Latest / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast / Episode 84: Our Most Anticipated Releases from the Last Half of 2024

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Episode 84: Our Most Anticipated Releases from the Last Half of 2024 · The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Mooks and the Grimes podcast.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Trevor.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, Paul.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, how are you doing?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I am doing pretty darn good today.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Just kind of, you know, recovering from the all the fireworks that have been going off around here.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, me and the dogs are hiding under the couch now.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have dogs.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's going well.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I can't say that's ever my favorite little stretch of time, to be honest with you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: it was interesting on the 4th itself which is Thursday we had them going off but
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: they kind of ended at I don't know 9.30 10 it seemed like and there weren't a ton
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: of them but last night you know the 5th I guess because it was Friday night oh yeah
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: we had it was quite the thing yeah it's funny I you know when the kids were younger
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: and stuff like we definitely would do it and I totally don't begrudge people with
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: kids
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: the joys that they might get from that but generally speaking i'll mention birds
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: early in this uh episode as a nature lover bird lover and more and more of a quiet
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: kind of you know hang out and read your book kind of guy i'm like i don't know
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: getting getting old i guess old and grumpy oh well i guess that's okay yeah no
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: worries on that too much
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we are here, listeners, because it is the beginning of July, our first episode for July.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we thought,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: why don't we look ahead to the last half of the year and talk about some of the
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: books that are being published that we're most excited about.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get there, Paul, what have you been reading?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: so I've been reading quite a few things,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: buzzing through quite a few lately,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: but I wanted to briefly mention something that will make you happy,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: that I decided to reread Anthony Trollope's The Warden in advance of continuing on
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: with the rest of the series.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I thought about just kind of diving into book two.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: But The Warden is so short and I enjoyed it so much the first time around that I figured, why not?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I did that and I actually did the thing we've talked about where I listened to the audio book.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't able to track down the narrator that you suggested,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: but I did find a good narrator,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: which of course I'm not going to
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: have right in front of me right now, but we can stick it in the show notes if you want to.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I just absolutely loved revisiting that world.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking forward to kind of moving forward and continuing on with more Trollope.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then another book that I just finished yesterday that I've been wanting to read
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: for years now is Pedro Perrimo by Juan Rufo.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I picked up a copy of this book at a library sale years and years ago,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: not really knowing too much about it at the time.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: It just kind of sat there on my shelf, and I never did get to it.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: As you probably know, there's a recent new translation by Douglas J. Weatherford that came out recently.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like it just created a ton of buzz, a resurgence in attention for this book.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of finally inspired me to pick it up.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And man, I'm so glad I did.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's an all-time classic, you know, that comes with some very high praise.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So Borges,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: called it one of the best novels in Hispanic literature and in literature as a whole.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then Susan Sontag called it, quote, one of the masterpieces of 20th century world literature.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then on top of all that,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: this edition also includes the glowing,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: it's like a five-page introduction by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it closes out with him saying that...
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Although Rufo's entire works for his whole lifetime number less than 300 pages in total,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Gabriel Garcia Marquez says,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: quote,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: they are as great and I believe as enduring as Sophocles.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So as you can see, I went into this with some pretty high expectations.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: But boy, it's just such a cool premise for a book.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: a man named Juan Preciado makes a promise to his dying mother that he's going to
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: return to this town where she lived,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: the town of Kamala,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: to find this father that he never met,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: which is Pedro Peramo.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so both the timeline of the book and the characters of themselves kind of add
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: up to make this just a really fascinating approach to the story.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: The narrative is broken into a bunch of different fragments that don't appear in chronological order.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of challenging, but also very fascinating, intriguing.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a puzzle in some ways.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the town,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: it turns out,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: is kind of populated by a number of characters that we meet along the way who are
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: no longer living.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that adds a whole other wrinkle to the whole thing.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you can definitely see how and why this was such a formative influence for
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: people like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others who kind of then took it into magical realism.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I have an excerpt that I was going to read.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit long,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: but I think if you don't mind,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: it's a very good representation of the book itself.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's right when he gets back into the town.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: It says, this town is full of echoes.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's as if they were trapped in the gaps of the walls or beneath the cobblestones.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: As you walk, you feel someone following in your footsteps.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: You hear things rustling,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: laughter,
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: old laughter,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: as if it were tired of laughing,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: and voices that are weary from overuse.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: You hear all those things.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine the day will come when these sounds wither away.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's what Damiana Cisneros told me as we walked across town.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: There was a time when I could hear the commotion of a party that kept going night
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: after night for quite some time.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: The noise made it all the way out to the media luna.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Until finally, I came down to see what the fuss was about, and this is what I found.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just what we're seeing right now.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not a soul.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: The streets every bit as empty as they are now.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Later, I stopped hearing those noises.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's exhausting being happy.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I wasn't at all surprised when it came to an end.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, Damiana Cisneros repeated.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: This town is full of echoes.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: They don't scare me anymore.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I hear the dogs howling and I just let them howl.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And on blustery days,
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: you see the wind as it blows the leaves here and there,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: even when it's easy to see there aren't any trees around these parts.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: There must have been at some point.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, where would all the leaves have come from?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: The worst thing is when you hear people talking and their voices sound as if they
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: were coming from a fissure,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: yet are so clear you might recognize them.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: It just so happens that as I was on my way here,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I came across a wake and paused to say the Lord's Prayer.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was still praying when a woman broke from the group and came over to say,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Damiana,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: pray to God for me,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Damiana.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: She removed her rebozo and I recognized the face of my sister, Sixtina.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing here?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I asked.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: She then hurried back to hide among the other women.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: My sister Sixtina, if you don't know, died when I was twelve.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: She was the oldest.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: There were sixteen of us in the family, so just imagine how long she's been gone.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And look at her now, still wandering the earth.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So don't be frightened, Juan Presadio.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Preciado, if you hear echoes that are more recent.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did my mother warn you I'd be coming as well, I asked?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, whatever happened to your mother?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: She died, I said.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: She died, huh?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: What of?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I never really knew.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps it was sorrow.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: She used to sigh a lot.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's not good.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Each sigh is like a sip of life that slowly gets away from us.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: She's dead, then?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I thought you would have known.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: How would I have known?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's been years since I've known anything.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then how'd you find me?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you alive, Damiana?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me, Damiana.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly I found myself alone in those empty streets.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: The windows of the houses opened to the heavens,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: twisted weeds poking out,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: the walls peeling back to reveal moldering adobe bricks.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Damiana, I yelled.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Damiana Cisneros!
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: the echo responded.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that was long,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: but I just think it was such a cool scene and,
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: it just gives a good representation of both the wonderful writing,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: but also just kind of this unsettling and strange book where you're always feel
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: like you're not quite caught up on everything,
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: but in a very good way.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that's what I've been reading.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Have you?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Read that one, or is it on your radar at all?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is on my radar.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember, but it was one of the options for last year's Summer Book Club.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, it was.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'd forgotten that.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a couple of copies of it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have the older translation and the new translation.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep sitting down thinking this is the weekend, right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's so short.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like something I should be able to just read.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to do it kind of in a fun way of looking at the two translations.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that just... I think my plan keeps getting in the way of me finishing it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've read the first few pages that way.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been so fun.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's...
