Four Books a Fortnight

As teased in Episode 26, Hannah recounts her experience with "Stories from the Stage," a television show on WGBH, the public broadcasting show where people tell live stories on a theme, hosted by Wes Hazard. For Hannah, the theme was "turning the page," which is obviously relevant to her experience leaving corporate publishing and endeavoring to run a real-live bookstore — in the middle of a global pandemic. How could it have possibly taken seven hours for this to take place? In this special episdoe of "John Updike's Ghost," you find out! We don't seem to talk about books, but this is all sort of book adjacent, and Hannah winds up hugging everyone — except for her buddy who went to the Moth instead. (BTW, if you want to pitch your story to "Stories from the Stage," click here.)

Oh ho! For our 26th episode we bring on a very special guest: Our cousin Rick Pfeifle! Apparently, he goes by Eric in his professional lawyer life, but we have always known him as Rick. Or Ricky. Whatever you call him, he's from Dallas and he's got an active-reading household. How has he raised voracious readers (8 and 10 years old)? What do he and Kate do to keep them reading and not playing video games? There's been some friction! "They don't like that sometimes!" How does he manage the guilt he feels when he watches sports instead of reading Dick Ebersol's memoir or the Baseball 100 because he's been reading all day as a lawyer? We talk about strategies for keeping kids reading even as they become teenagers and beyond. But also Sam read some Updike and an upcoming book about mermaids and has some thoughts on Updike as a "horndog."

It's a recording from Indigenous People's Day, so everyone's a little groggy, including Liberty Hardy (@FranzenComesAlive), senior contributing writer for Book Riot and host of the "All the Books!" podcast — which has, like, 600 episodes, which is a lot more than us — and a person who reads 700+ books a year! She's never done a podcast like THIS, though, where we're the ones asking the questions. How does she find time to read so much? Does she read on her laptop? Has she read the books we're reading right now? Does she watch TV? Does she agree that the Internet is evil and makes us sad? Plus: Her recommendations for spooky books that are great for the Halloween season. This one's a banger. We talk about a LOT of books. Sam may have bristled at some point, though. (Also, it's "Archenemies," not "Archrivals," that Marissa Meyer wrote.)

Hannah and Sam are both back from conferences — Hannah hit the New England Independent Booksellers Association Fall Conference (NEIBA!), Sam was talking cannabis. Hear what the booksellers are buzzing about (succession planning! Kelly Link!), how we really nailed the Morgan Talty book (Episode 18!), and how Maine and Massachusetts are really different cultures but seem to work together a lot. Oh, and Hannah saw Tracy Kidder at NEIBA, too. Plus, Sam's reading more Afrofuturism (Rivers Solomon!), and Hannah is reading old '60s-era fiction ("The Bloater"! Rosemary Tonks died in 2014) where people get angry about soup. Then we move into "Blurb Your Enthusiasm," a book about writing book jacket copy, which we mostly don't trust anymore, but which we spend a lot of time talking about. Finally, a murder mystery in a cannabis shop. Which is cozy.

After a not very productive discussion of whether September is the best month, Hannah can't quite bring herself to name the ARC she has read and decided she doesn't like (she "hate read" at points). Can you guess what it is? There are plenty of clues. It's a Christmas book (with no ugly sweaters). Maybe they should have killed the kid. It's unclear. Hannah didn't feel the characters, regardless. Then we get into "Fire & Blood," the source material for big HBO hit "House of Dragons," and why it's maybe bad for the world that something so brutal is popular. This leads into a very coincidental discussion about super-young girls ending up in high-stakes medieval-style environments, since Hannah is reading "Court of Thorns & Roses" and Maggie O'Farrell's "Marriage Portrait." Who knew they would be so much alike? Also: Update on the "Time Traveler's Wife" show, which Sam is bothered by for reasons, and a small discourse on (Wilco) Jeff Tweedy's book from a couple years back that turns into a long discourse on songwriting for some reason. Finally: Books we've sold 100 copies of and why we need to send the Obamas a note of thanks.

