[00:00:00] CASEY: I turned this toward books really fast. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.

ANNE BOGEL: It is a book podcast. That’s okay.

CASEY: It is a book podcast. Yeah.

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

Readers, recently you heard me dive into all things book club with our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club community manager, Ginger Horton. We talked a bit about our Patreon community on that episode also, mostly to point out how our book club community is just different from what we’re doing there.

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Readers, today’s guest struggles with perfectionism in her reading life, and I’m confident her dilemma will ring true to many of you. Over the past few years, Florida reader, Casey, has been on a journey of self-discovery.

Coming to terms with her perfectionism and noticing what it means for her reading life has been a big theme. She’s noticed she tends to save good books for later. That’s some uncertain time down the road when circumstances make the timing at long last completely perfect to pick up that book she’d actually prefer to read right now if she’s honest.

But Casey knows that life… Well, Casey has learned that life has a 100% mortality rate and it is a certainty she’ll run out of time to read everything she wants to. So she’s got to decide what should she read right now if that is true. And then how can she prompt herself to actually do it?

[00:03:01] Today, we’re exploring all that and more with special emphasis on finding backlist titles that are a little bit weird, a little bit whimsical, definitely strange and unique, and that just might take Casey by surprise, which she loves. It’s a good one. Let’s get to it.

Casey, welcome to the show.

CASEY: Thank you so much for having me.

ANNE: Oh, I am excited to dig in today. Our team was most intrigued by your submission. We know a lot of readers are going to be very interested in us exploring this topic.

Casey, would you start by telling us about yourself? We want to give our readers a glimpse of who you are.

CASEY: I am a mom in the suburbs. It probably says a whole lot of it.

ANNE: Can everyone tell we were just talking about Liane Moriarty before we hit “record”?

CASEY: Which is not riveting necessarily like that. No one was ever wowed by a mom in the suburbs. But I spend a lot of my life just doing mom things: a lot of driving, a lot of laundry, a lot of buying reads for people’s clarinets, things like that.

[00:04:02] And I also have this mind inside me that used to do really interesting things and that is curious and loves to learn and engage with things that are not necessarily right here in front of me. So being a reader is a way that I have been able to be a mom and have this very quotidian life, but also to have a life of the mind, I guess you could say.

ANNE: I love that. In your submission, you said that it’s a way for you to flex your brain and connect with people, which just made me grin.

CASEY: Yeah, my giant brain muscle. That’s right.

ANNE: I’m so curious. You mentioned that you read a revelatory book at exactly the right time that I think spurred you to reconnect with some of your old hobbies. Is that right?

CASEY: That is right. So I read this book, I think it’s called, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch-

ANNE: Oh my gosh, yes.

CASEY: …which is such a cute title.

ANNE: Oh, I haven’t thought about that in a few years.

CASEY: Yeah. I can’t even remember where I originally heard of this book. I think it might’ve been an NPR interview. And it sounded kind of cute, but it was in a self-help-y direction, feminism, and that was not a thing I read much of, at least at the time.

[00:05:12] But I chewed on it for a little bit and then I picked it up and it felt like a brand new way to see my life, that my life was kind of disappearing inside motherhood. This book is about kind of remembering that you are for more than being a useful tool to people, that you are a human by yourself, that you are allowed to play and enjoy the world.

There was a scene that spoke to me so sharply because the author was interviewing her sister and she said, “Tell me about some of your hobbies.” And her sister said, “Well, gardening.” And then she like put her head down on the table because she doesn’t even garden. She had to make up a hobby that she doesn’t even do.

That really spoke to me, that my life had become really just kind of service. The only thing that ever kind of stuck around through all of that was reading, but I wanted to do a lot more than read. And this book kind of awakened that part of me that was like, you know what, you are here for more than just laundry and driving kids to school.

[00:06:19] ANNE: That is lovely. I forgot about that book. Casey, tell us about your reading life.

CASEY: Well, I have been an achievement-based reader for most of my life.

ANNE: Oh gosh, I can feel so many people groaning and nodding along in their cars right now.

CASEY: Yeah. You know, I always like to have this feeling that I’m kind of like crossing things off of lists and achieving something. You know, I was a reader as a kid. I always had the book under the desk, like so many people that are on this show. And then I had a brief period where I didn’t read at all. I had a boyfriend that kind of discouraged reading, I guess you could say, in my late teens.

ANNE: Oh, that hurts.

CASEY: I know. And then we broke up and I picked it right back up and I kind of came back into it as about a 20-year-old. And from that point on, it was always kind of focused towards reading for fun, but also, you know, I wanted to be the person that nailed those classics that, you know, read a bunch of prize winners.

[00:07:22] I remember walking into the library one day and I picked a book off the shelf and I thought it kind of sounded good, and I noticed this sticker on the front that said, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. And I read it and I liked it. And I thought, Yeah, I’m going to read all of those. I’m going to read all the Pulitzer Prize winners.

ANNE: I’m laughing from the perspective of someone who also has a strong, completist, achieving bent.

CASEY: Yes.

ANNE: I get that.

CASEY: A lot of the Pulitzers are not good, actually. I don’t know that I would recommend it as a life course necessarily for a reader. But it was kind of just like a cool project to be working on. If you want a list to cross things off of the Pulitzers, it’s a great piece of material.

And then from there, I kind of felt like, well, why stop? You know, there’s also the Booker, there’s the National Book Award. So I started trying to read all of those and, you know, very directional, like mixing in a lot of fun reads, but I always kind of was moving towards some goals.

