[00:00:00] LIZZEY MCFARLIN: My parents hate this, but I would always take my books to sporting games, and Dad was like, “Look at the baseball game happening,” and I’m like reading Harry Potter Six and couldn’t be bothered with the baseball game.
ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I’m Anne Bogel, and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that’s dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don’t get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we’ll talk all things books and reading, and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.
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Readers, we regularly hear from listeners seeking tips and advice on how to read the classics. If you’ve ever felt intimidated by old books or haven’t been sure you’ve been reading them correctly, it’s not just you. Earlier this season, New Yorker Lizzey McFarlin sent us her guest submission, and in it, asked for help to approach the classics in a different way.
She’d been trying to read them the same way she’d approach any other book: late at night, hoping to sink in and quickly turn the pages. But that wasn’t working. She was too often growing so bored she would abandon them. She knew what she was doing wasn’t working, but she wasn’t sure what to do instead, and she came to us seeking some fresh ideas.
[00:02:50] Lizzey isn’t reading the classics alone. She’s in a local book club with five women who pick a new-to-them classic quarterly, and they plan a themed excursion related to the book. Today, Lizzey shares about some of the classic book and excursion pairings they’ve enjoyed so far and is hoping I can share possibilities for what they might read and where they might visit to go along with it in the future.
Whether you’re interested in picking up a challenging book or you’re contemplating making a lifelong dream come true, I hope you’ll find this conversation inspiring and empowering, and just a lot of fun. Let’s get to it.
Lizzey, welcome to the show.
LIZZEY: Thank you so much for having me. I cannot be more excited.
ANNE: Oh my gosh. Well, the pleasure is ours. Thank you so much for sending in your submission. Readers, that’s at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest. I was really excited to see it because, readers, as you will hear, we receive multiple queries a week from readers saying, “Help me,” in a very similar way that showed up in your submission, Lizzey. So thanks for that.
[00:03:53] LIZZEY: So happy to help. Okay. So excited to chat classics today.
ANNE: Well, I’d love to begin by giving the readers a glimpse of who you are. Would you tell us a little about yourself?
LIZZEY: I am 29 years old. I live in New York City with my husband and baby, Grant and Lucy. Lucy is seven months old, and is just a ball of perfection. She was born in December, so she’s just like… She couldn’t be cuter. I rave about her daily, as one should with their child.
I am originally from Texas, so I do have that Southern sensibility, I guess you would say. But I dreamed of living in New York my whole life, and two years ago me and my husband moved here just because we wanted to try it out, and it has been beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. We love it so, so much.
By day, I work in corporate recruiting. I work at a consulting company. But I spend a lot of time writing. I have a Substack I use. I do a lot of film photography, and I just love eating, drinking, cooking, and I spend a lot of time exploring my wonderful city with my friends. People are always in town visiting, and so spend a lot of time hosting as well, and it’s just so fun.
[00:05:07] ANNE: Okay, that sounds incredible. I want to hear more about the texture of your life. I believe that is going to come up in today’s episode.
LIZZEY: Mm-hmm.
ANNE: Tell us about your reading life. I’m leaving that broad on purpose.
LIZZEY: I have always said, like, if someone’s like, “Tell me about yourself,” probably the second thing to come up would be that I’m a reader, which just feels very defining of me as a person. I am an only child, so I grew up and reading was my companion. You know, I was just always reading. Such a gift is that my parents are huge readers as well.
On vacations we would always just sit and read, and that was… That’s just a huge part of our life and always has been. My parents hate this, but I would always take my books to sporting games and Dad was like, “Look at the baseball game happening,” and I’m reading Harry Potter Six and couldn’t be bothered with the baseball game.
[00:06:05] But I really became an extrovert, like I became very extroverted late high school and early college, and so I stopped reading as much. And then mid-college I rediscovered my former love, and now I’ve been able to continue to be super social but reading is just such an important part of my life. And I feel like I combine the social-ness of myself and my reading life by always having book clubs.
I just love, love, love my book clubs. I had a really great one in Texas, and now my one in New York is just weird. It’s like a weird format, but it’s such a delight. I talk about it all the time. And it’s a group of five girls, and we read classics. So we have a classics book club. So while I still do a lot of reading outside of the classics on my own, the classics and my book club are kind of anchors for my reading life throughout the year.
