I feel lost when it comes to fiction

AMYE DAY ONG: I would love to bring home fewer books from the library. I really would. The bag is heavy. You know, it's not like every book I bring home needs to be a winner. I would just like to improve my batting average.

ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we'll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.

[00:00:50] Readers, we are just a few weeks away from our annual gifting episode. This is a beloved tradition and we would love you to participate. This is like mini matchmaking, but for the readers on your gift list. This year, our team is chiming in to help you find the right book for the readers in your life this season.

So here's how we can help. Tell us a little bit about the reader, what they love and don't love, and what kind of recommendation you're looking for. Email [email protected] with the subject line "gift help" or ask us directly in your own voice by calling 502-627-0663 and leaving a voicemail. A whole lot of lucky readers are going to have our team weigh in on your best picks for your giftee this season.

Again, to participate, email [email protected] with the subject line "gift help" or give us a call at 502-627-0663 and leave us a voicemail. We can't wait to hear what you are looking for this season. Thanks for playing. Happy reading.

[00:01:54] Readers, today's guest is a devoted nonfiction reader and a recent audiobook convert, but she is struggling to find her way when it comes to fiction. Amye Day Ong lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and young children.

Amye has a good handle on most of her reading rhythms and she knows how to find the nonfiction titles that she won't be able to put down. But when it comes to fiction, Amye feels lost. Amye would love to better understand why she might like or dislike a certain fiction title before she picks it up. But right now, fiction feels disorienting.

Instead of playing the library lottery by hauling home loads of checkouts that turn out to be all wrong for her, she is eager to gain some insight so that she can better tell in advance which titles will turn out to suit her readerly taste.

Today, Amye and I take a closer look at common elements of the fiction picks that have worked well for her. And I'll leave her with things to keep an eye out for, plus recommendations for titles I hope she will find just as satisfying as her favorite nonfiction.

Amye also offered to recommend a nonfiction title that she thought would be just right for me. And do you think I would ever turn that down? You know, I didn't. Readers, let's get to it.

[00:03:07] Amye, welcome to the show.

AMYE: Thank you, Anne.

ANNE: I'm so excited to talk today. Our team loved your submission and is really excited to hear about your experience in book world and also about your fiction struggles.

AMYE: I'm ready to talk about it.

ANNE: Okay, wonderful. Amye, could you give our readers a glimpse of who you are?

AMYE: Yeah. So I currently live in Dallas, Texas. But my husband and our two young kids, we moved here during the pandemic. So we were in Chicago. I had previously had a career in higher education, but left that during COVID to take care of said little kids. So yeah, we moved to Dallas to be closer to his side of the family.

Also since kind of leaving higher ed, in addition to just all the child caretaking, I've also spent more time devoted to my writing. I write nonfiction, mostly personal essays, and I'm very slowly working on a memoir in essays. So yeah, that's kind of the bulk of it.

[00:04:14] I also work part-time as an essay coach. So I coach high school seniors on how to talk about themselves in their college admissions essays, which is really a lot of fun because I get to learn a lot about what different young people are aspiring to these days. Actually, it's just really rewarding. So I enjoy it a lot.

ANNE: That sounds like a lot of fun. What's a frequent tidbit of advice that you distribute to your high school seniors?

AMYE: Oh, you know, one of them is that a lot of times I talk to students, and sometimes their parents in an initial meeting about how you want your admissions essays to sort of feel like you're sitting across the dinner table with an admissions counselor, so that it's not necessarily a big song and dance about every accomplishment you have, but instead you're like trying to help the admissions counselor or whoever is reading your application get to know you in sort of this really well-rounded perspective, including all of your, you know, maybe peculiar things you're interested in or questions that kind of keep you up at night or, you know, unusual hobbies. But it's a lot about kind of what makes you tick.

[00:05:36] I encourage students to try to not think of themselves in comparison to everybody else, but instead, try to zero in on what their story is. And then we kind of talk about how to bring that to life in the different essay questions.

ANNE: Amye, after editing my own kids' essays myself, which was such a fun process and also really, really challenging, I imagine these seniors and their parents are really happy to be connecting with someone who knows what they're doing.

AMYE: Yeah. I mean, really, the pleasure is mine because I find a lot of the high school seniors I'm talking to, they have so much hope for the future, you know, and a lot of drive and ambition, and they're very clear-eyed about kind of modern-day struggles facing society. So, I don't know, they make me feel excited about what they're going to achieve and the impact they're going to have on the world. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun working with them.

ANNE: I'm so glad to hear that's life-giving work.

AMYE: Mm-hmm, it really is.