[00:08:24] I started a book club and we met often. You know, like every month I’m dragging these people together to talk about books. So it was a lot of required reading or what felt like required reading. Not required for school, but things that I felt like I had to finish. So that was a lot of the way that the first 15 or 20 years of my adulthood reading life went.

ANNE: And yet around 2019, you said that those projects ended and it really shifted things for you.

CASEY: That’s right. My best friend moved away and he was kind of the heart and soul of the book club with me. We kind of started it together. So I felt like it was a good time to end it. The Pulitzer group that I had joined and been a part of for a long time, and I eventually became the moderator of, or a co-moderator of, we made it through the whole list in 2019. Like that was the end.

I tried to do a mad scramble so I could finish with them because I was, you know, not exactly… you know, I had joined it a long time after they started and wasn’t exactly on the schedule they were. So I had about 15 books left and then I got pregnant again. And I get very sick when I’m pregnant. So it’s about five or six months of not being able to read with each baby.

[00:09:40] So I couldn’t finish on schedule with the Pulitzer group. They shifted after that to recycling through the list, and I had already read a lot of the list and also reading some long list winners from the Pulitzer, which I wasn’t as interested in.

So, all of a sudden, I had this just wide-open gift of time to decide what I was going to read and what actually made me happy to read. So I started out kind of with the same thing. Like I would feel antsy and I would reach for a Pulitzer or something that I felt like I should read.

But more and more I started to mix in different genres, explore, find more of the fun reads that I had not necessarily looked down on, but not been good at seeking out. Maybe look down on a little bit. But I always wanted to find the literary version of a genre read.

[00:10:38] So I started to seek more of those out, something that was well-written and would hold my interest, but that also was a mystery or a fantasy or a sci-fi book where the writing was good enough that I felt engaged and curious, but that the story moved a little bit better than some of the 1924 Pulitzer winners, you know?

ANNE: That’s so fun. We also happen to have an episode coming up. It’s yet to be recorded, but it’s on the calendar for a reader who’s interested in finding books that are literary and mystery literary and fantasy. So that’s going to be a lot of fun.

You know, Casey, in your submission, you talked about your struggles with perfectionism as a reader, and I’m so interested in hearing more about that.

CASEY: Perfectionism is such a funny thing. You know, this is a thing that I would never have dreamed that I had. So my son passed away in 2015, so a long, long time ago. I wanted to kind of be a rule follower, which should have been an indicator, but I wanted to pursue grief counseling. Like that was one of the things that people said you should do.

[00:11:50] So I went and did it and I had a few sessions and they were pretty good. Then I got pregnant with another baby, got sick again. And she said, “You know, why don’t you just come see me after? Like after you have your baby, come on back and we can work a little more.”

So I did. I came back after the baby was born and she said, “I think you have something called perfectionism.” And I just felt like, You have the wrong woman. Because that is not me. Like when you picture perfectionism, I think of a woman in a very neat outfit with a calendar and a pencil behind her ear, and she’s got it all together. Like a type A personality that is just so organized and maybe kind of bossy demanding of others. And that did not sound like me at all.

But I came to find out that perfectionism… I mean, it can look like that. It can look different for different people. But what it can also look like is just a strong desire to do everything right, which sounds good at first, but it can kind of ratchet up and ratchet up until your expectations are so high.

[00:12:59] And you’re kind of overdoing everything. Like if I am going to pack for a vacation, like, oh, man, the sensible thing to do is put clothes in a suitcase, but I’ll find myself like tracking down every perfect thing we might need for the perfect vacation, and then not even packing. You know, kind of like finding a way to fail as attempt to be perfect.

So I had to start to explore that. And one of the earliest ways I could see that this was true was in my reading life. Because one of the things I was doing was with everything waiting for everything to be perfect before I would do it. So if you want to get everything right, sometimes nothing is right. So you kind of find yourself saving everything for someday later. Like, someday, I’m going to apply to talk on What Should I Read Next?. And that someday never comes because you just feel like it’s not the right moment, or you’re not ready, or everything isn’t all in order.

[00:14:05] So with my reading life, saving it for someday kind of looked like that I would find a book that sounded like just made for me. Just the perfect thing. I tend to love the Arctic. I don’t know what it is about all that ice, but I love the Arctic. And I would hear about a book that is like, you know, the Arctic, and it’s interesting, and there’s maybe a fantastical element and I love all these things, and that sounds so great that I’m going to put it away and just never ever touch it and save it for someday.

I think that in one way that can make a person feel really happy, because my favorite flavor is abundance. Like to know that there is so much out there for me, waiting is just the happiest feeling. And I think a lot of my hobbies reflect that. Like you’re not going to run out of books, or you’re not going to run out of jigsaw puzzles, or whatever, you know, those things. You can suck away infinite opportunities to do those things. But it can kind of mean you never get there, right?

Like when you have these books that you felt like sounded like the best thing ever when you were 25, and now you’re 44, and you’ve never read any of them, the mortality rate is 100%. And someday, I will, as a matter of fact, run out of time. And I don’t really want all of those books to still be on my shelf. I want to get to them.

[00:15:30] I’ve gotten a little bit better about looking for those old ones and kind of being a little bit of a disciplinarian about it and saying, Okay, I know it’s terrible to read this book you look forward to so much, but you’re just gonna have to be brave and reach for it.

And so I am starting to go back and say, All right, it’s time, like, choose one, just one, and put it on your pile. You’ve got all this other stuff that maybe isn’t as good. And that’s great. You can rest easy that none of these are going to use up that storehouse of perfect options. And if they disappoint you, it doesn’t matter. But let’s grab just one.

But that instinct still to find the perfect thing and put it somewhere very, very special where I will never touch it, that is still very much a part of my reading life.