ANNE: We hear from a lot of readers who want to join or start a book club in their real life. You haven’t been in New York City very long. Is your book club local? I’m so curious about how you connected so quickly.
[00:07:03] LIZZEY: I’m just deeply lucky to have made really good friends from the start of life here. So my book club is Lucy, Hannah, Courtney, and Catherine. It was actually Hannah’s idea. I knew them all separately, and Hannah and I were talking one day, and she was also new to the city, and she was like, “I really want to have a book club, but I really want it to be classics adjacent.” Because her and I both read voraciously on our own. We don’t need a book club to help us do that.
She was like, “I really want to work on my classics reading, and I think it’d be fun to do it in a group.” So it started as me and Hannah, and then Courtney joined, who was one of my friends, and then Catherine joined, and then Lucy joined. So we just found each other along the way, people who had genuine interest in reading the classics or were already doing it. And we just invited them to come along. But we purposely try to keep it pretty small. It’s not like an open book club. Because of the way we format it, it would just be hard if we had 20 people, you know?
ANNE: Yeah. Yeah, I hear that.
[00:08:03] LIZZEY: One of my favorite elements… I just love to brand my book club. I just love to make it a big part of my personality. I think we all do, but to me it’s very, very special. So we recently decided that we’re going to have a name, and we’re going to be called the Blue Stockings, which from my understanding, there could be, you know, elements that are off about this. But it’s like an 18th-century feminist movement that started as literary discussion groups and salons, and it was just basically a lot of women being like, “We like to talk about things, like scholarly, educational things, not just hosting and fashion and things.”
To my understanding, that is the origin of the Blue Stockings movement. And me and a couple other people in my book club were reading the Emma M. Lion series, The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, and several times in that series they reference Blue Stockings. And so we were like, “Wait, this is the perfect name for our group. We should go by the Blue Stockings.” So we decided to call ourselves the Blue Stockings.
[00:09:09] We bought matching socks that we all wear, and so they’re blue, and they have these little frills on the side. And then this is a secret from my book club, but I’m already dreaming about the Christmas gift I’ll buy everybody that involves a blue stocking in a way. So I won’t say any more because I assume they will listen to this episode, but it’s fun having a kind of themed… an icon for your group that you can reference.
ANNE: Okay, I’m so intrigued by these Christmas gifts. All right. But no gifting spoilers here. So in your submission, you told us something else interesting about your book club, because you take it off the page as well. Tell us more.
LIZZEY: Uh, yes. Because we’re reading the classics, we don’t meet monthly. That would be way too much, at least in our individual seasons of life. We’re all late 20s, early 30s, and so we meet quarterly or seasonally. So we have a summer, fall, winter, and spring classic. And our very first book was Mansfield Park, in spring of last year.
[00:10:15] ANNE: That’s an unconventional choice for where to start with Jane Austen. I love it.
LIZZEY: It’s because I read a Jane Austen a year, and I’d only… This was my fifth Jane Austen. So this was one of the ones I hadn’t read. None of the others had read it as well. So we started with Mansfield Park, and we went to a British tearoom. And we were like, “Oh, wait, this is a perfect setting. We’re drinking tea. We’re eating scones. We’re talking about the book.” Like, it just felt so perfect. So we picked our summer book as East of Eden. It felt very grand but also dry California desert. I don’t know, it just said summer to us.
And then Hannah was assigned to pick our destination for that trip or for that excursion, and she was like, “Oh, John Steinbeck, when he used to come to the city, would always stay in this hotel. He signed the wall in the lobby. So we should do our next book club at this hotel so we can live the John Steinbeck life.”
[00:11:11] And then I think we just had so much fun picking the book but also picking the excursion, and it’s kind of flipped a little bit. Sometimes, like this summer, we knew we wanted to go on an upstate trip and do an overnight as our book club. And so we were like, “Okay, how could we find a book that pairs with what we already want to do?” And so that’s kind of the formatting we’ve fallen into. I also really like that it’s seasonal because New York is such a… Like, every season is wildly different, and all have their individual magic. And so I think when we pick pairings, we’re also being like, “What do we want to do in the fall of this year, and what book really aligns with that experience?”