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's fun.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: It helps me see the different things that are going on in the text when I am
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: looking at two translations like that.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I do think I get more out of it.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: But again, if it gets in the way of actually reading it, it's not the best thing.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, I had the same struggle.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, like you said, it's short enough.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: I really did read it.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I probably,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: not probably,
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely could have read it in one day,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: but it bled over into a second day.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: But you absolutely could sit down,
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm tempted to go back fairly soon and reread the older translation.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's an interesting translator's note at the end by Douglas J.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Weatherford,
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: who's the new translator,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: and he talks about some of the choices he made,
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: including trying to replicate some of the idiosyncratic punctuation marks that were
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: in the original.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: So as you look through it,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: you might notice that there's like these little,
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the right word is,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: but almost like the greater than,
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: less than signs,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: whatever the...
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: the true punctuation name for those are,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: but that's the way some of the,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: like the quotations are set off.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's definitely differences that are pretty fascinating,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be curious to see whenever you get to it,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: what you think of it.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it should be soon.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have it out.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have it ready to go.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the bedside table.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's been there a few times.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what have you been reading?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I want to see if this sounds like anybody to you.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a book that comes out this week,
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm really enjoying it,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm also just really enjoying the tone,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: the style,
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: the fun.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have to be selective.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of sentences with words that we couldn't continue with our clean rating on the show.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I already pushed it, I think, in our last episode.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So here is the end of one little section.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Then here's the next section.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: He lost his faith in God again around half four in the morning.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now he believed in everything else instead.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: He believed in spells and enchantments.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: He believed for sure he could put a spell on the horse.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: He clamped one eye shut to keep her in focus,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: but she danced about madly before him,
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: a nervous animal of golden aura.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was mostly Palomino in her.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: She kicked at the frozen hard ground and a petulance of tiny stars flew up in sparks.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I hear a lot of Cormac there.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was hoping, even though it is quite, you know, it's different.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kevin Barry's latest novel, The Heart in Winter.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it is unique still.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I keep thinking of Cormac McCarthy in some parts of it, but it has also got a lot of unique style.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite clear what's going on, but he just has a way of kind of twisting sentences around in...
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: odd constructions and using words in ways that you don't usually use words, but that work really well.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: How did you describe the stars?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know if you saw it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: A petulance of tiny stars.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's really cool.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not, you know, I'm just in at the, at the beginning of it, but really enjoying it.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: and it is his first novel set in America in 1890s Montana, but it does extend out.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'd love this, Paul.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is October 1891.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: The city of Butte,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Montana is rich in copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Here we find Tom Rourke,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: a young poet and ballad maker of the town,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: but also a doper,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: a drinker,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: and a fearsome degenerate.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: captain Long Anthony Harrington.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: and they strike out west on a stolen horse,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho and
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And briefly, an idol of wild romance perfects itself.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: With everything to lose and with the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: distant speck on their horizon,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that sounds right up my alley for sure.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's pretty short.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Each page is...
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: in and of itself a fairly quick read because there's a bit of a higher a larger
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: font size and the pages are small just kind of feels like something you can put in
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: your pocket and just read excitedly wherever you're at so nice very cool have you
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: read any of his other stuff because i haven't i haven't yet i've read some of his
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: short stories they get published in the new yorker periodically i know the name i
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: can't like him yeah because he won the booker i believe like
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think he's probably been in conversations with it,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: whether a finalist or just because he's got books.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: But here are the books.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've got Nightboat to Tangier, Beetlebone, and The City of Bohain.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of those are ones that I've heard great things about and have always thought,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I need to read him because I do like his stories.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think he and I have like online kind of said hi to each other in the
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: past because of his stories.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, something along those lines.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've always kind of felt like, oh, I, I, I like what I, what I see here.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's, you know, someone that is out and about, but this will be my first one.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was looking.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: He has not won the Booker.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: He won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's the one you were thinking of.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's the one I was, yeah.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Shortlisted for the Costa.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's it.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: International Dublin Literary Awards Goldsmith Prize.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So he's won some more regional or slightly smaller prizes.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, definitely acclaimed to some degree.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds really good.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think, uh, I think it's as I'm reading it, I'm like, Oh, Paul needs to get his hands on this one.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds really good.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then that one, like I say, comes out here at the beginning of July.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: apt for our upcoming discussion of books that are coming out the second half of
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: 2024 that you're particularly excited about.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: and last time I think we did this, we just decided to do these in chronological order.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, what's coming out in July, August until the end.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I told Paul, let's try not to do that this time.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's, let's do a five through one ranked.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that I know which book you're most excited about,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: even though this has been hard,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: like it probably could easily swap around and,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: and all that.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought, let's make it a little tough on ourselves.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you did.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that will be a lot of fun.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if we do have some on our list that overlap,
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: which I wouldn't be shocked,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: we can kind of discuss or figure out why it might rank a little higher for one of
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: us than the other.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know about you,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: but when I started this exercise,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: as always,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was a little bit swimming in the deep end because I never know where to start
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: when I'm looking to see what's going to be published for the rest of the year.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's the millions and all these other lists that come out.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of other resources.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And at first,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: as I was looking at some of the bigger publishers,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was struggling to actually find too many books that I was overly excited about.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd heard some people say,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: like in the US in particular with the election,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: that some of the publishers had been front-loading in 2024 a little bit some of
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: their bigger titles.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this is true or not, but to kind of avoid getting drowned in all of that mess.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I kind of wondered, I'll be curious to see as your list comes out,
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: how many of them on your radar were from bigger publishers versus some of the smaller publishers?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because like I said,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: when I first started looking,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was like,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: geez,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if there's that many really big name books that I'm that excited about.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: I made, let's see, I'm just going to count really quick.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: We'll live 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: 22 list, a long list of contenders.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And these are ones that I genuinely looked at and thought that could be in my top five.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't just put down other books that sounded interesting.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm going to be very curious.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to have to save a little time for an honorable mention because I might
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: have a few more I need to add.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: I had a decent list of honorable mentions, but I don't think I got anywhere near 22.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe there'll be some that you came across that I'm excited about that I just didn't track down.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I have the resources and the craftiness that you do.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's get to it.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see what happens here.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: First off, I genuinely am excited about the books that you have coming up.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know what ones I might have missed.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I did think about, we probably should have gone back to our list for the start of 2024.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: To see how we did.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know I got through at least a couple of them.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Percival Everett's James.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see, what was another one?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Karis Davis's Clear.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think maybe a couple more I read from my list.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't go back and look at yours.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't tell you, let's do that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll just avoid any embarrassment just in case you're like, this is the book I'm so excited to read.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just forgot about it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't be surprised if embarrassment was the right word.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: But on the off chance that I really just crushed it and didn't realize that,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: I will maybe potentially follow up at the beginning of the next episode with a
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: little short update.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds good.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a good way to do it.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Next episode.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And listeners,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: if you hear nothing,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: just pretend this conversation never happened because it means I probably didn't
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: read any of them.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You forgot what you forgot and you forgot to bring it up for the next episode.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what do you have for your number five?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: My number five comes out in October,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: October 15th from Archipelago,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: and it's Canoes by Maylis de Kerengal.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: translated from the French by Jessica Moore.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: We both read and loved Eastbound recently.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I was really excited to see this one on the forthcoming list that they have on Archipelago.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure most of our listeners probably do this,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: but you can go to a lot of these small publishers and not only see newly released,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: but also their forthcoming list,
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: which is kind of what I was browsing around through.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this book Canoes sounds like quite a big departure from Eastbound,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: both in the format and kind of the content that's covered.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And your last book that you mentioned that you're currently reading had a Rocky Mountain connection.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Strangely enough, this one does too.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, a Colorado connection, which really surprised me.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll just read the blurb here from Archipelago.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: It says, when did I start placing myself in the fable?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: The young Parisian wonders as she tells her son the legend of Buffalo Bill,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: a spectral presence atop the mountain in their small Colorado town.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: She has just moved to the United States and everything disorients her.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Suburbs stretching along reptilian highways,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: a new house rigged like a studio set,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: but most of all,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: the sound of her husband's voice.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sam speaks with a different tone in English, not the soft and swift timbre of his native French.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: De Kerengal opens up a torrent of curiosities, hauntings, and questions about place and language.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Seven stories ricochet off of this exhilarating central novel,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: and in them we hear female voices by turns indelibly witty,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: insightful,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: intimate,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: bracing,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: and profoundly interconnected.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: The women of these stories are mad about stones,
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: molds of human jaws,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: voicemail recordings,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: sonic waves,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: UFOs,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: and always how the texture of human voices entwines with their obsessions.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, holy cow, that is a whole lot packed into a couple of paragraphs.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: to me,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: at least on the surface,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: that sounds almost nothing like Eastbound,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: which makes it especially interesting to me is that's the only book by this author
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: that I've read so far.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I did see that and thought, okay.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not on my list.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's one I thought for sure could be.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it is... I would recommend that you do go and read some of her other ones that have come out.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think The Heart was so surprising to me.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I started that one because it was... It may have been...