ANNE: Casey, I’m so sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing that journey with us and what is meant for your life and also your reading life. We’re talking about your story today, not mine, but I will say I’ve been interrogating some hard things in therapy as well.

[00:16:35] I mean, readers, you know, it’s no secret I’ve had a really rough few years. And also going back into the past, I’ve been really… I mean, what I’m thinking of now is your journey and also how something I’ve really learned is that perfectionism that I also have a good girl firstborn daughter proclivities toward that I thought was in the past tense, like does resurface as what I now understand to be a coping strategy, a survival skill to keep me safe from the scary stuff.

It makes sense to me. And also… I mean, to start in the easy place, when it almost attacks something you love, like your reading life, clearly, it’s not a survival strategy that is serving you. Time out to say everybody we joke about how What Should I Read Next? is bibliotherapy. I am not a therapist. I’m just somebody who goes to therapy. My degree is in something else. But we’re readers or people and these things matter in our reading lives and our whole lives. And this conversation feels really relevant to that.

[00:17:39] So, Casey, I can also see that if sending in the submission to What Should I Read Next? used to be a one day when the circumstances align exactly right, and it became something that like you actually did, because here we are talking, I can see that this is something that you are finding ways to work with, and that you are making, I hope, progress that feels really good on.

Because I can just hear in what you’re reflecting, like, you will run out of time. So let’s read the books that we want to read right now. What’s helping you?

CASEY: You know, so many things. I think realizing the ways in which I feared failure and feared rejection, this is probably so different for everybody, but one of them is body image. I always was very careful with how I looked. Not like a high maintenance woman. But if I was going to go outside, I was going to have makeup on, my hair would be done, my clothes would be neat.

There were a lot of years that I would not have answered the front door if I didn’t have toenail polish on, you know, like that kind of thing. Like just making sure that I was presentable.

[00:18:44] So it’s like a little mini exposure therapy, I started going out, every once in a while, without mascara to kind of prove to myself that I had worth in the world even if I did not look perfect, and that I could run into somebody, and they might notice that I look sick and tired, but that I was still a human, that I was still worth something, that I had a lot to offer, even if I did not have mascara on that. That little thing, I think was a first toehold for me, like a way to purposefully not be perfect. Not that I was ever perfect. But that attempt to kind of control everything about what you present to the world, to take a little step back from that was really helpful for me.

In my reading life, I think I started to make… I used to be a big mood reader. So that was always like, well, you have to find the perfect thing for your mood. So with planning my reading life a little bit now, I make these lists, and I give myself full permission to throw books back if I don’t want to… Like I don’t have to finish the list.

[00:19:53] But it’s a way to put a few books on there that are… ones that I have been meaning to get to. And once they’re in my house to just give them a shot and say, you know, it’s all right if they don’t turn out how you thought. It’s okay to use them up because that’s what you want to do.

So planning these little lists instead of being a mood reader completely has been a little bit helpful. I turned this toward books really fast. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.

ANNE: It is a book podcast. That’s okay.

CASEY: It is a book podcast. Yeah. I think also becoming a reader that read multiple books at a time was really helpful. I used to be engaged in what my friend calls book monogamy, right? Serial book monogamy, where you are all in it with one book at a time, you read it the whole way through, you finish and then you start a new one. And I had always read that way. And it left me feeling like I didn’t have time to fit in another one and I better skip ahead to the next required reading.

[00:20:54] Once my book club schedule and my Pulitzer schedule relaxed, I started following… you know how some people will have like one nonfiction and one fiction going is how it started. And then I thought, well, why stop at one?

So I’d have three or four fiction books going and then a book of nonfiction and essays and a memoir. And so now I have like this cornucopia of eight or nine books going at a time. And that loosened up that feeling of like, is this one book worth it right now? Is this the right book to choose? Is this the best way to spend my time?

So I have them all going and some of them phase out and I don’t even ever finish them. And some become, you know, the best books of your life and you read them almost uninterrupted and all the other eight go back to the pile for a little bit. But that was another way in my book life that I was able to kind of relax that control hole.

ANNE: Yeah. Like you mentioned that freeing yourself from the idea that you were making a firm commitment to a single title just really reduced the agonizing over which perfect book for right now to choose.

[00:22:02] CASEY: It really did. And now I kind of have this dance card that’s always going and it’s like, you’re free to join me and you’re free to join me. And if it doesn’t work out, you can leave the party. It’s a much more free flowing way to manage. And there’s always room for more. And that has, yes, definitely freed up the way that I’m able to look at what books to read next.

ANNE: I love the movement in your verbs, like you’re going to dance with the book or throw it back on the pile. Something else that’s jumping out at me listening to your experience is that this idea of control is so powerful. And yet the thing we love about reading is like we’re not in control. It’s a collaboration between us and the work, us and the author, depending on how you want to think about it. I mean, even if you really, really want to like… I mean, that just can’t be done.

CASEY: Well, and it’s interesting you say that because control is another thing that I didn’t think was an issue for me. Like when I think of someone with control problems, I think of someone that exerts control over others, you know, that makes their children all wear matching outfits. Like, can you imagine with all four of your children to try to do that? Or that, you know-

[00:23:11] ANNE: I can imagine a rebellion is what I can imagine.

CASEY: Yes. Or that dinner is served at such a strict time and we have to follow our routine. And that is not how my house operates at all. It’s baseline anarchy almost all the time. I am not controlling of them at all. But I was controlling of myself.