ANNE: So what did you pick for upstate?
LIZZEY: Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch. Stay with me.
ANNE: Well, I love how you made Jane Austen work in New York City, so…
LIZZEY: Absolutely. It started with… I think it was also Hannah. She was like, “Guys, we should go to Italy, and we should read A Room with a View.” And I was like, “That feels a little bold, but what about if we go to the Catskills?” And so we were like, “Okay-
ANNE: You just need a view.
[00:12:18] LIZZEY: We just need a view. Any view.
ANNE: Field of flowers.
LIZZEY: Exactly. And so we were like, “Okay, okay. We’re not going to go overseas, but we’ll stay in New York. We’ll go upstate. That sounds fun. What book would pair well with it?” I think we just were like, “Who is a New York author?” And so that’s how we landed on Fitzgerald. We picked Tender Is the Night. We were like, “We’re going to go upstate.”
And the reason we did that is because I think it ends on Long Island, or… I’m not positive if it ends there, but he’s from Long Island or is from New York in general. And so we knew we wanted to read a book by him because he felt like he captured the New York summer essence.
ANNE: Lizzey, I’m so curious. What was the motivation for the Classics Book Club? Was this a recent love of yours and the book club instigator’s idea? Was this a gap you saw? How did that focus come to be?
[00:13:18] LIZZEY: I really love doing hard things on a micro scale because I think it prepares me to be the kind of person who can do hard things on a macro level and in the actually important areas of life, like the larger scale things. And so I want to be a runner so that I can have endurance to overcome hard things, you know?
And I think it’s the same with reading. A lot of reading, I love it, it’s so effortless for me, but I will, in stressful seasons of my life or when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I can just go to easy books that I don’t remember at the end of the day, I don’t remember anything that happened. You know, they’re pleasant, but they don’t stick with me. And I really wanted to be proud of my reading life. I always am. I love to read. I love all the different types of books I read. But I wanted to feel the sense of accomplishment in my reading life as well.
[00:14:17] And so I think that was the reason for the classics, because you have to approach them just so… At least for me, I have to approach them so differently than I do a normal book or a non-classic novel. I have to read them slower. I have to be a lot more focused. I can’t just go in and out of them and be chatting with someone or texting on the side. I really have to devote my whole attention to it. And I find that when I do that, I get so much out of it. Like, they really stick out to me in my mind, and they’re these pillars of my reading life. Whereas last year I think I read 75 books, and I remember 10 of them or 15 of them super well, and the classics are in that group, because of how I have to approach them.
So I think that’s why we wanted to challenge ourselves a little bit in our reading life and do it in a social setting, so… because I think the discussion amongst friends really helps us remember them as well and have them stand out to us.
[00:15:18] ANNE: Okay. I’m curious to hear how your reading practices have changed or evolved since this book club began.
LIZZEY: I would also throw in “since having a baby”, because my book club has existed… It started once I was already pregnant, and then has extended through the first seven months of my daughter’s life. So I think my reading has slowed down a lot, but I’ve also realized there’s just a lot more going on in my life in the last year, year and a half, and I don’t have as much time or attention to devote to reading. And so the time I am spending, I’ve just noticed how much more liable I am to be distracted than I was before.
And so I’m trying to figure out how to acknowledge that I may need to read less in this season, but how can I read more thoughtfully and less distracted? Maybe I don’t get to read for an hour at night, maybe I only get to read for 30 minutes, but how can those 30 minutes be really concentrated and focused rather than me trying to do five things at once?
[00:16:31] I also used to listen to a lot of audiobooks, and I don’t really do that anymore. If I’m doing something, I’m doing one thing at a time, and I’m trying to be really focused on it. Otherwise, it just doesn’t stick with me. I’ve noticed that in our summer book, which is Tender Is the Night, the language is so beautiful, but it’s very dense and a little convoluted at times. And if I’m not fully focused, I can breeze through five pages and have no idea what I just read. So I think the classics have forced me to focus more intently on the words I’m reading and read slower, but in a way that actually sticks with me.
ANNE: Okay, so if you’re reading less but want to be thoughtful about it, it seems like reining in the options of books you might be choosing from. Like this is really helping you.