[00:06:38] ANNE: Oh, my goodness. Okay, I'm just remembering there is a book that I loved this year. It was out from Tiny Rep in January, Gone Like Yesterday by Janelle Williams, where the protagonist is a writing coach who helps high school seniors write their essays. Have you read this?

AMYE: I haven't. No. I'll totally have to look that up.

ANNE: I think so. It's got a magical element. It's about family history, multiple people's family histories. I think that'll be a fun one for you to look into.

Now, Amye, tell me about what your reading life is looking like these days.

AMYE: So these days it's much better than it was before. So I suffered from I think what, you know, I've heard you talk about on the podcast and a lot of other readers dealt with, a pandemic reading slump. I feel like on every book podcast I listen to, they were talking about... or publishing podcast. You know, they'd say book sales are up in the pandemic. And I would think like, "Who is reading?"

[00:07:35] I had such a hard time reading during the pandemic. Some of it is probably that I had transitioned to being home with my kids, and so my day-to-day life was really different. But I just found it hard to find any books that really kind of met me where I was at reading-wise.

I feel like I've been trying to improve my reading life for a while, but at the end of 2022, I did a couple of things. One is I bought your My Reading Life journal and I started trying to track my reading there. And then I think towards the end of 2022, I also did a couple of other things, which is that I downloaded the Bookmory app, or I think maybe it's pronounced like memory, Bookmory.

It's an app that has zero social media, really sort of easy to log your reading, but you can visually see all of the book covers. So that was an easy way also to track my reading.

And then the third thing that made a big difference was, in sort of a podcast rabbit hole sort of moment, from your podcast I found From the Front Porch, that podcast. And then from her podcast, one time she mentioned an episode of The Ezra Klein podcast with a literacy scholar, Maryanne Wolf. She talked about deep reading and the love for deep reading and its impact on your brain versus skimming.

[00:09:07] And there was just a lot in her conversation that made me think about my reading life a little differently so that it wasn't reading as much as possible, but like trying to build in moments in my day for deep reading, even if it's very short. So that's kind of what I've worked to do in 2023, is kind of have a morning time and an evening time that's usually brief, but for some kind of sacred reading time. Then also I've integrated audiobooks and that's helped a lot too.

ANNE: Oh, that's amazing. I'm so glad to hear that. Now, Amye, you mention that you are trained as a nonfiction writer and that you're working on that kind of work and feel very comfortable with that aspect of your reading life. But that's not true for all of your reading life.

AMYE: Yeah. So with nonfiction, I feel like I have a pretty good guess as to a book I'm going to enjoy. But even sometimes, if it's a book where I don't want to finish all of it or I start it and I'm like, "Okay, this isn't it for me," I feel like I have a fairly good appreciation for what the author is trying to achieve.

[00:10:17] So it doesn't feel so personal when I don't like a book. Like I don't feel like me not liking a book is any reflection on the author. It's just that just might not be the nonfiction book I want to read right now or maybe I only want to read one essay from that collection, but I'm not driven to read the whole book. But I still kind of value it and can see what the author is usually trying to do.

But with fiction, I feel lost and I feel very much like just a reader who wants to be entertained with beautiful stories. And I'm not quite sure which stories I enjoy. And I don't do a very good job anticipating my own tastes. I check out dozens of books from the library and read just a few of them because I just don't really know what I'm looking for in fiction. I guess that's what I'm hoping to understand better from talking to you.

[00:11:18] ANNE: Okay, interesting. I hope that we can do that today. Amye, I'm curious to hear what is it that especially appeals to you about nonfiction when it comes to the reading and the writing?

AMYE: I think, with nonfiction, I get to spend time in words and sentences about life. I love that the things that I ruminate on or think about or wonder about or lived experiences can be represented on the page.

So many years ago when I knew I loved writing, but I didn't know what I wanted to write, I was in a class for writing children's literature. Like an evening adult ed sort of class. And I found myself over and over again just wanting to write physical descriptions of the eastern Kentucky foothills of the Appalachian Mountains where my family has a cabin.

[00:12:20] I realized over time that was much more interesting to me than any of the fictional characters I could come up with. And that helped me to realize that it's the real stuff that I like the most. I still enjoy being entertained in fictional worlds, it's just not what I'm drawn to write about.

ANNE: And yet you feel that pull to explore the realm of fiction.

AMYE: Yeah. I guess maybe that's one of the things I do really love in fiction is when an author makes you feel like you're inside someone else's lived experience. So maybe that's part of the reason I don't really dip into science fiction or fantasy is that I really enjoy feeling like I'm inside someone's day-to-day reality, whether that's, you know, present-day or historical. But I like feeling all the quotidian details and feeling just emotionally what it's like to be in their body in a fictional sense.