And so control can go outwards or inwards. And when all that control is turned inwards, as I think is, you know, maybe more common… You know, perfectionism is so common. It’s not a rare thing. I’m not a person calling in that has this story that is unique or a tabloid headline. This is so many people. A lot of people have perfectionism. And I think many of us don’t even know it.

And we have this picture of what that looks like and what control issues look like. And to find out that you are this thing that you didn’t recognize is a really interesting experience.

[00:24:17] ANNE: Yeah. Awareness is the first step to any change. And I really appreciate you bringing that insight from your own experience to our readers today.

Something that I like about reading for these experiments in mini-exposure therapy, I feel like I talk about all this time when it comes to abandoning books that aren’t working for us. When it comes to books and reading, we can really break the system in a way that we have no choice but to extract ourselves from it.

Like if you challenge yourself to try 10 different books, read the first chapter of each and see which one you might enjoy reading next. I’m not necessarily recommending this. But I’m saying that someone who feels compelled to finish every book they start, like it would be onerous to finish all those books after giving yourself a taste of a chapter.

You certainly can do that, but you make it really hard for yourself to keep adhering to these rules you’ve always lived by, at least in your reading life. And it’s just really interesting to hear how you found a way out.

[00:25:18] CASEY: Yeah. I think quitting books is such a great reading tactic to let yourself say, you know what, this didn’t work out, or maybe it will later, but just not at this time. And there’s so much out there that it would be a pity to waste the time you have on this book that isn’t working for you. So I advocate quitting.

A lot of my friends are resistant to that. I think I have always been pretty willing to quit except for books that I had to read for book club, for the Pulitzers. So it’s really nice in my reading life now to have almost complete freedom to say, You know what, this just isn’t working. I’m going to try something else.

ANNE: I’m glad to hear it.

CASEY: You know, when I decided to go back to therapy, part of my motivation was that our family life had always seemed really hard. I mean, I knew I had a lot of children, but it also just seemed harder than… I thought, I guess that it was me, because I watched all these other families that seemed to be operating pretty well. And then my own, I have…

[00:26:26] Anyone would tell you, a really great setup here. I have wonderful children. They are beautiful. They are smart. My husband is this really upstanding man. He’s got a good job. My mom loves him. She sends me birthday cards that say, happy birthday, bless your heart, and thank God for your husband, type of thing. And so I knew that I had a great family. So then you feel like, well, if it’s not them, then it must be me. So going to therapy was kind of like, all right, well, then let’s fix me.

So I did all of this internal work, learning about perfectionism and learning about a lot of other things too. It’s been a long personal journey. It’s not simple and it’s not easy. It felt like I had improved a lot of things and then we were writing letters to Santa last year, and I saw that my son just could not do this, could not sit down and concentrate.

[00:27:28] At the end of it, I thought, I wonder if he has ADHD. So I took a quiz for him, a little online quiz and he had all the signs, all of them. And I felt like, oh my gosh, really? So I got him evaluated and he had ADHD, but he also had autism. Autism, it turns out, is highly familial, which I didn’t know. I’d always heard it’s like 2% or 3% maybe of the population, but it’s very hereditary.

Once we saw that he had autism, I could see it also in my oldest daughter, possibly in my youngest daughter, though we’re not sure yet. They’re all very high functioning. So it’s hard to see maybe in the beginning. Then definitely in my husband and many of his family members.

So this journey has been so valuable and I am really glad that I was able to put work into the things that were making me the hard part of it. But it was hard. It was harder than I thought because I was surrounded by a lot of people that maybe they don’t have the same instincts that a lot of other people have.

[00:28:38] Having a family that has three or four out of six autistic members is harder than having everybody that is neurotypical. So that also was a weight off too, to see finally that I always thought the whole world was me and that all of our problems must have stemmed from me. And instead it was like, well, it’s maybe you some, but it’s also them and it’s also everything.

ANNE: That was lovely. I’m just thinking what a difference… it sounds like it’s making for you to at long last understand more about the reality that you find yourself living in. Like, oh, this is how it really is.

CASEY: Yes. That is just the perfect way to put it. This is how it really is. That the reality that you are living in and struggling against is different than you thought. When you shift that lens, you can understand yourself better. I felt like, oh, that poor woman, which was the first time I ever felt that way. It’s like, oh, that poor woman was carrying all this and didn’t even know.

[00:29:44] I even read a book. Oh God, it was just forever ago. 10 or 12 years ago. I heard an interview on NPR about this couple and the husband realized very late in life that he had Asperger’s syndrome, which they’ve now gotten rid of. But at the time it was Asperger’s syndrome, now it would be called high-functioning autism.

The wife says in the interview, you know, so many women hear our story and they think, “Oh, I bet my husband has that.” Because there are a lot of qualities in regular, you know, ordinarily functioning men that kind of overlap with autism syndrome. So they felt sure that all of their husbands had it.

And so I heard their story and then I read his book and I had heard her warning, and it’s like, no, no, that’s not your husband. There’s just some overlap there in traits, but your husband is normal and your family is normal. And then fast forward 10 years and, and to find out that I was kind of right there, but just didn’t see it.

ANNE: Yeah.

CASEY: Assumed it had to be me.

[00:30:48] ANNE: I’m glad you see it now. And that just to hear you describe the compassion you now have for yourself, that’s not always an easy place for some of us to access. Raises hand. It’s deeply good to hear you describe that for yourself.

CASEY: I think that was the thing that was always missing. I think that’s the reason I’m able to move forward better now is I do now have that compassion for myself. I’m able to see like everybody else, I’m a woman doing her best, some successes, some failures, but that I move through the world with good intentions and I can now give myself credit for that.