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: one of our Best Translated Book Award nominees.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't have a premise that I was super excited about.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Man,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: it's her writing,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: just the way that she's able to get into heads and make the sentences just keep
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: pulling or pushing,
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: just whatever it is,
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: it's super compelling.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Even in that one, Eastbound, I thought was even better.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm, I'm excited about this one for sure.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I love like,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: apparently this contains a novella and then seven short stories that quote ricochet
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: off of the novella,
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: which that is very interesting premise to me too.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it sounds.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, very all around.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to get to October 15th for that one.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: October 15th.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Archipelago.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my fifth one is one that I do have an early copy of, but I haven't started it yet.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's coming out from Knopf.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: in August, August 20th to be specific.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's by an author.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons I think I'm so excited about it is that it's an author I've
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: wanted to read books by,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: but haven't yet.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is like a extra ability to,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: there's a little bit extra reason to be excited about this one is it might open up
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: the door for me and someone that I've been wanting to read.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the title is part of the draw.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I like the cover from Knopf as well.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, their little box that they sent me, I think the box itself was designed based on this cover.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it came with a little pin that's like, you know, from the cover in some way.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of some fun little swag.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a historical fiction,
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: and she is the author of one that was up for the Booker Prize,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Island of Missing Trees.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Also, know nothing about it, but again, that's a pretty fun title.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say, both of those titles are pretty amazing.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And here is the blurb.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we'll be doing today.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: In the ancient city of Nineveh,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: on the bank of the river Tigris,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia,
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: erudite but ruthless,
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: From its ruins,
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: however,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: emerged a poem,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: the Epic of Gilgamesh,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking sewage-filled River Thames.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: With an abusive alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Arthur's only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher,
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Arthur's world opens up far beyond the slums,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: and one book in particular catches his interest,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Nineveh and Its Remains.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: In 2014,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Turkey,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Narin,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: a 10-year-old Yazidi girl,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family's ancestral
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: lands along the Tigris,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Narin is running out of time.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 2018, London.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, I don't know.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a really ambitious setting and, you know, various timelines.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: I like the kind of connection with the book,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: but it does make me a little bit wary because I really like Anthony Doerr's writing,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: and I did not like Cloud Cuckoo Land,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: which kind of had a,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: not similar,
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: but was also various time periods,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: various things going on,
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: and kind of centered on a book.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see, but I'm hopeful.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is my number five for a reason.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited to sit down and finally read it.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put on the pin.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds really, yeah, you should put on the pin while you read it for sure.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: That does sound fascinating.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, I could see it going either way.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: obviously this is an acclaimed author,
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: so it's not some debut novel where some gutsy youngster is going for it.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is somebody who has clearly put in her time.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and maybe even deceptively more than we would think.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I only know her work for the last few years, but she published her debut in 1998.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: She has 19 books published.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So this is, yeah, you're, you're a hundred percent right.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is not some, some new, her second novel, the bastard of Istanbul.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I heard about that just because it was a long list E for the orange prize back when
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: it was the orange prize.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, she's been around the chops.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was, I hadn't heard about it.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked it up on my phone while you were talking and,
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: At the bottom, it says, you may also like The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we're in a good spot here.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for such an ambitious book, I was looking, it's 464 pages.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like it's a slim little thing.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, that's a lot to be packed in.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'll be very curious to hear what you make of that one.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: August is its date.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll be getting to it soon, I hope.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll let you know.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my number four actually will be out.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not out yet, as I say this, so it definitely counts.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: But by the time this episode airs, it will be out because it comes out July 9th.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: it comes out from donkey archive and it's another one.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: I told you, I kind of have that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I know some people, they see a giant book and they run the other way for me.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the siren song.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I will necessarily read it right away,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: but there's something about those big books and donkey has been really coming out
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: with some great ones lately,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: including like some of the ones we've talked about,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: the garden of seven twilights and some of those other ones.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: This one is Marshland by Otohiko Kaga, translated from Japanese by Albert Novick.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said, they've been specializing in a lot of these big books recently.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is a monster at 884 pages.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Again,
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know anything about this author,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: but I've started to see this one getting some buzz online.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I actually thought it was out because of our friends who've been getting it.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I need to get a hold of that.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had the same thought.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: I had the same thought.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, see if this grabs you.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: It says,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Marshland is an epic novel on a Tolstoyan scale,
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: running from the pre-World War II period to the turbulence of 1960s Japan.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: At 49,
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Atsuo Yukimori is a humble auto mechanic living an almost penitentially quiet life
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: in Tokyo,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: where his co-workers know something of his military record,
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: but nothing of his post-war criminal past.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Out of curiosity,
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: he accompanies his nephew to a demonstration at a nearby university and is
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: gradually drawn into a friendship,
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: then a romance,
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: with Wakaka Akihara,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: the brilliant but mentally unstable daughter of a university professor.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: As some of the student radical groups turn to violence and terrorism,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Atsuo and Wakaka find themselves framed for the lethal bombing of a Tokyo train.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: During their long imprisonment,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: the novel becomes a Kafkaesque procedural,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: revealing the corrupt intricacies of the police and judicial system of Japan.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: It says,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Marshland is a revelation of modern Japanese history and culture,
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: a major novel from the hand of a master well known in his own country,
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: but virtually unheard of so far in the United States and Anglophone world in general.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, I mean,
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Tolstoy and Kafka both mentioned in the blurb.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know that some of these blurbs can be a little bit over the top,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: but I mean,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: that definitely does get my attention.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's one of the reviews is from Jack Rockwell from Words Without Borders.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it just has a few pieces that kind of stand out to me.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: It says,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: His criticism of the criminal justice system of mid-century Japan could just as
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: well have been written about the United States today.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And Anglophone readers interested in the subject will find his work here highly rewarding.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Readers interested in a brilliant,
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: high-definition portrait of post-war Japan will find little to compare to this that
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: is readily available in the English language.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that added up together to make me pretty intrigued by this.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I've told you before, like, I honestly...
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Japanese literature.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've had some that I just absolutely love and then other ones that I sometimes struggle to connect with.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's an area that I continue to strive to kind of figure out what it is that
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes doesn't work for me.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: But then when it does hit, it's been some of my favorite books that I've read.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So just that that region in general in this book in particular continues to really call to me.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: It might be a great gateway, just the post-war Japan.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I've mentioned,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: when you said that before,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've said,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: look,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: go on to the Criterion channel and start binging some of these great post-war Japan
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: filmmakers and the things that they're dealing with are,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: just to see that...