[00:13:27] ANNE: Okay, interesting. We will, I'm sure, talk about that more. Amye, I'd love to ask you voice-to-voice. You mentioned in your submission a really interesting experience you had with an internship while you were working on your MFA in the ALA basement. Would you share that in your own words?

AMYE: Yeah. After I started my MFA in creative nonfiction, I spent one summer working in the basement of the American Library Association, and I specifically worked for Booklist, which is their book review magazine.

So I'm sure, as you're aware, they receive... I mean, I think I unpacked probably somewhere between 200 to 300 books a day on the days I was there. So these are like Advance Reader Copies or ARCs.

[00:14:26] I mean, I would just open box after box after box and put them on a book cart, and then wheel them up from this sort of sad, dark room in the basement up to the offices. And then they would, you know, sit outside the different editors' offices and they would look over them and decide which books were going to be reviewed.

Because one thing that's sort of interesting about Booklist, and I think this is still the case, it certainly was when I was there, is that it's a recommend-only book review magazine. So they're only interested in recommending books that they do encourage librarians to purchase for their collections.

So with that in mind, the reviews are always incredibly short. I got the chance to write a few, and they're just teeny tiny. I think it's like 125 words or something like that. And you have to kind of encapsulate the whole book in a very short space so that the librarian knows, okay, what is this book about, what type of patron is it for, and should I buy it?

[00:15:28] ANNE: Yes. I actually remember reading in John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed about his time reviewing books for Booklist Magazine. And he says in such a small space to work with that the parts of the book you relished have to nestle up right alongside the parts you had reservations about. Like the highs and the lows, the good and the bad, who will love it, who won't, like it all has to fit in this tiny little conversational space.

He talks about how that shaped him as a writer and a reader. And I'm not sure I've thought about that since, but I'm sure thinking about it now.

How many hours a day on this internship did you spend actually opening the mail in the basement?

AMYE: Let's see. I think I was there three or four days a week, and I would guess somewhere between an hour and a half to 2 hours each day was opening books. All I know is it was a long time. I don't know exactly how long it felt. It felt like an hour and a half to 2 hours, whether it was or not.

[00:16:28] ANNE: Are there any titles from that time that you remember passing through your hands that have stuck with you?

AMYE: I remember Emily Oster had a pregnancy-related book called Expecting Better. I remember because I picked up the arc... They have these bookshelves so that staff could take books after they had been reviewed or not reviewed. You could take a book home with you. And I think that was what I took home. I wasn't expecting at that time, but I think I was curious about her book. She was at that point, I think, an economist at the University of Chicago.

And then I think I remember coming across a children's book that I really disliked. I won't get into that one, but I think I remember, yeah, opening one children's book that made me angry.

ANNE: You do remember. That has stuck.

AMYE: Oh, yes.

ANNE: Well, Amye, I'm ready to move into your books if you are. What do you think?

AMYE: I'm ready.

ANNE: You know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one book you don't, and what you've been reading lately, and then we will explore what fiction possibilities can look like in your reading life. First, I'd love to hear, how did you choose these for today?

[00:17:37] AMYE: Since a lot of my, I guess, reading troubles began with the pandemic, I selected only books that I have read since the pandemic started because it just, to me, wasn't entirely relevant to pick a book I loved ten years ago. I selected only books that have sort of worked for me since some of my reading life has changed.

ANNE: Okay, I like that approach. That seems to make a lot of sense. What's the first book you chose?

AMYE: So the first book is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. It's a generational historical family saga. So it starts in I think the early 1900s in Korea. And then it kind of follows members of the family through for generations as Korea is occupied by the Japanese, as characters move over from Korea to Japan as they attempt to assimilate in Japanese culture and are really unwelcomed, kind of the discrimination they suffer and really just the kind of trauma that that causes for a lot of the families there.

[00:18:49] But even though it talks about really some historical realities I was completely unaware of before reading the book, it's really just so beautifully rendered. I can still remember specific scenes of certain characters and kind of the way they were drawn. It just felt very palpably real to me.

Even though it's a generational story, once you get into it, you realize you're going to be leaving a character after their time is up and it's time to move on to the next person, you know, their next offspring or descendent. But I was so sad to leave each character. I knew the story was going to move on to the next person in the family, and I just didn't want it to. I just wanted to stay with them for a long time.

[00:19:40] ANNE: A good sign, but it seems not something to let you down too much if this ended up standing out as a favorite for you.

AMYE: Yeah. I think the whole way through it, it's just a stunning book. And she's a really powerful writer. She talks about some interesting things I wasn't aware of. For example, she talks about how some Koreans tried to pass as Japanese in Japan just because the discrimination was so terrible that they faced when they were identified as Korean. And that was really interesting to me.