ANNE: Yeah. That’s great, Casey. We are going to move into talking in depth about your books. You know how this works. You’re going to tell me three books you love, one book you don’t, what you’ve been reading lately, and we will look for titles that you may enjoy reading next. But I don’t feel like I have any insight into what you’re looking for right now.

What kind of books are you hoping to walk away from our conversation with? And of course this could be like genre, but it could also be a book that makes me feel a certain way or a book that gets me thinking about a topic. What is it for you? Do you, do you even know?

[00:32:01] CASEY: I think so. I think when you talk about feel, I really like books that have that big-hearted optimism feeling, not necessarily in plot, but in tone. I think that that is one thing I really look for is something that feels positive in some way to read.

I love literary fiction, but I really… I love all things. You know, I read across a lot of the map now that my reading life has gotten broader. I love to discover new authors. That always feels like such a jewel box to me when there is this person that I have never read before and never maybe even heard of that has not just one book that you like, but all of a sudden there’s like eight books. Talk about abundance. You know, all of a sudden you have so much abundance to look forward to. Though that’s probably also bad, right? That’s the socket-away feeling.

ANNE: It doesn’t have to be bad. It’s what you do with that abundance.

CASEY: That is true.

ANNE: It’s good to have options. I wouldn’t want you to not have options. But then I want you to feel you can enjoy them in the present tense.

CASEY: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:09] ANNE: Okay. That’s helpful to hear more about how you read. Are you ready to tell me about your favorites?

CASEY: Sure.

ANNE: What’s the first book you love?

CASEY: Tigerman by Nick Harkaway. Tigerman, first of all, was just a delightful surprise because if you look at the cover of this book, it looks like a book that is for men, by men, about men. There’s like this, I don’t know, like karate-clad man on the front, I think, and like a savage-looking tiger. I can’t remember exactly. But it looks very masculine and like a thriller maybe.

I checked this book out actually from my husband during a mad dash to the library at the start of the pandemic. We heard an announcement that the libraries were all closing indefinitely, and my family underwent a panic, like we have not known previous to this.

[00:34:04] So we went and we just, you know, as many as we could carry. We have probably five library cards in the family, and we maxed them all out and just carried home so many books and stacked them all up and settled in for what turned out to be, I think, five months of library closures.

So I read a lot of what I got for myself. And then I was getting a little bit towards the bottom of the pile and I saw this Tigerman that I’d brought home for my husband, and I thought, Well, why not? I heard it reviewed somewhere, it was well received.

It is just magical, because you have this lonely man that kind of falls for this kid, like he wants to adopt him. And he knows right away that this bright little boy could bring something to his life. So you have kind of this witty and touching relationship between these two people.

But then also a superhero narrative. You know, it’s kind of like a superhero story, like a comic book fantasy, but from an adult point of view, that is… you know, it’s got that little bit of genre feel that I love, but it’s also written in a literary fiction way. And those two together are always a delight for me.

[00:35:21] Like, I want it to be a little weird and a little whimsical and something that I haven’t maybe read before, that’s strange and unique. But I still want that beautiful quality writing. And I feel like Tigerman really is able to deliver on that.

ANNE: I’m jotting that down. A little weird, a little whimsical, strange, and unique. The fact that you jumped into that book with the attitude, well, why not, I think says a lot about your journey.

CASEY: Yeah, I think you’re right. I was also just out of options.

ANNE: Well, yeah, because with reading, we get to have our limits pushed in safe ways, and then we have to try new things. And you know, it worked for you.

CASEY: And when you are down to the last four books that you checked out of the library, and the future stretches long-

ANNE: I mean, by golly, you do what you have to do.

CASEY: You’re willing to take a chance on Tigerman.

ANNE: And find a favorite you’re going to talk about years later on a podcast.

[00:36:18] CASEY: Yeah. And I do love a surprise, too. Another book that I found that way… because when you read the Pulitzers, when you read all the Pulitzers, there’s a lot of bummers in that stack, right? These are not all books that have stood the test of time, necessarily. And there is one… oh, shoot, what’s the name of it? It’s a Western. And it is-

ANNE: Lonesome Dove.

CASEY: No, no, not that one.

ANNE: Okay, thank you. I didn’t know where that was going.

CASEY: That’s a crowd-pleaser. And everyone that starts the Pulitzer challenge… because I’ve coached a lot of people in this now, being the moderator of that group. And everyone comes in and they read Lonesome Dove, Gone with the Wind, and I don’t know, one or two others, and they’re like, okay, now I’m going to read them all. And I feel like, oh boy, you don’t know what you’re in for.

So you’re weeding through a lot of wheat and chaff, right? And the chaff is not insubstantial in the Pulitzer challenge. Okay, this is a book that I’ve heard you talk about a different one by this author.

[00:37:18] They go out West, they go to Mexico at one point. But that book was a surprise, right? Like I am not interested in Westerns. And I was reading this really out of diligence to try to achieve this thing. And it was just so wonderful to stumble upon something that I didn’t think I would like at all, and have it turn out to be one of the best books I read all year.

ANNE: What? Okay. I mean, I want to play this game. I have no idea what this could be. A man and his father go out West.

CASEY: Well, not his father. A man goes out West and he brings his wife. Okay, maybe we should go with the other one that I’ve heard you talk about more. Because I think you’ve read this one, but you’ve read a different one by him that you liked and you’ve spoken about many times, where there’s two couples and they are friends. And one is like-

ANNE: Oh, this is Wallace Stegner.

CASEY: This is Wallace Stegner. Yes.

ANNE: Out West is Angle of Repose.