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: That that complex nuance and my friend David Blakeslee and I did the Eclipse viewer
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: on Criterion Eclipse sets and so many of those were post-war Japan and he is a
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: great kind of historian as he's talking about movies.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: He always gives some great context for when the film came out and the things it's wrestling with.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that sounds just like a wonderful book.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love the cover.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be honest with you.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I first saw the cover.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't read the title.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't read about the book.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, that looks like a great book from donkey.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I saw the spine and how big it was and thought,
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know it looks like a book I,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: I,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to read,
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: but my,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: like you said,
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: not run the other way,
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: but circle around for a long time before I do.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: So just because of the intimidation and excitement factor.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's true.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually took your advice.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: I obviously watched a fair amount of Ozu,
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: and I went and watched Late Spring after our last conversation,
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: which does take place in that post-World War II era.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then An Artist of the Floating World comes to mind, that wonderful Ishiguro story.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: novel where there's the man who's kind of dealing with his role in the war and some guilt over that.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you're right.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's definitely so much fascinating possibility there.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, anyway, really looking forward to that one.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my next one is maybe one of the more like
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: probably will be one of the more talked about books is my guess from my list just
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: because of the author and her history,
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: especially she,
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: she finally and recently won the Pulitzer prize.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this is her followup.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is Louise Erdrich, the mighty red.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: This comes out October 1st and I can't wait.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I love her books.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and,
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: been a fan of her for years, kind of hoping someday she is a contender for the Nobel prize.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think what she's doing is important while also being really incredible storytelling and fiction making.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this one, it, this is the blurb.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: It says history is a flood, the mighty red.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, it's that part in italics.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that might have.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I probably should have skipped it.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just started with this.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Gary Geist,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: a terrified young man set to inherit two farms,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: is desperate to marry Kismet Poe,
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: an impulsive lapsed goth who can't read her future,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: but seems to resolve his.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo, a gentle red-haired homeschooled giant, is also in love with Kismet.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's determined to steal her and is eager to be a homewrecker.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Kismet's mother,
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Crystal,
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: hauls sugar beets for Gary's family and on her nightly runs,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: tunes into the darkness of late night radio,
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: sees visions of guardian angels and worries for the future,
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: her daughters and her own.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Human time,
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: deep time,
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: red river time,
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: the half-life of herbicides and pesticides,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: is set against the speed of climate change,
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: the depletion of natural resources,
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008,
• 35:59
  2009.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: How much does a dress cost?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: A used car?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: A package of cinnamon rolls?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can you see the shape of your soul in the ever-changing clouds?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that the you know,
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: that last sentence or that last paragraph,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: maybe maybe lays it on a little thick with the blurb writer trying to be a little poetic.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what all is saying necessarily, but the premise here sounds fantastic.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she always seems to be able to get these,
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: really intimate stories with very specific individuals and their their unique
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: circumstances and dreams and all of that to tell a broader story.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I just,
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: like I say,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited for anything she does,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: even if the blurb,
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: while this one does make me excited to read it,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: also has parts that make me not excited for the blurb.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: If it's like the blurb, I'll be like, it's a little bit too much.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I seem to remember you saying, have you read it?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: most or maybe even all of her?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have not read all of her books.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I've me, I don't even think I've read half of her books.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I had that in my head,
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: but,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: it is,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: she is someone that I save and,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: and think,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: this is when I'm going to want to read,
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of them are her,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: her,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: her first few books,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: probably the first half of her career is where I'm really lacking in,
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: in what I've read.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think I told you, maybe what you remember is we did have this conversation.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: There was one of hers.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the one that won the Pulitzer.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was the one before that.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Night Watchman.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Was that the one?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a bit since I've looked at her list.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: The Roundhouse, maybe?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't love the Roundhouse.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I didn't either.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't like, I think it was the Night Watchman.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: The Sentence was the one that I read that I really liked.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's the one.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the one that won the Pulitzer.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: um i love uh plague of doves um my favorite might be la rose just love love it so
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: excited about this one yeah no i as i have said several times when talking about
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: her i had mixed i i started with the roundhouse and didn't love it on top of that
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: it was that terrible audiobook that i've mentioned several times where it just the
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: narrator was honestly probably i mean i don't mean to pick on anyone but it was
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: probably the worst narration i've ever heard for an audiobook
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: But then I did follow up last year and read the sentence and absolutely loved it.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that gave me the motivation to keep diving in because she's just one of those
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: authors that clearly I know that,
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: she's on the list of not that I have to read it,
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: but I feel it within myself that I should and want to read more of her stuff.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so maybe La Rose would be the one that I would try.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love that one.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I would definitely recommend it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was one that she came out with.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you want one that's a little bit different from her, you know, sprawling,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: kind of built into the world of Louise Erdrich,
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: her,
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: her big,
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: big books,
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: the,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of them tend to fit together in some way.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but she came out with a book in 2010 called shadow tag, which is much smaller in, in, in scale.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, and, well, I think it's even much smaller in, you know, the physical book.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: I might recommend that trying that one too.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: I really, that book,
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was probably the book that got me really excited to read more of her work and
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: start working backwards and forwards.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'd go with that.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's good to know.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like we always say,
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: it's fun to have authors like that where you know that there's a lot to still look
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: ahead to.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have one more at least by her that I own called Painted Drum.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've read that one yet.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't read that one yet.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's one I have.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we've talked about this too, and we did this on our Completionist episode.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you have an author's titles in front of you, and it's just so exciting.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to break that spell.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of life's joy is in the excitement.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, anticipation.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I'm going to break our streak here.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm...