[00:17:26] LIZZEY: Yes. I would totally agree. Right now I have seven library books on my shelf that I’m just not going to get to. I’m living a lie. I need to return six of them and just focus on one book at a time. I’m a person who thinks she can do everything and loves to do five different things at once, and I feel like in this season I’m learning, do one thing at a time, do it really well, and you’ll be better for it.
ANNE: Okay. Well, I’m interested in hearing more. I’m definitely interested in hearing more about your classic book and excursion pairings, because your upstate trip sounds amazing. And also in your submission you talked about how you wanted to read the classics differently. But we’re also going to talk about the ones that have worked for you and the ones that haven’t. What should we do first, Lizzey? Should we talk about your books?
LIZZEY: I think we should talk about my books, yes.
ANNE: You know how this works. You brought me three books you love, one you didn’t, and what you’ve been reading lately. And, you know, I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for, but we are going to figure it out and try to find it for you. How did you choose these books that you brought today?
[00:18:35] LIZZEY: They honestly felt pretty easy to pick because I was keeping it to just the classics I’ve been reading, not every book I’ve been reading. And so in my lifetime, I’ve probably read 15 classic books, you know, so it didn’t feel that hard to narrow it down.
I’ve really noticed a theme between all of them, so I’ll say that before I get into my books. I notice I love language. I love just exquisitely crafted sentences. At the end of the sentence, I’ll pause and just be like, “Oh, that is so beautiful. I love the way they said that.” One of these books specifically made me cry when I was reading it just because I thought it was so gorgeous. But also, I love when the characters feel personal to me, and there’s still a little bit of a plot. I don’t like beautiful language, no plot.
[00:19:27] So the three books I picked were East of Eden by John Steinbeck, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and A Room with a View by E.M. Forster. E.M. Forster is the one that I just kept reading it and clutching it to my chest after paragraphs and be like, “I can’t believe I get to read this. I can’t believe this book exists.” But I had that experience with all of these different books.
ANNE: I love that for you. Okay, let’s take it one by one. Tell me about East of Eden.
LIZZEY: Okay, East of Eden, uh, such a special book. Every member of my book club rated this in their top five books of all time after we read it, which was really special to us. So I think also part of it. I am a Christian, and so the Genesis story is very familiar to me. And so hearing it or reading it rewritten in this really creative way was so compelling to me.
[00:20:22] I think the reason this book ranks so highly for me is the language is beautiful, the structure of it is beautiful, but it’s simple. I feel like a lot of classics are, you’re glad you’re reading them, but sometimes they’re a slog to get through. I did not feel that way with East of Eden at all. I was racing through it. And I think it’s because it has such a robust plot, and the characters are really compelling, and they’re definitely not one-dimensional. They’re just very robust, complicated characters. So in some ways it felt like a modern-day murder mystery at times or a massive family saga. So I thought the plot of that book really kept me engaged, and his writing, while stunning, was also very simple. It wasn’t too complicated.
[00:21:14] ANNE: Okay. That’s really impressive that it made such an impact on all your readers. I got to say, for those who think the classics are dry and dusty and boring, East of Eden, oh my, was not what I expected it to be when I finally picked it up, maybe like 10 years ago. I mean, thanks to comments from readers, this may have predated the podcast age, but I’m really glad I tried it. I mean, do you want to say anything about what is often surprising to modern readers who think like, “Oh, here’s an old book about old things,” and then they find this?
LIZZEY: I really just think if you read for the love of language and the beautiful way words are assembled on a page and just you hear a description of something and you want to cry or laugh or it just feels so accurate to what the thing is, the classics do that better than anything. There’s a reason they’re a classic. I think it’s stretched my understanding of what books can be, and it’s given me a higher bar for my everyday reading life, and I really appreciated that challenge. It’s been hard to force myself to do hard things, but I feel like I’m becoming a better reader because of it.
[00:22:29] ANNE: All right. Tell me more about The Picture of Dorian Gray. So bossy.
LIZZEY: No.
ANNE: Tell me more, Lizzey.
LIZZEY: Get into it. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a delight. This was my fall book club last year. And we did a double feature for our book club last year, so we read The Picture of Dorian Gray, and then we read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving because we wanted to go upstate to Sleepy Hollow, the town, for a day. Which is like, Washington Irving is buried there, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is based there. That one was an example where the excursion comes before the book.