[00:38:13] CASEY: Angle of Repose. Thank you so much. Yes, Angle of Repose is a book that I did not have any interest in reading and it was big and fat. And I felt like, oh, thanks, Pulitzer Challenge. Here’s another one that is going to be just time in the gym. You know what I mean? And instead, it was lovely and it was wonderful.

I even drove through Leadville years later and felt like this glow of having been in the place that was written about in a book that I loved so dearly. So it wasn’t even just a neutral or mildly positive. I loved this book. And I like when that happens, when there’s something you think you’ll hate and then it’s just fantastic.

ANNE: Okay. So at least that one time, the Pulitzer challenge served you well.

CASEY: The Pulitzer Challenge served me well and Tigerman served me well. I think both kind of happened the same way, where you think, this is a dud and then it’s great.

ANNE: All right. I love that. Casey, what’s the second book you love?

[00:39:10] CASEY: Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton. This book is also strange, really. It is like a Victorian social manners kind of book. The framework is very much like the suitability of marriage and etiquette and estates being settled and lawsuits and courtship and country houses, but it is all done with dragons. All the characters in the book are dragons. I wasn’t sure about this premise.

Sometimes fantasy, the writing can end up being a little bit lowbrow. And I thought that that was maybe where this would end up. But she really snagged me because she had this parameter in place that all the social strictures that are imposed on women in that society, in our real life, that was all just done by kind of social control, like what you should and should not do.

[00:40:10] But in this book, the dragons, if they are in close romantic contact with a man, and I don’t mean like very close, like intimate, I just mean like if they get too close and they feel that butterfly tingle feeling, and then they are too physically near each other, like they bump shoulders and they feel that zing the female dragon will go from being a gold color that they are all born as females to turning pink and then red.

So it will be apparent for everyone to see that she has had inappropriate contact with a man. Like your maidenhood is over and your ability to make a good marriage is completely undone. I just felt like taking immutable biological facts and pairing them on that strict Victorian framework was such an interesting idea.

ANNE: I love the way you described that Victorian comedy of manners, but dragons.

CASEY: But dragons. What a strange thing to do! And why has no one ever done it before? You know, like how brilliant.

[00:41:16] ANNE: Your description of this book reminds me of one that was published much later called Heartstone by Elle Katharine White, I think it is, which was described to me at The Story Shop in Monroe, Georgia as Pride and Prejudice, but with dragons, which I don’t read a lot of dragon books, but I couldn’t resist that. It’s a lot of fun. I mean, came out much more recently.

CASEY: Sounds very much in the same wheelhouse.

ANNE: It does. It does. Casey, what’s the third book you love?

CASEY: Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler. And this book is… you know, I think you could describe it as the double black diamond of reading comprehension. There is a lot going on. It is not necessarily chronological. It’s complex. You have to concentrate super hard, but not in a slog type of way. It’s more like a dog with its ears pricked up that is like ready to chase a ball. You feel like, okay, where are we going? Where are you going to throw it? Because I want to go there.

[00:42:23] It would be useless to explain the plot. It is just so intricate and a lot of things are purposefully not revealed until quite late in the book so that you can kind of keep wondering. But it is kind of the combination of a very intelligent, very intellectual study of language and character and plot. And then also just a romp. Like it’s exuberant. It’s like a roller coaster. It’s a rollicking.

So I feel like this book is all the things I love to find. There’s the writing, but there’s also things that are almost not fantastical, but a little bit mystical, maybe. There’s the Arctic. I just love the Arctic for some reason.

I also read it with a friend. I read it with my best friend, Fred. He and I have been reading together for 20 years. That was also such an amplifier for this reading experience to be able to dissect it.

[00:43:27] He and I talk almost every day on his commute to work and it is almost exclusively books. So we always have a book going and we discuss the chunk that we’ve kind of agreed on, you know, like a hundred pages every week or something, you know, much looser than that.

But we read this book together. And so all along the way we got to say, well, what do you think is happening? And what does this mean? It was just so fun. It was such a fun book.

ANNE: That sounds delightful. And I can see how it perhaps had that element of surprise you enjoy so much. All right, Casey, change of pace. What book was not right for you, whether the timing was wrong, it didn’t align with your taste, a topic popped up you didn’t want to read about? What comes to mind?

CASEY: I chose One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle for this book. And this was not a book I hated. I hate a lot of books. I’m kind of a hot and cold reader. And this wasn’t that, but it was just so vanilla. It had a great premise. There’s this mother-daughter relationship that sounded so enticing and a little bit of magical realism and the setting work was very good.

[00:44:38] But the writing… you know, I’ve heard you say before that sometimes the writing is just good enough to move a good book through itself, kind of. And this one was not enough for me for that. Like the writing was so uninteresting. It just literally told me what happened and nothing else. I like to see that stylistic stamp of the author that no one else could have written this, that there’s personality in it. And this just didn’t have that.

ANNE: Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. Stylistic stamp. What have you been reading lately?

CASEY: I have been reading Bats of the Republic lately. That’s a book by Zachary Thomas Dodson. That one is another one that is very whimsical. There’s a lot of ephemera in there, like maps and different transcripts of recorded conversations and naturalistic drawings. There’s even an envelope at the back that says “do not open” that I think gives you a big reveal. I haven’t gotten there yet. Though I also appreciate that it says “do not open” in giant letters, and then in tiny letters at the bottom, it says, “unless you’ve reached the end.” For the rule followers among us that are like, well, man, maybe I really shouldn’t, you know, if it says don’t open it.

[00:45:57] Again, it’s a buddy read with my friend, and it gives us a lot to dissect and puzzle through. So there’s these dual timelines and you’re trying to figure out what really happened. And it gives me that… you know, I love to think, and this book gives me a lot of chances to think and figure out and wonder.