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: fairly certain that this is going to spoil one of your remaining books.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll see.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: So this one comes out September 3rd from New Directions.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's from an author that we have talked about a lot.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: One of your favorites, I think.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Laszlo Krasnohorkai's Hirsch 07769.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Translated from Hungarian by Otili Molzett.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't even know this one was coming out.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, just kidding.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't had enough coffee.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: There was a moment where I was like, surely that can't be true.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, this one is the one that straddled my list.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't put it on.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: For the main reason that I do have a copy of it.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was putting my list together, there was one of our Instagram friends who was reading it.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't know.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Loved a lot of his most recent work.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I love Satan tango.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I love the melancholy of resistance war and war, but then you get into like sable there below.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he gets a little bit more mystical.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know yet what Hirsch 07769 was about.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he kind of dispelled it.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: He said, this is like your favorites of his.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said, oh, that changes everything.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm really excited.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I had been putting my list together and thought, this can sit on the border.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: We'll probably talk about this.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad to have that opportunity to explain myself.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And to make it so that you covered it.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't have to use up one of my spots.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: See, that's a very crafty move.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: No,
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: it's interesting because a lot of my excitement for him,
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have not read a lot of his books and it's for the same reasons you were just
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: talking about with Luis Erdrich.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, I know I'm going to love so many of them.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so like I read Satan Tango and I've read some of his shorter novellas and
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: things like that,
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: but I've been saving the melancholy of resistance and some of the other ones.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: kind of savoring them.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I always feel a little bit hypocritical saying I'm so, oh, go ahead.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say, what one did you read?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Satan Tango.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I always feel a little hypocritical saying I'm so excited to read one of these
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: books when I have like a shelf full of his like all-time classics and some of his
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: other ones that I haven't even gotten to.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's just,
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: honestly,
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of it was your enthusiasm for some of his earlier works years ago
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: that really got me just,
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: there are certain authors where you just know
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to love a lot of their stuff anyway.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: this one,
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can just read the description and you can see,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you you've read it by now,
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: but the first part of it won't surprise anyone written in one cascading sentence
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: with the power of atomic particles colliding Krasnohorkai's novel is a tour de force,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: a morality play,
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: a blistering satire,
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: a devastating encapsulation of our helplessness when confronted with the moral and
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: environmental dilemmas we face.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: the National Book Award winner's breathtaking new novel about neo-Nazis,
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: particle physics,
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: and Johann Sebastian Bach.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it says, the gentle giant Florian Hirsch has a problem.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Having faithfully attended Herr Kohler's adult education classes in physics,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: he's convinced that disaster is imminent.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel to
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: convince her of the danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Florian works for the boss,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: the head of a local neo-Nazi gang,
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: who has taken him under his wing and gotten him work as a graffiti cleaner in the
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: small eastern German town of Cana.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: The boss is enraged by a graffiti artist who is defacing the various monuments to
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Johann Sebastian Bach,
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm going to slaughter a lot of these names,
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thuringia,
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: with wolf emblems.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: A Bach fanatic and director of an amateur orchestra,
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: the boss is determined to catch the culprit with the help of his gang.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: Florian has no choice but to join the chase.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Havoc ensues when real wolves are sighted in the area.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, it sounds wild and crazy like so many of his other ones.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if that made you think that what you had heard, that it was closer to the older style.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it does sound close to the older style.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I think one of the things I love about his older books is the
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Almost otherworldly settings,
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: even though they're just the dour,
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: rainy,
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: muddy places that those other books were set in.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Isolated villages that almost feel like they're like the Bardo or something.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I love that setting.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this one is obviously going to be different,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: but it also doesn't sound mystical,
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: which is one of the things that it's not that I begrudge him or even think I
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: couldn't eventually maybe try again and understand it better.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: But that just kind of pulled me away.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: and I'd heard,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: I admit this isn't just something I'd heard from others that,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: oh,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: he's going in a new direction.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to be as dour and all that.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: I always give you a hard time for your taste in the most depressing of books,
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: but I do it because I'm making fun of myself maybe a little bit too.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I tend to like that stuff quite a bit.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was skeptical of some of his later books.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, we have The World Goes On.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just looking at my stack over here.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't really know what that one's even about.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's here.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: It arrived, you know, some years ago.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Baron Winkum's Homecoming is another one that I have not really even grappled with.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I have seen more people reading lately and loving.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought,
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: OK,
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: I need to readdress my balance here and figure out why I have started to cross off
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: someone who,
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: a decade ago,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: I could never have believed I would start
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: like just letting books come and go.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's interesting.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: A good reminder for them.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Baron Winkheim in particular,
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: like you said,
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this is true,
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: but I feel like a lot of people have kind of grouped it in with some of those all
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: time greats of his.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if that's a literal grouping,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: like if there's any connection or if it's more of just,
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: they belong in the same tier in people's estimations,
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm,
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: like I said,
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've,
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've read a couple of his,
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: continue to just buy them you know i have quite a few of his that unread but this
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: one in particular does excite me and i'm sure i will pick it up and hopefully maybe
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: i can start working from the back end of his long list and make my way there
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: eventually all right yeah excellent i well
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it, Paul.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: They did send me an, or a copy.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I've, I've definitely got it on my, my plans.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: So is that one?
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you have it in front of you.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't notice how many pages it is.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where it falls in the, he has some that are tiny, some that are huge.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say not tiny and not huge.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere in the three or something.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's my recollection from, from holding it in my hands.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: weeks ago yeah I don't have it open on my screen to really know we're completely
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: wrong I know it's not tiny yeah but I also think like I'm looking over here at like
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Baron Winkum and
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: some of those other massive ones.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's put it this way.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not one of these massive 800 page books,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: but it could be,
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: it could well be a five,
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: four or 500 page books,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: which might still be,
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: pretty big.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember that.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Should we look it up?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Should we just look it up?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just look it up.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's,
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: let's figure this out so that people are sitting there like having,
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: having to go and do this for themselves.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: September 3rd.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: This has it.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say we were way off 512 pages.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: I did say four or 500, didn't I?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or did I say three?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think you said four or 500.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you got it.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it is on the, on the, on the bigger side of, of all that.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: But again,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: when I look over here at the,
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: some of the other books on my shelf,
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: they're probably just,
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit bigger.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Relatively easy to read.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: One sentence.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's only 500 pages.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: Breeze right through that sucker.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: My next one is,
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: again,
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: from an author that I don't have any experience with in terms of previous books
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: that she has written.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I've been,
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: again,
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: more of this over the last few months,
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: interested in reading her books because I heard this one was coming out.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is Danzy Senna.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is Percival Everett's wife.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that I started looking into this is that he was in conversation with
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ann Patchett for the release of James.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: And she said that she had just read Danzi Senna's,
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: she said Danzi's,
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: because they all,
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: hang out and all that.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: But Danzi Senna's upcoming book comes out September 3rd called Colored Television.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: And said she just loved it.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of those books that she wishes she could put into people's hands right now.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I love it.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: want to read the books that personal Everett's partner is writing,
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: and,
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: and,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: but,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: but I haven't,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: she's also written new people,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: um,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: symptomatic Caucasian,
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: a novel,
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: which I do think I'd heard about.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: but this one colored television,
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: it says Jane has high hopes that her life is about to turn around.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: After a long,
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: precarious stretch of bouncing among sketchy rentals and sublets,
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: she and her family are living in luxury for a year,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: house-sitting in the hills above Los Angeles.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: The gig magically coincides with Jane's sabbatical,
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel,
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: a century-spanning epic.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Her artist husband Lenny dubs her mulatto war and peace.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Finally,
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: some semblance of stability and success seemed to be within her grasp,
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: but things don't work out quite as hoped.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: Desperate for a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: a hot producer with a major developing deal at a streaming network,
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: he seems excited to work with a real writer.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: And together they begin to develop the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Things finally seem to be going right for Jane until they go terribly wrong.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: I could read that and think that is a Percival Everett book.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just the themes and the ways it kind of is addressing issues.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: So when I saw this was coming, I thought, oh, I've got to get my hands on that one.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: And likely.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: put her in a, in that, I want to read everything she's written category, but who knows?
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't even read a word she's written.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I could be completely off, but this is how my brain works.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're not alone in that.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's really fun.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said,
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: it's,
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: it's interesting because he has so many books left that I,
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: by the time that I,
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: he came onto my radar and I think many people's radar already had a huge backlist
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: that I still need to catch up on.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if her stuff starts adding to that, it can keep me very busy.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't... Okay, let's look and see.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: How many books has Danzy Senna written?
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: This one's not going to be quite as hard.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: This will be her sixth book.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Still, that's a decent chunk of history.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and one of them is a short story collection.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: You are free for 2011.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this is her fifth novel.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and get started.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: You only have to read four novels by next time we meet and tell me your thoughts
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: and I'll try and do the same.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: As you know, I have nothing else really to read at any point, so that shouldn't be a problem at all.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't just list off an 800,
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: 900-page book as your book coming out over the next few days as one of your choices,
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: followed up by a 500-page book.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we won't even mention a little slim thing called Miss McIntosh that continues to... That's right.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think that this looks fantastic.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's coming out from Riverhead Books.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: And more and more,
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just...
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're kind of another...
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: they are part of a bigger publishing group.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I love the books that they publish.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: They get me... You know, they publish quite a...