Hannah has found some Hope Punk: "A Psalm for the Wild Built"! It is not actually dystopian fiction, but we don't let that stop us from talking about dystopian fiction as well (which doesn't just mean set in the future!). Why is dystopian fiction attractive? Are we writing it for the same reason? How is it a response to utopian fiction (the HG Wells book Sam was thinking of is "Men Like Gods")? This leads in to a talk about "Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" and how reading habits might be changing with the different ways people are consuming and purchasing art in general (Sam's impersonation of a Gen Zer is perhaps not very accurate). Hurrah for Taylor Jenkins Reid, Emily Henry, and Colleen Hoover! This moves, somehow, into Japanese fiction ("Bullet Train" and "Twilight World") and "Wool," which Hannah is correct that other people don't consider YA either. Then Sam decides that you tend to like David Mitchell more if you've done hallucinogens, Hannah argues you can't be a good writer without being an avid reader and talks about re-readering "Picture of Dorian Gray" (not "Portrait," as Sam incorrectly corrects Hannah, like a jerk), we pitch Mosin Hamid's "The Last White Man" as the next Book Club pick, and we wrap things up with some party ideas.

Hannah's tuckered out! The Tax Holiday Weekend Extravaganza was a big success, raising $650 for the Eastern MA Abortion Fund and selling all kinds of used books out of the Garage (which we're now capitalizing), but also rather exhausting. Plus, Sam had to part with some books from the personal collection he was a little sad to see go, but that led to a discussion of which books Sam actually reads more than once (Hannah basically never re-reads), inspired by the new Duran Duran book. This leads to a discussion of "perfectly fine" books and why we don't really need to finish those books and how exciting it is to start a book and know you're going to want to finish it (like "Chain Gang All-Stars," which comes out ... in April). Hannah also felt the need to talk about Penguin Random House/Simon and Schuster case, which Sam only barely understands, mostly because she's delighting in all of the nonsense that's being spouted, and it has made her want to buy more books from Norton (new Lydia Millett!), which is employee-owned. Then we finish up with a Molly Tanzer update (there are BOTH gloves and a cat on the cover, BTW) where Hannah admits she probably shanked the marketing on the third book.

Hey hey! It's our 20th episode and we're celebrating by just doing the stuff we normally do: Talk about the books we're currently reading and wherever that takes us. And, yeah, we're at camp again, so it's a bit of old and a bit of new, with more reflections on the meanness of the 1990s (Sarah Vowell is apparently a voice actor now, in addition to being a writer), the brand-new "Calling for a Blanket Dance" (there's hope!), and Emily St. John Mandel (who can write like hell) and just how much authors hate doing book tour events. This leads us into how not to talk to your local bookstore as an aspiring author (it is, actually, about the money) and then the books we're currently working on, by Molly Tanzer (finger insertions), Gabrielle Zevin (gaming!), and Hiron Ennes (whose "Leach" debuts in September), with a final discussion on indie publishers and how and why we bring books into the Shop.

This week, Hannah is back from Europe and ready to talk about a month's worth of bookstore visiting and reading — including books like "Delphi," about working from home and being a mom in academia (not "The Latinist," the book Sam couldn't remember), and "Class Trip," a book that isn't as much about skiing as you'd think from the cover, but does inspire an aside on the trend in ski books. Travelogue and discussions of how European bookstores (Fernando Passoa! "Fortune Men"! "Consent"!) seem to work out of the way, with a sidebar on the publing industry, Sam then engages in a rant about a trend he's seeing in YA where the female protagonists seem particularly wimpy, including in a book his daughter gave up on after three pages. Then things wind up with discussion of books that need 100 pages to get going, "Horse," and a revisit of "This Time Tomorrow" and time travel and zombie books and why we love both of them as a society. Also: If you know of a hope-core, green-punk book we should read, speak up.

This week, we're joined by Morgan Talty, whose debut short story collection, "Night of the Living Rez," is maybe the hottest thing going right now, with glowing reviews in the Times, NPR, Electric Literature, The Portland Press Herald, and so many more. We talk to him about writing short stories vs. a novel, how his Penobscot heritage works its way into his collection, what the difference is between writing about Mainers and Penobscots (he's not going to make them dance for a white audience) and where they come together, how the book almost got called "The Little Yellow House," and which stories, books, and authors inspired him while he was doing his writing, including "Out of the Woods," "Knockemstiff," "Jesus' Son," Raymond Carver, Anton Chekov, Tommy Orange, and many more. Also, we find out how he actually makes a living.