ANNE: It’s cool that you mentioned that one, because Holly on our team is reading it now, and she’s talked about how it’s such an interesting and unique experience.

CASEY: I can’t believe someone else on your team is reading that right now, because I think… isn’t it kind of old-ish too? It’s not a new book.

ANNE: It is. Maybe like 10 years?

CASEY: Yeah. That sounds about right. And I think I read a lot in that zone, like 10 to 20 years old, I think is a common place I find myself.

ANNE: Okay. Uncanny. We talked about what you’re looking for in your reading life right now, and the things that are really rising to the fore for me are what you said about reading widely, loving books that are literary, but also have a strong genre bent.

[00:47:02] You know, I’m going to think about how to describe those over the long term, but for now, I feel like we both know what we’re talking about. Is that good?

CASEY: Yeah.

ANNE: I’m also especially thinking about how you love the weird, the whimsical, the strange, and unique. You did say a little, a little weird, a little whimsical, but also a strong stylistic slant. So I’m going to keep all these things in mind.

Also, you’ve got some serious under-the-radar reads. I’m inclined to go a little old and a little new. How does that sound?

CASEY: Sure. I feel ready for anything.

ANNE: Let me start with two general nonfiction recommendations for our audience that I kept thinking of during our conversation today. Now, there are all kinds of wonderful books about autism written from a really personal perspective, but there was one that I wasn’t able to read in time to include in the Fall Book Preview, but I found it quite good.

It’s called A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole by Marian Schembari. She wrote about her journey to being diagnosed at age 34 and how transformative that was for her that just came out in fall of 2024.

[00:48:11] Also, after hearing about it from numerous friends and fellow readers, I read The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power, a few years ago, it’s maybe within five years old, by Katherine Morgan Schafler. She’s a psychotherapist who writes here about how we can work with our perfectionism instead of fighting it. And she breaks the book down into five types of perfectionists.

I especially related to the messy perfectionist. And she helps readers figure out how to identify their style and what it might mean for them.

Casey, for your books, I’d like to start with a novel that was first published in 2011 by the Israeli author Yoav Blum. It’s called The Coincidence Makers. Do you know this book?

CASEY: No, I’ve never heard of it.

ANNE: He’s a novelist who has written quite a few books with weird and whimsical premises. But alas, only one is translated into English so far, and it is this one.

[00:49:15] This story, it follows three friends whose job is to be coincidence makers. So, when you have these random occurrences in your life that we write off to chance, like you pass a friend in an intersection or a drink spills or a glass breaks or you miss a train, like it’s just something that happens in life. But in fact, in this book, these three friends are the coincidence makers who makes these things happen.

The way they talk about the coincidences they are employed to execute in this book are so fun. Like one of the guys once caused an entire floor of an apartment building to hang laundry on the same day. One of the women was able to create a situation in which for half an hour only buses with numbers divisible by three were at the central bus station. Those are mostly things they did for fun instead of for work, just like bets with each other.

But the point is, these coincidences are important because they change the course of our lives and the course of the world, even though it may be invisible to us. We may not understand the factors at play, but these coincidence makers are making things happen in ways that we don’t understand. We don’t understand the reality we’re living in is the case.

[00:50:23] This book is very much like a fun thought experiment. It felt a little bit like Einstein’s dreams to me. I love that author’s work. It felt a little bit like Minority Report. If readers have read Lev Grossman’s Magicians series, it feels in that vein, if not a read alike.

But in getting into the weird and whimsical stuff, Blum also gives a little bit of distance to explore how to live a good life and what it means to live and especially what it means to love, because there’s a love story woven through here as well.

I’m trying to think, does this have that big-hearted optimism in plot and in tone? I want to say it’s got a quiet-hearted optimism, not a real phrase, but I think that’s what we’re going to get here. Maybe you would disagree. How does that book sound to you?

CASEY: That sounds great. That sounds really great.

ANNE: Okay. I’m happy to hear it. All right. This next one I feel like is kind of a wild card, but if it pays off, I think it could pay off big. And if it doesn’t, we can chalk it up to an experiment and a mistake. And you learn from mistakes and mistakes are wonderful and you’re embracing them now. So this will all be fine?

[00:51:34] CASEY: I’ll be fine.

ANNE: Okay. Things I’m telling myself to make myself feel better. I’m wondering about Susan Howatch and specifically her Starbridge series. Are you familiar with her work?

CASEY: I feel like I’ve maybe heard her name, but no, I don’t think I really am.

ANNE: She is probably best known for The Wheel of Fortune. She also wrote a book called The Rich Are Different that I see just around and about all the time. But the books I want to focus on are her Starbridge series.

This is a six-book series and it’s set in the Church of England, which I think maybe sounds really stodgy and stayed, but these books could fairly be categorized as psychological dramas. They’re also pretty racy. The series begins with the book Glittering Images. This six-book series was published in the late 80s and early 90s.

[00:52:27] The glittering images of the title represent the facade that these churchmen are presenting to the world and also the facades that we all bring to the world, like the perfect polished appearances. Oh my gosh, I kind of had a vibe and then I realized I’m kind of echoing your words from earlier.

So in this specific case, we have these noble, charismatic, elegant, definitely honorable churchmen. They are professional men of God. But in this book, we find out what lies behind those facades. And it’s a lot.

The first book begins with a mystery. The setup is something like an ordinary low or mid-level dude in the Episcopal Church is sent in to investigate some rumblings about immorality at the fancy bishop’s residence. I might be wrong. He might be sent in to investigate potentials for a promotion. But when he goes in, he thinks of himself as an arch-Episcopal spy, like the church shouldn’t be spying. It feels pretty weird to him.