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: a diverse and interesting list.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they do.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that might just come up again later on.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: But not now, not now.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: My second one,
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think if we went an entire episode,
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: especially an episode like this,
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: and we didn't mention NYRB,
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: we might get our license taken away.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: um so that's not why this sounds absolutely fascinating and it's from an author
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: that i love um coming out october 22nd seeing further by esther kensky translated
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: from the german by caroline schmidt and this is from the nyrb line but not the
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: classics line just to be clear um her previous book rombo was also released through
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: their nyrb
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: line.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I've mentioned her before.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: I've read and really enjoyed several of her books, Grove and River.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I do actually still need to read Rambo.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't gotten to that one yet.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: But based on the two I have read, I just absolutely love her writing.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: She does a lot with nature, but it's not always...
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: at least in the first couple of books, it's not always like the beauty of nature.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's,
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: it's finding beauty within like,
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: a canal ditch or something like that,
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: where there's still birds and things like that.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really interested in some of the juxtapositions that she creates.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: and again,
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that is the case in Rambo,
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: cause I haven't read that one yet and we'll have to see what this seeing further,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: but,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think this one in particular will appeal to you,
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor,
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: and probably any other cinephiles in our audience.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the description.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: It says,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: in this Zabaldian autobiographical novel by a leading German author and translator,
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: a narrator attempts to revive a rundown Hungarian movie theater,
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: an unpromising endeavor that soon leads into a consideration of the building's
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: history and an homage to the power of the cinema,
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: imperiled as it may be in our time.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: so that's kind of the first blurb and then i found a little bit more it says while
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: traveling through the great alfold the vast plain in southeastern hungary the
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: narrator of seeing further stops in an all but vacant town near the romanian border
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: there she happens upon a dilapidated cinema once the heart of the village it has
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: been boarded up for years
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Entranced by the mozzi,
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: as cinema is known in Hungarian,
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: she soon finds herself embarking on the colossal task of reviving it,
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: compelled by what she calls a dream in a glass coffin,
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: the preservation of the cinematic experience,
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: beautiful and undecayed like snow white,
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: in some people's thoughts and memories,
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: nourishing the fantasy of its reawakening.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: What follows is a history of place,
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: told by the town's few remaining inhabitants and uncovered in physical traces of
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: the past,
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: left behind in the grand old building.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: Seeing further illuminates the cinema's former role as a communal space for
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: collective imagining,
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: a site rooted in ritual that has steadily disappeared.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: For Esther Kinski,
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: it nevertheless remains a place of wonder,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: a dark room that unfurls a vastness not beholden to the ordinary rules of time and space.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: Seeing further is an homage to the cinema in words and pictures.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: I love her anyway,
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: but then hearing the premise of this one,
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: just sounds wonderful to me.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: A passion project based around something that we both love by an author that I've loved in the past.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: To me, that shot her up to number two on the list.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: And an author I haven't read yet.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Riverhead, I believe they were the ones who published Grove and River here in the US.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're right.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so many times I put her books in a cart to buy.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like, okay, I'm not buying any books today.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't ever go through it.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I haven't read anything by her yet,
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: but definitely starting to feel like I'm I'm losing out more and more and more.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if there was ever one that might win you over,
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: sounds like it would take a lot of boxes for you.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just that just that write up makes me go.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go in and think about that stuff because I think about some of that already.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, Rombo, that's one I don't actually own, the one before this.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I need to go ahead and just grab both of these.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think I do have Rambo here somewhere.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe I'll just,
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: again,
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: as we always say,
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: there's nothing else to read,
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: nothing else going on.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just start that one today.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been wondering what I should read.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: See, I'm making that easy for you.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my next one, let's go back to archipelago books.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: I actually thought this is where you were going to go when you started to talk
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: about archipelago,
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: though it makes perfect sense that you went with the de Kerengal book.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: But this is Sister Deborah.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: by Scholastik Mukasanga coming out October 8th.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: listeners who are new to the show may not know,
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: but Paul and I did a whole show on Scholastik Mukasanga talking about each one of
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: her books that we had in English.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time we knew this one was down the pipeline.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think I thought it was coming out last year,
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: maybe sometime in 2023,
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm delighted to see that it is on the slate for the end of this year.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds fantastic.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'll read the blurb.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: When time-worn ancestral remedies fail to heal young Ikirizi's maladies,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: she is rushed to the Rwandan hillsides.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: From her termite perch under the coral tree, health blooms under Sister Deborah's hands.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: Women bare their breasts to the rising sun as men under thatched roofs stand,
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: stunned and impotent before this female fury.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now grown,
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ikirizi unearths the truth of Sister Deborah's passage from America to 1930s Rwanda
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: and the mystery surrounding her sudden departure.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: In colonial records, Sister Deborah is a pathogen, an incident.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: Who is the keeper of truth, Ikeresi impels us to ask.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who stands at the threshold of memory?
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: Did we dance?
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: Did she heal?
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: Did we look to the sky with wonder?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ikeresi writes on, pulling Sister Deborah out from the archive, inscribing her with breath.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: A beautiful novel that works in the slippages of history.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sister Deborah,
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: at its core,
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: is a story of what happens when women,
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: black women and girls,
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: seek the truth by any means.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that comes out in October,
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: translated by Mark Polizotti,
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: and he's done several of her other books,
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: just fantastic books.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: yeah i will admit i was playing a little bit of poker there um i was very close to
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: adding that but i was surely trevor will add it so we can still get a mention in
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: and i can it kind of what you did with kresna horkai so right no i i think very
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: very fondly of that project that we both took on to read all of her books and talk
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: about them and i've talked about
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have a tendency to kind of scatter authors across time,
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: dipping in and out,
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: rather than how some people will do like a full-on project,
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: like our friend,
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: Louis Panini,
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: will just go through and read the entire works of authors.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I rarely do that,
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: but doing that with her work,
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: with Scholastique Mukasonga's work,
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: was one of the more powerful experiences because you could just pick up on these threads,
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: these connections.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: all these other things.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it just, it built almost into like a big masterwork.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so,
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: like you said,
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: just to hear that she has another one coming out,
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was absolutely thrilled and we'll pick it up for sure as soon as it comes out.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you promised another book by Riverhead in your list, and you've got only one left.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm assuming that's where we're at.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this one, boy, the September-October timeline is really strong right now.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's always so good.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: September 24th from Riverhead, The Impusium, A Health Resort Horror Story by Olga Tokarczyk.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: So seeing anything by... Should have known.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: It probably was pretty predictable, but anything by Tukarczyk.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then reading the description of this one, holy cow, it sounds amazing.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I love a health resort horror story.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it says,
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: "...the Nobelist's latest masterwork,
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I,
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas."
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: September 1913,
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: a young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's guest house for
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: gentlemen in the village of Gorbersdorf,
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: a health resort in the Cilician Mountains.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: Every evening,
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: great issues of the day.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Monarchy or democracy?
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do devils exist?
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are women born inferior?
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: War or peace?