I'm always really interested in these kind of liminal spaces, you know, that folks occupy sometimes and kind of the difficulty that that causes, not only for one character but for the next character down the line in the generations as well.

ANNE: Okay, I'm noting that, Amye. That's Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. What is the second book you love?

[00:20:38] AMYE: I also loved Writers & Lovers by Lily King. I had loved her book Euphoria, but I think I was reticent to pick up Writers & Lovers because it's a story about an aspiring writer, which is something I definitely identify with. Also, you know, it's done sometimes in fiction pretty frequently.

So I just remember picking up this book in the bookstore and being like, "Oh, I'm just not in the mood to read about a writer right now." But I came back to it at some point in the pandemic or maybe it was after I had moved to Texas, and it just really stuck with me.

So it's about a 31-year-old aspiring writer who has a ton of student debt and who is really grief-stricken. Her mother has passed away. She's working as a waitress and she is trying to write a novel. I think it's going on like six years or something like that, that she's been trying to write it.

[00:21:36] And, you know, in the midst of all this striving to be a published author, she's also trying to make something out of her love life and things that are, you know, a lot of times not going the way she had hoped.

It's a book that I feel like has a lot to say about writers and writing egos. Some of the men that she has relationships with are also writers and have their own aspirations and hopes for her to contend with. So that's really interesting to me.

And the other thing I loved about that book is I felt like the ending was very earned. I won't say anything more about it, but it was just an ending that I felt like really stuck the landing.

ANNE: I'll say more about it. Lilly King has said that she thinks the reason that critics and readers, but especially critics, appreciated the ending was there was a pandemic. So she got away with that ending in a literary novel.

[00:22:36] AMYE: I think it had hope. And a lot of times that's what you need.

ANNE: Yes. That was Writers & lovers by Lilly King. Amye, what is your third favorite?

AMYE: For my third, I wanted to select an audiobook because audiobooks have been so central to reading more since I kind of had the reboot of my reading life. So I selected Passing by Nella Larsen, and it's narrated by Robin Miles.

I actually got this one, I think, through the library, but have since gone on to get a lot of other audiobooks through Libro.fm, and... I don't know. One of the things that stuck with me is this was like the first audiobook where I remember where I was standing when I was listening to certain sections.

You know how NPR used to talk about, like, driveway moments where you're like in your driveway and you don't get out of your car even though you're parked because the story is so interesting or so good? That's how I felt when I was listening to Passing.

[00:23:40] I feel like a lot of the book is scenes of conversations between these two friends, Irene and Claire. Both Irene and Claire are light-skinned Black women, but Claire has chosen a life of passing for White and has married a White man. And even though she's kind of in a totally different social circle as Irene, they kind of run into each other again and again, and Claire sort of pursues that.

So there's all these really interesting conversations. It almost feels like the book is like these intimate conversations on forbidden topics. I think that was something else I really enjoyed, like the closeness between these conversations.

And you're in Irene's head for the book, so it's kind of narrated from her perspective. And you understand why Claire has chosen to pass. And at the same time, you see all the trickle-down effects of that decision. And also you see why Irene would never make that choice. It's a really fascinating book and it's beautifully narrated. Robin Miles, I followed her to some other audiobooks as well because I really enjoyed her narration.

[00:25:01] ANNE: I was just talking with a reader this morning who loved her narration of N.K. Jemisin's The Great Cities duology that begins with The City We Became. She's one of my favorites. So versatile and so good.

I also want to flag that my edition of Passing has an introduction by Christa Holm Vogelius that was so insightful and I'm so glad that I read first. I mean, I'm a White woman living in 2023, I don't know what I don't know. The details she provided as a background to the story, just... I need it and I appreciate it.

Okay. That is Passing by Nella Larsen. I'm so glad the audio works for you and that you worked one in since that's something that's really working in your reading life right now.

Amye, what is a book that was not right for you?

AMYE: Not right for me was This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. This book is about a woman who's having her 40th birthday. She works as an admissions officer at a Manhattan prep school that she attended herself. It's sort of like her life is not going the way she had hoped, and her father, who's a sci-fi author, is really ill and is sort of near death.

[00:26:22] So it's a book that has... I mean, I've stated this already, but you might guess why it didn't work for me, is it has some kind of time travel elements in it. So she finds kind of a portal that allows her to go back in time to a specific day in her youth. So she gets to spend time with her father when she was younger.

The book kind of goes on from there. And it's kind of a question of like, can she change the present day based on what she gets to reenact from the past?