[00:53:29] But then when he starts poking around, he discovers that things are kind of weird. Like the bishop’s marriage is just off. Like something is not right with his wife. And she has a companion who he wonders what the dynamic is between these three. And the more he finds out, the more he just discovers mysteries within mysteries. And he knows something is going on, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.

So we do have that mystery element, like, what is he going to find out? But also there’s history, there’s family drama, there’s a little bit of romance. I think it’s fair to call these psychological thrillers, but we’ve also got that element of spiritual warfare, especially in the later books. There is a lot happening here.

The first three books take place in the 1930s, which is not the same setting as Tooth and Claw, but is set in a time where things are very respectable and stayed, especially in the Church of England. Then the second three are set in the 1960s. And it’s a continuation of that story with overlapping characters, but a very different time, which I also found really interesting to read about.

[00:54:33] Each book is narrated by a different character. You can read them as a series or as standalones. How does that sound?

CASEY: I think that sounds great. It sounds like a really rich world with a lot going on. If I like the first one, then there’s so much abundance. Like I have a few more after that that I can go back to.

ANNE: I love it. Okay. I want to make sure you know about a book that’s quite new. Do you know The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley?

CASEY: I do. And that is the most sacred book in the sacred vault. When I saw that, I thought, oh, now that is the one that is the most untouchable. But tell me. Tell me about it.

ANNE: Have you read it or is it in the perfectionist vault?

CASEY: Of course not. That is the one where it was like, oh, this is perfect. I’m going to take this snowball of beautiful Arctic ice and put it in a time lock freezer and never touch that one. So no, I have not.

[00:55:29] ANNE: It’s weird and whimsical and strange and unique. And then you said Arctic and I went, ooh.

CASEY: Yes.

ANNE: Also, you love a book with a strong stylistic slant. This one has a story to tell and it does it in a really interesting way. Readers, if you’re recognizing this, it was in the 2024 Summer Reading Guide. So perhaps you heard me talk about it then. But even then, I think I said that this is one of the weirdest, most original books I’ve read in a long time. And I mean that as high praise.

This is her debut and it unfolds in a near future where the British government employs time travel, but it’s administered by a really clunky bureaucracy, which leads to all kinds of humorous moments because they’re traveling through time and space. Whoa. Except if you don’t get the form right, all hell breaks loose.

So our narrator is unnamed and the way her name functions in the story, the way there’s a little mystery right from the get-go about that is fascinating and also really important. So pay attention from the beginning.

[00:56:34] Well, she takes a position as companion to a time traveler. He is the devastatingly handsome Commander Graham Gore, a real man of history who was lost as part of the 1845 Royal Navy Arctic Expedition when that expedition failed.

She gets the job largely because her mother was a refugee from Cambodia. And the British government is like, you know what it’s like to be a refugee. You have experience here and we’re charging you with the care of this other refugee. And she’s like, well, where’s the refugee from? And their answer is history. He’s a refugee from history. He belongs back in 1845, but plop, here he is in our modern world.

So this story is so interesting because at once it’s very vast paced with mystery and adventure. Oh, and you like your literary to go with those things. You got that.

[00:57:31] But it’s also deeply philosophical. We’ve got a spy story, a love story, and it’s all told with this droll British humor, especially about the bureaucracy, as her characters talk about things like the mechanics of time travel and what happened to the expedition, but also race, gender, trauma, and imperialism and also the Arctic. How does this sound to you?

CASEY: You know, Anne, I have read so many great books and they were all by accident. Because if I knew they were going to be good, I would have saved them for later. And I feel like, you know, here is this book that sounds perfect because it is. And so maybe this is what I should read next. Like here’s the full circle journey.

ANNE: Now, maybe since you love a surprise and this one sounds perfect, it’s going to be underwhelming. Maybe you owe it to yourself to just find out sooner rather than later.

CASEY: Well, and, you know, I think that’s the thing is like, I am okay with underwhelming. I can’t not handle being disappointed. It’s the fear of being disappointed and the sucking it away, like the saving it for later is not a rational thing. There will always be more books and some of them will be disappointing, but most of them will be great. So it’s just like the leap. You have to take the leap. So yeah, maybe so.

[00:58:52] ANNE: I mean, you got to leap with something. You got to choose something to dance and if it’s not it, you can throw it back on the pile.

CASEY: That’s right.

ANNE: All right. Oh, I love it. Okay. Casey, we covered a lot of ground today, but we ended with three books or more than that if you count the whole series, but we’re not going to count that. So we have The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum, Susan Howatch’s Starbridge series, Beginning aptly with Glittering Images, and the book you already know and suspect you’ll love, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Of those books, what do you think you might be willing to let yourself explore next?

CASEY: Okay. So I’m sure that you can feel this coming, right? That what I want to say is The Starbridge series because I’ve never heard of it and there’s more than one, so I won’t even use it up. But I think that the answer is that the book that I’m going to read next is The Ministry of Time. I’m going to not save it. I’m going to do it right now.

[00:59:53] ANNE: Well, thank you for sharing your thought process out in the open. That’s so interesting to hear. And also, I’m not sad about the Ministry of Time. And I hope you’re inspired to let other books out of the vault, so to speak, after our conversation today as well.

CASEY: Yes, thank you so much.

ANNE: Oh, Casey, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Casey and I’d love to hear what you think she should read next. Find the full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com. Follow our show on Instagram @whatshouldireadnext.

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Thanks to the people who made this episode happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Productions. Readers, that is it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” Happy reading, everyone.