We paired it with The Picture of Dorian Gray because it felt a little creepy, and we were going around Halloween, and we just felt like it emulated the fall spooky nature of it. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a delight to all of us. All of us loved it. I feel like my book club is often in alignment on how we feel about books, which is a nice feeling. But it just is so creepy. It’s the same sort of beautiful language, really compelling characters. You’re just fascinated by… You’re so sucked into the story. It didn’t feel hard to read. I felt like I was being pulled through it by a really plot-heavy novel, very complicated character. So I wasn’t bored for a second with this book.
[00:23:49] I think I like classics that I can see how modern books evolved out of them. Like, there’s a lot of echoes of the modern books I’m reading in it. Because in The Picture of Dorian Gray, there’s a murder mystery, and he’s on the run, and it’s just a very complicated man. And I think that was a compelling read for me.
ANNE: Sounds good. I love the sound of that trip. That sounds amazing.
LIZZEY: It was so dreamy. And we got stuck into a Halloween festival while we were up there. It was amazing.
ANNE: I love that for you. All right, Lizzey, tell me more about A Room With a View.
LIZZEY: Okay. A Room With a View is the one that is a little uncommon because this was not a book club pick. My friend Hannah was like, “We should read A Room With a View and go to Italy.” And she was joking, but she pitched it to our book club, we were all like, “Okay, ha ha. We can’t go to Italy this summer.” And we chose a different book.
[00:24:48] But I ended up reading A Room With a View because I was on maternity leave, and I had time, and Hannah was like, “This book will be very, very important to you.” And she was right. The main character’s name is Lucy, which is my daughter’s name, so that was just like a fun little aside that I loved. It almost felt Jane Austen-esque, which I don’t know, maybe they’re not similar at all, but they felt similar to me. Like, you just love this young woman who is finding her way in the world, and she’s learning to explore and see new parts of the world, and then she comes back to stuffy old England and is changed by her travel experiences. I felt like I was Lucy in this novel, and I just love that.
Again, the writing is exquisite. The characters are really personable. Feel like those are always themes for me. But I think I liked that it was witty as well. I love the way E.M. Forster poked fun at this persona of English citizens going abroad to find themselves and discover themselves in Italy. And while he was talking about a very common experience that people had at that time, he also was making fun of the way that they travel, and when they’re in Italy, the different idioms they do or the idiosyncrasies they embody while they’re traveling. So I just thought it was a really easy book to read. I loved the characters, and also I just liked the sarcasm that was built into the novel as well.
[00:26:15] ANNE: Okay, not a question we ask a lot on What Should I Read Next?, but have you seen The Merchant Ivory adaptation?
LIZZEY: No, tell me more.
ANNE: Well, it’s widely argued that this is one of the few adaptations that’s better than the book it’s based on.
LIZZEY: Whoa.
ANNE: It features a very young Helena Bonham Carter and Daniel Day-Lewis. There’s an iconic nude bathing scene. Not sexual at all. Very, very funny. Oh, Maggie Smith is Aunt Charlotte.
LIZZEY: Oh, wow. Okay, I need to watch this. I have heard about this. My friend, once I read A Room with a View, was like, “The movie is amazing. We need to watch it together.” So that’s up on my list. I’ll add it to my end of summer bucket list.
ANNE: I mean, if you’re not going to Italy with book club, maybe it would be a fun movie night.
LIZZEY: Which I think is a mistake that we’re not, but maybe next year.
ANNE: Yeah, if you’re not going yet.
LIZZEY: Yes, exactly.
ANNE: Okay, Lizzey, tell me about a book that was not a good fit for you, and I’d love to hear why.
[00:27:18] LIZZEY: I feel bad saying this, so I’m going to start there. The book that was not for me was The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I was so excited about this book. Every book club, we pick the book for the next book club. And so in the fall, I was one month away from having my baby, and the girls in the book club were like, “Lizzey, what do you want to do? You get to pick our winter book because you’re the one about to have a child, and you kind of get to set the scene.” And so I was like, “The Brothers Karamazov is a book I’ve always wanted to read.” I have several friends who are like, “This is my favorite book of all time,” so I had very, very high expectations for this book. But for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s like a 900-page Russian tome, with all these great themes about spirituality and family and good and bad and all this stuff.