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse in the surrounding hills.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: Someone, or something, seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: Little does the newcomer realize,
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: as he tries to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: sinister forces beyond,
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: that they have already chosen their next target.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain,
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: Tukartik revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it with signature boldness,
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: inventiveness,
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: humor,
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: and bravura.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, on top of everything else, Magic Mountain has to be the bait to get me in.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that one, just everything about it sounds absolutely fascinating to me.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: I love the creepy horror part of it.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love anything set in that time period.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sanitarium on top of everything else sounds pretty great.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: that one,
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: as soon as I saw it,
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think I must have known that this was coming maybe,
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't know.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many books come across our radar.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes even if I heard about it a year ago or something,
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: it may have been swamped under a little bit.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as I remembered that this one was coming and saw it on the list, it jumped to the top for me.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's on my long list.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree that the way it's written up makes it sound so good and intriguing.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: But even just last night, and I can't remember who it was.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: posted some lines from from it i think maybe the beginning where she talks about
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: the the misogynistic lines that she or things that she talks about in in the book
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: or lines that she references or whatever she goes i got them from these folks and
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: then lists a bunch of uh
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: leaders, men, authors, you know, just a variety, just, just there.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is where they came from folks.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow, that's, that's a gutsy.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's from the,
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: I assume it's from the Emposium since it's coming out and I had not seen that
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: anywhere else.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh, you know, so it should be, should be, should be really, really great.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I, I, again, if I would have been sitting here thinking just a little bit harder, I
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: or at all.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: I would have known that was your number one.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, no worries.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's good to keep you in suspense.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that you still have a little bit of a books of Jacob hangover.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: You'll be happy to see it.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a slim 320 pages.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: I did see that already.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely have that hangover to the point where I still haven't gone back and
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: read flights and,
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: um,
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: and drive the plow,
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_00: drive your plow.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the other one that, that, that I know people love, um,
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: because I'm kind of waiting to cleanse my palate still.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Though I didn't hate the books of Jacob, it just, you know, it was such a...
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: The Books of Jacob is another monster that I have yet to read,
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: so I can't even say that I'm a completionist on Descartes.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: But the two that you mentioned previous are two of my very favorites.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can you pick out just out of what you know, what's my number one, Paul?
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, boy.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you'll guess.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing I'll say, and I don't know if this is more of a broad guess, but I will say I've...
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've been surprised that you haven't had as many of our usual favorite publishers
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: as I might have thought you would.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if this potentially could be an NYRB classic or would we actually
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: have a stunning upset and not have a single NYRB classic mentioned in our...
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: preview do you i could just mention some of the nyrb classics that are coming out
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: that didn't did well yes they're highly anticipated didn't make my list exactly
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: okay um you know i am excited for waiting for the fear by okaz otai or a tie um and
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: i i actually have have started reading that one
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're publishing John McGahern's The Pornographer, which I'm excited about.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: Never read that one, though I've liked a lot of his other work.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: They are also publishing the first book they've ever published by Jean Escheneau,
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: one of my favorite authors.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've read, I don't know, a dozen of his books, and this one's called Command Performance.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: I really like his his his interesting, strange, strange books.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so that one was the one that was almost on my list.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're coming out with Leonore Carrington's The Stone Door,
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mavis Gallant's The Uncollected Stories.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: The one I thought Johnson Sun City is coming out.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was going to say.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's the one I thought might be on your list.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, it wasn't, it's not easy leaving them off.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think part of the reason I did is because this could easily be an NYRB classics episode every time.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I'll be talking about them and seeing them,
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: but I also was being genuine about these other ones.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a,
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: there's a sense of intrigue by these other ones because they weren't ones that were
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: necessarily on my radar for a long time,
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: which the NYRB classics,
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to know what's coming next.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: Quite, quite a ways down the pipe.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're, they're anticipated, highly anticipated, but maybe not quite the same.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like,
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: as I'm sitting down to make this list,
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: ones that pop up as,
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh,
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: that,
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: that looks,
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: that I really like a surprise for me.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: I like the way you did it this year because I feel like it complimented nicely some
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: of the ones that I picked and some of the ones you mentioned weren't on my radar.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: So no.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: OK, so I struck out.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not an MWRB classic.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: it's going to be maybe a little bit silly and anticlimactic,
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: but I'd be lying if I didn't say that the book that I just can't wait till it comes out.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: is We Solve Murders by Richard Osman.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he's the fellow who wrote the four books of the Thursday Murder Club books.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I just love those books.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love the characters in them.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: The mysteries are fun.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're good mysteries.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, that's so beside the point of these just delightful characters.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the best writing I've ever read about aging and grief and
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: All of that just it's they're just really emotional and well done.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: So he he announced, you know, a while back that he's going to write these four.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: He'll probably get back to the Thursday Murder Club someday.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: But he had another idea in mind.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it was this one and I've been excited to see where he goes as much as I would
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: love him just to continue to just give me what I want.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_00: I also am excited for him to give me something I might not be expecting,
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: but it's still,
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: still looks fun.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully still has his,
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: his humor and is,
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: is something that,
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: that just delights me,
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_00: but who knows,
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: maybe this is going to be some really gritty,
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know, crime novel that he's like, I finally can get it out.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't write this kind of stuff in the Thursday murder club, but it doesn't sound like it.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: It says Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: The pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: His days of adventure are over.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy's job now.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Working in private security every day is dangerous.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: She's currently on a remote island protecting mega best-selling author Rosie
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: D'Antonio until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now,
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I could have,
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: and maybe a part of me was tempted to maybe put this at number five or maybe just
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: an honorable mention somewhere down the road or just read it and mention it
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: somewhere else.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: But...
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: I do really like these and am really excited for when it comes out.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's September 17th.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, again, just loaded months.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it did make me kind of sit there and go, okay, I've got all these, you know, Sister Deborah.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to be a really important book to me.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why put We Solve Murders first?
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no real reason for it.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're both highly anticipated.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to rank them.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: based on all of that.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought if I was in the bookstore today and both of them were sitting there
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_00: and I bought both of them,
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: which one would I just sit down and read?
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd sit down and read.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: We solve murders for, for multiple reasons.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it wouldn't be because I was trying to, to, you know, discount or dismiss, uh,
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these other books that I think are are important.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of brought up that interesting line between this more commercial fare,
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: this,
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: books that you read for the for the fun of it.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_00: For the entertainment versus books that you read for the entertainment.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: the impact and the, all of that.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I, I don't know how to rank and, and, and fiddle with them in any way.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have to talk about things in some kind of order and just saying,
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: which one would I sit down right now and,
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: and read?
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is where I'd begin, you know?
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, I like that.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, not that you need to justify it at all, but that makes total sense.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I also like seeing you wriggle in the web that you wove because you're the one
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: that made us rank these.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you have no one to blame but yourself.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I could have avoided it all.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I like that.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's fun to just think of it that way because,
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: it's just a fun little wrinkle to put on things.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's me.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I made the web to begin with, because it is interesting to think about it.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not important and it isn't, you know...
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: it doesn't really say a whole lot,
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: but at the same time,
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: it's kind of fun to figure out ways to,
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_00: to,
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: to talk about these things.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it brings up other issues like,
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting here thinking,
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_00: do I want to put that as my number one?
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are people going to think?
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I like thinking about that.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I like addressing those little, little parts of, of, of me.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: and then a week or a month,
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: as we talk about,
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_01: it's also arbitrary that there could be another one that would be
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: blow past all these or they might move around in our orders, but it's fun as of today.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's where we stand.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, did you have any other honorable mentions?