I started it because I really enjoyed the voice. I related to the character as someone on the other side of 40, and I really enjoyed the relationship between her and her father. I think I was 100 pages in when I stopped just because I didn't care about time travel at all. I really don't.

[00:27:15] And through a very strange circumstance having to do with a ransomware attack to the Dallas government, which shut down a lot of Dallas City services as well as the public libraries, for like seven weeks you couldn't request a book at the library and you also couldn't put in holds. You couldn't return books either. It was very strange.

So because of that, I actually ended up finishing the book just because it was the only book I had on hand. So I did finish it and I enjoyed whenever the book came back to that father-daughter relationship. But the time travel part in the middle, you know, I'm sure it's very well executed and would work for a lot of other readers, but it just didn't work for me.

ANNE: I am trying to wrap my head around seven weeks without the city services, including the library.

[00:28:09] AMYE: Yeah, it was like the 911 call center I think was having to like, I don't know, phone in requests as opposed to use the computer system, I think the judicial system. It was like all these city services were down. So because of that, you can imagine there's a lot more essential services than library services. So those were the very last to come back online.

There were much more serious impacts from it, but I was certainly sad to not be able to use the library for those seven weeks. I think I even had to go out and buy like three books at one point.

ANNE: So some readers who often prefer realistic fiction nevertheless appreciate how with time travel you get a different angle on relationships than you would otherwise. And clearly, that's not you. There's a little bit of like a caper-ish kind of screwball tone to this book. I'm wondering if that might have been not a fit. Another possibility is you would just like it to be realistic. Please and thank you. The end.

[00:29:12] AMYE: You know, I heard an interview that Emma Straub did and she was talking about how I think her own father either had recently died or something like that. And I think this was that she enjoyed writing this book because it allowed her to kind of imagine a father-daughter relationship and kinda go back in time a little bit herself. I just kept feeling like the 40-year-old was fascinating on her own. I didn't need the teenager version to really care about the 40-year-old.

ANNE: Amye, that's really well put. I like that. She was interesting enough on her own. I really enjoyed that book. And yet also there was definitely a version of it, of a story like that where we could stay with the 40-year-old character.

Okay, that is This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. Amye, what have you been reading lately?

[00:30:03] AMYE: My most recent fiction reads have actually both been audio. One was Matrix by Lauren Groff, and that was read by Adjoa Andoh, and Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, which was narrated by Meryl Streep. So both kind of big-hit actresses narrating pretty awesome books. So those were both really enjoyable reads for me.

ANNE: Okay, I'm glad to hear that. And Amye, what are you looking for in your reading life right now?

AMYE: I would love to bring home fewer books from the library. I really would. The bag is heavy. You know, it's not like every book I bring home needs to be a winner. I would just like to improve my batting average, as a sportsperson might say, and just have a better idea of what works for me.

Sometimes I listen to the show and I hear books described and I just think, "That sounds amazing." And then I go and pick it up and I'm like, "Oh, but not for me," and I feel this sort of disconnect that I can't quite figure out why. Even a premise can sound really fascinating to me, but I'm not sure all of what I'm looking for on the page.

[00:31:21] ANNE: Okay. I'm interested in hearing how are you deciding what to bring home right now. And it sounds like you're getting it from the library. Sounds like a physical hold, and then you're meeting the actual book.

AMYE: Yeah. I would say almost always it's a book that I have heard about, probably through some sort of podcast. So yours is a primary source. But I also listen to several other book podcasts, whether it's from the Front Porch or the New York Times Book Review, or if I'm looking at sites like Lit Hub, or if I'm just scrolling Instagram, I'm coming across something. I think those are the primary ways.

And then because most of my books come from the library, the Dallas Public Library is large, but I can't necessarily get every book when I want it. So a lot of times I'm just loading up my hold and just, you know, standing in the queue and waiting to see what comes in. So there is a certain randomness for when I'm getting a book.

[00:32:33] Now, with the audiobooks, it's different because I have found having Libro.fm membership that supports a local bookstore, I have found that that's a lot more successful for me because that at least gives me one venue where I can pick a new title if I want and I can sample a bunch.

So if I can sample, you know, 4 minutes of audio of four different books and then pick the one that I think I like the best, but I don't always do fiction. You know, sometimes I'll do nonfiction as well.

Sometimes the literary fiction titles are a little easier to find. You know, I think Lauren Groff's The Matrix is a good example of that or, you know, Min Jin Lee, I think, Pachinko is one of the finalists for the National Book Award. So those are a little easier to find. I still might not like all of the titles I pick up, but there's at least a better chance.

