EP60: Comfort Books and Badass Women

Live from the Book Shop: John Updike's Ghost

Sam has covid, but it's been a good four-year run of not getting it, and it's an easy way to remember it's our fourth anniversary of buying the Book Shop. We start off this week with a little look back on things we didn't expect when we got into this mess (why are publishers so mean? How do you stock all the books that people want?), and then launch into a book discussion proper. First up is Lois Lowry's classic, "The Giver," which is an absolute banger that you need to read right now if you haven't already. And probably even if you have. Second is Hannah's effort to brand "Joan January," whereby she reads Joan Didion at the beginning of each year, and this year it's "A Book of Common Prayer," an odd little novel from the 1970s that reminds Hannah of Gatsby and would be a good book club book. Then Sam is back in middle school for "The Glass Sentence." by S.E. Grove, which is a triumph and he was happy to read again. Magic maps! We're doing a whole new paragraph now, because next up is "A Love Song for Ricki Wilde," by Tia Williams, for which we have no transition, but Hannah is listening to and loves the dialog. Great V-Day book. And it's got a little vodou, just like "Devil Makes Three," which Sam didn't get and stopped reading. Oh well. You might like it if you like Haitian history and the CIA. Luckily, Hannah has just read most of "The Orchard," by Adele Crockett Robertson, which she really likes, and is based in Ipswich, and features a much more realistic badass woman. Finally, we finish up with some Pullman, some Winter Institute, and some self-promotion. Don't miss it! (Also, at the end, there is a rare instance where Sam actually remembers something correctly, and Hannah is wrong.)