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I have a couple that I could just buzz through real fast that I wanted to make sure to mention.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go ahead and list them, and I'll list some of mine.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think some of mine, I'm wondering if you knew they were on the way here.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not surprised they're not on your list.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I wouldn't be surprised.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_01: The first one that I was thinking of was The Plains by Federico Falco.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: coming out from Charco Press, translated by Jennifer Croft.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And for those who don't remember,
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: that's the same author who wrote A Perfect Cemetery,
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_01: which just came out from Charco recently and has been highly acclaimed.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I won't read the whole thing, but that one does sound really good.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: It says, in the city, the notion of the hours of the day of the passage of time is lost.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_01: In the countryside, that is impossible, the narrator tells us.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_01: He goes on to recount his day-to-day life in the house with a garden where he's
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_01: isolated himself in an attempt to cut off contact with everything and everyone and
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_01: possibly to flee from himself.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Time is almost palpable here.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: It goes by without haste and allows you to feel even the tiniest details around you.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Insects, noises, a falling leaf, the smell of damp earth.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that one, on top of the fact that it's from an author who intrigues me
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: The ideas behind that one sound very good.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Another one I keep,
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: this is a common theme for me,
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_01: but an author that I keep buying all of his books and I've not yet actually read
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_01: any of them.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure if it's Elias or Eliash, but Eliash Khoury.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's had quite a few come out from Archipelago and there's a new one coming out
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: November 12th called Children of the Ghetto,
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Star of the Sea by him,
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_01: translated by Humphrey Davis.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: That is definitely pretty high on my list.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_01: of books I'd like to read.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then another one from Archipelago,
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Tomas Gonzalez,
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: who's an author that I've really enjoyed some of his work in the past,
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: has a new one coming out August 27th called Fog at Noon that sounds really good to
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: me as well.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So those are a couple that leapt out to me.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the others were the NYRBs that you already mentioned as well.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's one that I was going to bring up, but technically it doesn't come out until 2025.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it doesn't count.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I know.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it's going to be I can already just tell you it's going to be at or near the
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: top of your first half of.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think I know what you're talking about.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Looking ahead.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we can either tease it or you can take a guess either way.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are you talking about the Cilentiary?
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or not the Cilentieri.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_00: What is the new one coming out?
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Suicides.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to say,
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that one would be probably like your number one or two,
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_01: but then I saw it barely creeps into 2025.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it got disqualified January 7th.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Antonio de Benedetto's The Suicides, the third book of his kind of loose...
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we call it a trilogy, but three pack of books that are somewhat related in some ways.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Waiting Trilogy, I remember exactly how they put it.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's what it is.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that one too.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_01: there's anytime a Clarice Lispector shows up on any list on New Directions has one
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_01: coming out July 30th from her,
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_01: The Beseeched City.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there's all kinds of honorable mentions and beyond the ones that we mentioned today,
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_01: there's lots of good stuff that'll keep people occupied for sure.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: One of them that would have probably made my list,
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_00: but I have actually read it now,
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_00: and we'll be talking about it.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come out until December, and that is The Voyage Home by Pat Barker.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is the third book in her kind of Women of Troy series of novels.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say more on that another time, but it doesn't come out until December, so...
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Another one that I have started and I'm excited about and I'm finding very
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_00: delightful is A Philosophy of Translation by our friend Damien Searles.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that one's coming out later.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the dates for the rest of these because I just kind of put the list
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_00: together and didn't go digging into them.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: But another one, The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am seeing folks getting that.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting early copies of that, and I've still not read a Murakami novel.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is this the one to start with?
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I love her books so much,
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_00: and I would like to actually sit down and just reread the ones I've read from this
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_00: world that she's created.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_00: and, and catch up on the ones I haven't and get to this one.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: our friend Simon Savage,
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_00: put on the,
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was the women prize website that that's what he's planning to do this
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_00: summer as a summer of Strout.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I thought that's a lovely idea.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_00: another author I haven't read anything by,
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm wondering if,
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think you just read some,
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_00: the,
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_00: the book that he's most famous for,
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_00: um,
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sergio de la Pava.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, every arc bends, its radius is coming out.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is that, that one?
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Are you like, Ooh, I love that.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember what's the name of the other one.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now you put me on the spot.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm, I'm.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't remember either.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'll cut this out so you look like you knew exactly.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've fallen for that one before.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: A Naked Singularity.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_00: A Naked Singularity.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, the Singularity?
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_01: That was another one of those where I just kept seeing it.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I had like almost a cult following.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, I did decide and I listened to the audio.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I told you it worked really well as an audio for me because it's just such a...
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_01: The way it flows and the dialogue and everything, it worked really well.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's interesting.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would definitely be curious about that one.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll definitely be reading that one.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Richard Flanagan has a book called question seven.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's a Booker winner of the last decade.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't know enough about him to that, that made my, you know, was it a real contender?
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but one that I don't, you know, didn't read is mother dead by big dish.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can't, I don't know how to say that name.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but, um,
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's another book coming out by her called If Only that looks really good.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was close to getting onto my list.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_00: If Only, Vigdish Hjort, or that's how I'm saying it.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to say it.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Slave Road by John Edgar Weidman.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that one, I, I do like, uh, John Edgar Weidman's, um, stories there.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I've read them mostly in the New Yorker and really like them.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited about that.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and one that I thought could come up on your list is Anima, a wild pastoral by Kapka Kasabova.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: We both read Border relatively recently.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is just has another one of those great covers.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've been looking forward to this one.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, thanks for mentioning that one.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I had forgotten because I just picked up her third one when I was in Chicago recently.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I have read the first one.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Here are others that I thought could pop up on your list.
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, might as well bring them up.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_00: We got Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then The Two Richards.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lazarus Man by Richard Price.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Playground by Richard Powers.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those both would appeal to me.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: I love Richard Price.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't read everything that he's put out, but I really do like his stuff.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then Clockers.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_01: What was the other one?
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Lush Life.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Lush Life.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then he wrote under a pseudonym.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_01: There was another one and I'm spacing on the name of it, but it had like white in the title.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_01: um that came out yeah that's very intriguing he was one of the writers on the show
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: the wire among other things and the the ones of his that i've loved have that same
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_01: whatever it's just the dialogue and just the the grittiness but also the humanity
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_01: so yeah i didn't realize he had another one coming out and i feel like it's been a
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_01: while since he's had something so that's pretty exciting and then richard powers is
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_01: another one where
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love the overstory.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Love, love, love it.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_01: But he's another one where I have so many of his backlog that I haven't yet read.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll be curious to see what that one's about for sure.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep on meaning to read more of his books,
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_00: but I did finally read Bewilderment last year,
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: sometime.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the one that opened the door for me.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I still haven't read The Overstory, but I have it.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So good.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Playground has a big... It's a really lovely cover image.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not one that I would pick out the book that has this cover, but I love the picture.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's of a, you know, just...
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_00: underwater manatee maybe a school of fish and the sun's behind it these beautiful
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_00: blues and coral um colors and you know so clearly i mean i'm thinking it's probably
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_00: going to be some something about the ocean in this book very cool all right well i
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_00: just uh made made the the show notes kind of lengthy there at the end but
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's,
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: it's easy to,
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: to look at a,
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_00: a bunch of these lists and,
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_00: and get a little bit overwhelmed.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, take that as it's worth, uh, listeners and, uh,
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if we said a name that intrigues you, let us know what it was.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: What ones did you not know were coming up that now you're excited about?
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or what ones did we not mention that you think, how could you guys not have mentioned this one?
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most exciting publication events of the year.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure there'll be plenty of those.
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: No matter how many of these you list,
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_01: there's,
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_01: inevitably there's going to be some that are missed.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said,
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_01: several of those ones you mentioned at the end,
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like,
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: how did I not even know that was there?
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's amazing as much as we follow this stuff and spend so much time talking to
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_01: people and searching and looking how there can still be those hiding in plain sight
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_01: authors and books coming out,
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_01: which is pretty fun.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul, it's nice to be back in the saddle.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: We took a little bit of a break on our end, recording an episode earlier than we normally would have.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been three weeks since we sat down together.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's delightful to be back.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like it's been a long time.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, it's great to be back with you.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have a great rest of the day out doing great work selling books.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to hear what happens today.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'll send you updates as usual.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bye, everybody.
• 1:24:16
  Bye.
• 1:24:16
  Bye.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to donate to the show,
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: anything and everything,
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_00: even a dollar a month helps and is deeply appreciated.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can become a Patreon at patreon.com slash mooks.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.