[00:33:28] But I think sometimes with those palate cleanser romantic comedies, it's trickier because, I mean, I've already said I really like the real real of daily life, and a lot of times those don't have them. Or they don't have a lot. So it's hard sometimes for me to find. I found a couple authors that I do like, but my batting average is even worse for those.

ANNE: Who are some of the authors that you consistently like?

AMYE: I really enjoyed Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. With that one, my favorite part was the SNL parody of The Night Owls. Then I also have really enjoyed Jasmine Guillory. She had, I think, The Wedding Date, and also Party of Two were both books that I really enjoyed because I think in both of those they have an interracial couple.

[00:34:23] I'm White and my husband is Chinese. I think in both cases it was a Black woman who was in a relationship with a White man. But I felt like the conversations they were having felt real to me. Some of the assumptions and tensions and things that had to be worked through, they felt like real life, and I appreciated that.

I was reading for the happy ending, but I really enjoyed being able to see some of those difficult interracial marital conversations happen on the page.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, Amye, I have some ideas that I'd really like to recommend to you, and we'll do that. But first, you mentioned that you had a nonfiction recommendation for me, and I would love to hear that if you are comfortable sharing.

AMYE: I am. Full disclosure. This is why I submitted my listener submission is I read this book and on each page of your book journal, one of the questions you ask is who would you recommend this book to?

[00:35:33] So I feel like even though I'm mostly using the Bookmory app now to track my reading, that question has still stuck with me. So as I was reading, I just kept thinking, "Oh, Anne would love this book."

ANNE: I'm so glad. Thank you.

AMYE: I just kept thinking, "How ridiculous! Anne has lots of books to read, and I don't know that she needs this recommendation." But I-

ANNE: She does. She really does, Amye.

AMYE: I couldn't shake it. So then I was going to email you and then I was like, "Well, shoot, if I'm here at the website, I might as well put in a listener submission." So that's actually how I ended up submitting it. But the book is The Everybody Ensemble by Amy Leach.

ANNE: I don't know this one.

AMYE: It's like an exuberant devotional to the natural world. That's how I would describe it. It is like a mash-up between Wendell Berry's Reverence for Nature and Beth Ann Fennelly's Heating & Cooling.

[00:36:32] It is completely bizarre. It has all these very, very short essays that... like the titles of some of them, one is called Haunted by Hedgehogs, one is called The Benevolence of Blueberries. Another is Especially the Zebras.

You know, Amy Leach as a writer, I came across her in my MFA program and she is just totally awed by our world and all of the living creatures and, you know, plants and animals inside it. And she kind of just dives really deep into each of them. But this is not slow, dry nonfiction. It is short, snappy. It's almost prose poetry. Almost, not quite.

But I thought devotional was almost the best way to describe it, because there are these little ones you can read before bed. That's how I read it. I do feel like she draws a little bit from a Judeo-Christian tradition as she's somehow thinking about the animals and the plants and the blueberries and their place in the world.

[00:37:46] I guess maybe thinking back to, you know, all the good that hope can do for the world as far as change, I feel like climate change is a presence in this book, but it's not a doom and gloom book. So I think you would really enjoy it.

ANNE: Well, that sounds wonderful, and I really appreciate the recommendation. And those two authors that you anchored this work to, Beth Ann Fennelly and Wendell Berry, I mean, you know how I feel about Beth Ann Fennelly and Wendell Berry.

AMYE: Yeah.

ANNE: Well, thank you very much. Okay, Amye, are you ready to go back to your books?

AMYE: Ready.

ANNE: Let's review. You loved Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Writers & Lovers by Lily King, and Passing by Nella Larsen. Specifically, you loved the audio read by Robin Miles. Not for you was This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. And lately you've been reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett and Matrix by Lauren Groff.

[00:38:48] You're looking for fiction that will suit your reading taste. Oh, and you know what we didn't ask you, Amye, was you mentioned that you've instituted some new reading rituals this year.

AMYE: Yeah. So I read in the morning a little bit with my coffee. I read before bed, even if it's a tiny bit. And then I always have an audiobook going during the day. So I almost always have like a three-book system. And as long as one of those books is good, I feel like my reading keeps moving.

ANNE: All right, I'm gonna let you supply the nonfiction in that equation. Let's see what we can do for the fiction. Now, you did mention that literary fiction, slow capital S Serious literary fiction is perhaps the easiest for you to find. But those palate cleansers of romantic comedies or other light fiction, those are tough to find.

Part of me is wondering how you might feel about literary fiction. It moves faster than a Pachinko or a Matrix. But I think we could still shelve literary, but maybe you wouldn't feel like you need to swing so hard in the other direction afterwards.

[00:39:59] Now, there's lots of good books in that other direction, but right now you're having a hard time finding them.

