also a multi-book reader so I might be reading up at the same time.

Anne Bogel [00:58:37] And I hope you really enjoy it. Thanks so much for talking books with me today.

Keren Form [00:58:40] Oh my God, thank you so much. This has been so much fun.

Anne Bogel [00:58:43] Hey, readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Keren, and I'd love to hear what titles you'd add to her TBR. Find Keren on Instagram @Kform27 and see the full list of titles we discussed at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

Don't forget to call in and leave your suggestions for what I should read next, and maybe you'll hear them on a future episode. That phone number is 502-627-0663. And please remember to share your name, first name is just fine, what book you think I should read next, and why you think it might be right for me?

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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. Thanks also to our Community Manager, Sara Aeder. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. As Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah! how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.