[00:28:13] So we decided to read it, and we decided to do as our pairing. This is my favorite pairing yet. We went to the New York City Ballet, and we went to this place called Dante, which is this fabulous bar in New York City, and got vodka martinis and just felt very Russian in our… We all dressed up in formal gowns for this excursion as well. And so it’s my favorite excursion we have done yet.
However, the book, all of us were like, “This was really, really hard to get through.” I think the reason this wasn’t for me was so much my phase of life and not specifically about the book itself, which is why I have some regrets. Like, I had just had a baby. I was trying to read a little bit every day while she’s crying in the background and figuring out how to be a person. I think I was missing a lot of the things that make this book great, which are the great meditations on good and evil and spirituality and family and our place in the world.
[00:29:13] I think a lot of those massive chapters or these moments where Dostoevsky is trying to tell us a story and impart meaning to us, I was just missing because I was flying through. And so it’s a book I would really like to come back to one day and read differently than I was able to do at this time in my life.
ANNE: Mm-hmm. It’ll be there for you when you’re ready to pay it a return visit.
LIZZEY: I agree. I think the problem is me, not Dostoevsky, and I apologize to him.
ANNE: You know, okay, so I see many ways in which what I’m about to say is patently false, okay? However, it does seem like the older books are more patient when it comes to the reader not having time for them right now. I feel like I phrased this really weirdly. Here’s what I mean. There’s books coming out right now that, like… It almost feels like I might miss the cultural moment if I don’t read it now. You know?
LIZZEY: Oh, yes.
ANNE: I’m not going to be able to participate in the conversation. But there’s never going to be a wrong time to read a book that’s been around for a couple hundred years.
[00:30:20] LIZZEY: I agree with that. I think that’s a very good way to put that.
ANNE: The theory needs a great deal of refining. But there’s a seed there I’m going to tug at later, to mix my metaphors completely.
LIZZEY: No, no, I love that. I agree completely, and I know that it is waiting for me when I am ready for it.
ANNE: Okay. All right. Well, I’m glad you sound philosophical about that. I mean, one of the reasons to read at all is discover what it is we like and why. So maybe in 10 years, you’ll be like, “Ugh, I see why this has stuck around, and also this is not to my taste, and here’s why.” But it feels like your reading experience was not in-depth enough to feel like you’re able to say that at this moment in time, and also you don’t know what kind of reader you’ll be in 10 or 20 or 30 years.
LIZZEY: 100%. Can I add one more detail about-
ANNE: Absolutely.
[00:31:12] LIZZEY: So another element that I’m thinking about as you’re talking is, I think the cultural context is so, so important for a book like that, and I didn’t have it. Like, very soon after I read this book, I reread A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, which is a book I adore. And that’s set like 30 years after this book ends. I could be getting the dates wrong a little bit.
But so much had changed in Russian society between those two books, and I was like, “Oh, I think I would’ve enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov a lot more if I had understood what was going on in Russia at that time in their society.” It was the end of serfdom, and a new class was rising up. I think for these classic books, I need to do a little bit of prior study to help understand the scene that they’re set in. And I think that will really help my enjoyment of them. So that’s like a note for myself for the future is to do some study in advance.
[00:32:20] ANNE: You know what’s so interesting is I think that much contemporary historical fiction we’re reading does some of that work for you. Like, it helps you understand the context.
LIZZEY: Yes.
ANNE: Amor Towles isn’t assuming you know nothing, but he also really helps you out in understanding the world the count was living in, and not just the world of the hotel. That’s not all I’m talking about. But Brothers Karamazov assumes a lot of you.
LIZZEY: 100%. He just is like, “So yeah, the serfs, there’s no more serfs, and they used to be serf owners, so they’re bad.” I could be getting some of these details wrong. He keeps referencing Pushkin. I’m like, “I don’t know how important Pushkin is to this society. I think I would appreciate this a lot more if I understood what you’re trying to tell me in these small details that I just… I don’t know.”
[00:33:10] ANNE: And I think the subtext I’m hearing is at the stage of life in which you were reading this book, you wanted to read the book. You didn’t want a lit seminar on how to approach the book, the background information you needed to know, etc, etc. In order to read the book, you wanted to be able to read a book.