AMYE: Yeah. I think that would scratch two itches as far as something that has beautiful sentences, but that also maybe has a nice pace to it.

ANNE: Because these literary ones, I'm not sure they're quite as much in your wit. I feel like they will be different than what you might pick up now. And we could strike out. But maybe you'll love them. How do you feel about finding out?

AMYE: Yeah. Let's give it a shot.

ANNE: Should we start with the [inaudible 00:40:35]?

AMYE: Yeah.

ANNE: All right, let's do it. I'm thinking about starting with Jean Kwok. Have you read anything by her?

AMYE: I haven't, but I do recognize the name.

ANNE: Okay. I'm glad to hear that. She's written lots of books. I think her most recent before this one I'm about to recommend that is brand new was Searching for Sylvie Lee. But she has a new one that feels like equal parts family drama and gripping mystery. It almost feels like she accesses a thriller gear for this.

[00:41:08] And the underpinnings of it are so smart. I think there's lots for you to appreciate as a writer. Also, you said that you were a little reluctant to pick up Writers & Lovers because it's about an aspiring writer. Now, this one is not about a writer necessarily.

This story features two women whose lives are on a collision course. One of those women is Jasmine. She's living in a rural Chinese village. She's married to a much older man and she has a baby. Her husband tells her the baby died. But what she finds out not long after is that her baby didn't die, her baby was a daughter and her husband wanted a son. And because of China's one-child policy, that meant that he arranged for that baby to be adopted by a New York City couple.

When she finds out, she flees the village and arrives in New York City with no documentation, deeply in debt to the frightening men that she calls the snakeheads who help her enter the country just on a mission to find her daughter.

[00:42:14] This child's adoptive mother is Rebecca, and she's an influential literary editor who doesn't know anything about the sinister circumstances surrounding the adoption. She has no reason to think that everything wasn't completely as it should have been and that everyone was happy with the arrangements.

So Jasmine is determined to be reunited with her daughter. Rebecca is dealing with her own issues at work. And, you know, eventually they are going to come together, but you don't know how. So it starts as a serious slow burn. But as we get to the climax, I mean, it just gets explosive. Like more than once, I was like, "Oh, I can't believe that just happened."

Now, okay, if you're listening and you're like, Anne, don't be such a nerd, just tune me up for a second. But the way that she explores the just devastating political ramifications of China's one-child policy, which I know very little about as an American reader, I thought was fascinating.

[00:43:15] The way she uses doubles in this book, completely fascinating. And Rebecca, in her position as editor-in-chief for this prestigious New York publisher, is wooing a novelist who has written this brilliant, it's going to be a breakout novel on the immigrant experience.

So the way they discuss this novel and the way those conversations about her book in the immigrant experience and what it means in occupying two worlds is just really... I really admire the way that Jean Kwok does this. How does that sound to you?

AMYE: Yeah, that sounds fascinating. That sounds really good.

ANNE: This is me being tempted to make the blanket declaration. You are going to want to talk about this with someone when you finish.. Maybe that's not true for everybody, but I did turn to my husband and say like, "Can I spoil the ending? Because I need to talk about this book right now." I hope you enjoy it. That is The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok.

[00:44:07] The next book I want to recommend is one that I have personal experience with the audiobook. I thought it was amazing in that format. This book is The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue. Is this one you know?

AMYE: No, I've never heard about this.

ANNE: Okay. I'm not sad about this. This just came out in June. It's narrated by Tara Flynn, if you opt to go that direction and knowing, Amye, that you do like audiobooks. This is an Irish novel and it's narrated by an Irish narrator in an Irish accent. This has a lot to recommend it in that format.

You're actively seeking emotionally close literary fiction, and that's what this book is. We are inside the head, in the first person, of Rachel. She's a student. She's, I think, in her early twenties. Her best friend is James. They both work at a bookstore.

She's on a university program. She's not that far from her degree and she sets her sights on her professor. He is married. She's not going to let that stop her. She is determined to make something happen between the two of them.

[00:45:14] So when she finds out he has a book coming out, she arranges a signing at the bookstore where she and James both work. So she'd like to get something started with this professor but the professor has other ideas. And soon Rachel finds herself not in a relationship with this professor, but still very much enmeshed in the life of this man and his wife, who happens to work in publishing. Where do all these people who work in publishing come from?

But she happens to work in publishing. She's young, and stylish and kind. Her friends are witty. She throws great dinner parties. She becomes thoroughly involved in their life.

I don't want to tell you too much because I don't want to spoil anything but Rachel's friendship with James, her relationship with this couple, she becomes entangled in this, at times a wonderful, but eventually awful web and really interesting, dramatic things happen.

[00:46:21] I have to say, this title is perfect. You don't hear about it till the end. I really like the date in my ear. The ending is quick, but I don't think abrupt and very fitting. We've talked about endings here. I really enjoyed listening to Rachel tell me in her voice, "This is what's happening. This is what I'm going to do about it. This is why I don't know what to do about it. This is why I made that good decision. This is why I made that terrible decision. And oh, what am I going to do next?"

I really enjoyed being, I mean, in her head in the first person listening to Tara Flynn's Irish accent, try to figure out what she got herself into. Now, I wanted to hold back for fear of spoilers, but have I told you enough for this to sound interesting?

AMYE: Yeah, it definitely sounds like it hit some of the same notes as the Writers & Lovers because in that one there's also a... not a student-professor relationship, but definitely an aspiring versus established writer relationship and romantic relationship. So, yeah, I could see some of those tensions being really interesting and explored in sort of a different way in The Rachel Incident.

[00:47:30] ANNE: Yeah, I hadn't thought to make that connection, but that makes a lot of sense what you're saying there. And then finally, can we pop off a few fun, lighter reads?

AMYE: Yes, please.

ANNE: For the romance, I have three titles and authors in mind and I think we can firmly call all romance. First of all, blanket recommendation that works with Abby Jimenez. If you really enjoy Jasmine Guillory, I think she also just nails the good plotting, easy-to-read, and serious issues, just really fun banter. She does such a great job.

Next, you mentioned how you wanted to read about the 40-year-old woman, not the 16-year-old woman. Have you read Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan?

[00:48:14] AMYE: I have. And that I really, really enjoyed. I would put that up there with, you know, Romantic Comedy and some of the other Jasmine Guillory books as one that I really liked. I didn't enjoy her most recent one quite as much. But I did really like Nora Goes Off Script.

ANNE: I hear you. I thought Nora Goes Off Script was really something special. Like a standout. And I'm so glad it was a fit for you. And then I was thinking The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta. Is this one you're familiar with?

AMYE: No, I haven't heard of this one.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. A plug for the audiobook: it's narrated by Tanya Rodriguez. And there's some phone calls in this book and the way they handle those on the audio, the phone calls and the voicemail is just super fun. I mean, the whole thing is great, but there's a few little flourishes that really elevate the audio version.

[00:49:05] This is set in the world of Hollywood. It's about a fake relationship. There's the friends-to-lovers trope as well. The protagonist here are A-list actress Win Tagore. Win is a woman of color working in Hollywood. She's British, but people always ask her where she's from because she's not white. And that's a constant source of frustration in the book.

She has a friend in trust fund kid, Leo. His parents own hotels. They strike up a friendship when they are thrown together at a gala and they just kind of get each other in each other's struggles. But then her publicist says, like, "You know what? It'd be really good for both your images if you made this a relationship. It doesn't have to be real, just make this a relationship."

But then someone starts to develop feelings. And there's a lot of pining in this book. There's tension when they realize this is all about to blow up and it's going to do that in the headline, and that will be terrible for our careers. And of course... You know, I'm not going to say anything more about it.

[00:50:08] This is not a romantic comedy. I listen to the audio and I'm not sure how it would have struck me had I read it for the first time in print. But the audiobook read and felt very literary. It doesn't have that light tone that I would want in like an Abby Jimenez or an Annabel Monaghan. But that doesn't mean it's not what I think you could enjoy. And that wouldn't feel like a change of pace from something like Matrix. How does that sound?

AMYE: Yeah, that sounds really good. I love the title too—The View Was Exhausting.

ANNE: It's good.

AMYE: It's a great title.

ANNE: It's good. And there's a good little reveal when you find out why they chose it. Okay, well, I'm glad that sounds like a winner for you. Now, Amye, are you ready to step back and see what sounds good?

AMYE: Yeah.

ANNE: Okay. So we talked about taking a chance on books that were a little perhaps different than what you might pick up. We talked about The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok, The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donohue, and then The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta. What do you need in your reading life right now? What do you think you might read next?

[00:51:16] AMYE: I definitely need something fun next. So I think The View Was Exhausting would be what I would pick up first. Then I think Jean Kwok's The Leftover Woman would be a quick second.

ANNE: Well, I'm so happy to hear it. Amye, thank you so much for my own book recommendation, The Everybody Ensemble. I can't wait to check that out. And thanks so much for talking books with me today.

AMYE: Aw, it's been a pleasure, Anne. It really has.

[00:51:42] ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Amye, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Amye on her website, amyedayong.com.

We've also put a link in our show notes page. You can find that at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com. That is also where we put the full list of titles we talk about for every single episode.

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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. 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.