LIZZEY: Correct. I wanted simplicity.
ANNE: Okay. Because sometimes, I mean, readers might be thinking, “Well, there’s a solution here I’m seeing,” but that’s not the package you were looking for.
LIZZEY: Correct.
ANNE: Okay. Maybe it’ll be the package you’re looking for at age 45, but not today.
LIZZEY: Fingers crossed.
ANNE: Yeah, not when Lucy’s less than seven months old.
LIZZEY: Seven months old, yeah.
ANNE: Okay. Lizzey, what have you been reading lately?
[00:33:54] LIZZEY: The book I’m reading for my classic book club, which I referenced a few times, is Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s, on paper, my perfect book because it starts in the French Riviera. I’m obsessed with France. I took French all through college. It’s set in the French Riviera. It’s basically about a love triangle, I would say, if that’s not too simplistic of a way to say that. So it’s a great start.
And then to my knowledge, it ends in Long Island. Maybe it doesn’t actually come back to New York. But F. Scott Fitzgerald is a New Yorker, so I’ll give him that. And so far it’s been really, really lovely. I do think I’m having the same problem where I went back to work recently, and so I’m kind of trapped in this like I just don’t have a ton of time to read this in the way I would like to. And then I didn’t start early enough.
[00:34:48] So I think some of the problems I’m having with this book are entirely self-created. But the book itself, whenever I settle down with it and really focus, I love it. And I think it’s exquisitely told, and I can see why he’s the master. So I’m really enjoying that.
And then I always have like four or five books going at the same time, which is my own problem. So I’m reading Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, Dolly All The Time by Annabel Monaghan, and then Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. So lots of different books kind of going in the background, but really trying to focus on Tender Is The Night right now.
ANNE: Okay, I’m glad to hear that. So what are you hoping to take away from our conversation when it comes to recommendations on what you might read next or in the future?
LIZZEY: I would really like to hear some classics you think I should read based on what I’ve shared, and think of some fun pairings that could go with them, things we could do, and I’m happy to workshop those together because I plan events for a living, and I just find that I love to curate experiences. And I think that makes my reading life more enjoyable, and I have more motivation to finish my books when I have something I get to do to look forward to.
[00:36:04] So I’d love to think of some classic excursion pairings. And then if you have any tips for how to read the classics better at this period of my life, I would love to hear them because I’m trying to improve my method.
ANNE: This sounds good to me. Lizzey, let’s start by talking tips, and I’m thinking specifically about what you said in your submission about how you often try to read these like you do regular books, which is late at night, wanting to read quickly, and they just don’t grab you. So it’s easy to, I think as you said, read five pages and be like, “Wait a second, my mind is wandering. What is even happening?” And we don’t want that to happen for you.
So let’s talk about maybe approaching that differently. And, you know, we’ve just been saying the classics without really saying what we’re talking about. Like, how does your book club define a classic? In Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club, and we’ve done classes on this, the very loose way we’ve defined is about 50 years old, still being commonly read today. And then often we’ll talk about modern classics as well, which loosely defined, works of such literary merit I feel like that needs air quotes, highly subjective, but the language endures, the story endures, still has something to say decades later. Often being taught in classrooms is a signal, but not a defining quality that it’s the kind of book we’re talking about. But how do you all think about this for your book club?
[00:37:36] LIZZEY: It’s a great question. I think we have a very loose definition of it. Like for example, our spring book club was Anne of Green Gables and paired with a book called Hotel Ludwig, which is like set in New York and written by…
ANNE: Oh, I don’t know that one.
LIZZEY: His last name’s Bemelmans. He wrote the Madeline books. He illustrated the Madeline books.
ANNE: Oh, okay.
LIZZEY: And so he has a bar called Bemelmans Bar that he illustrated the designs in the bar. And so we wanted to go to Bemelmans Bar, so we read like a double pairing of Anne of Green Gables and Hotel Ludwig. Those are both atypical classics. They’re not in the same category as East of Eden, but they felt old enough. They felt like they had enduring significance, or like in the case of Hotel Ludwig, he has enduring significance because of the Madeline series and all of that. So I think we have a pretty loose method of defining that, but it has to be old. That’s a good bar for us.
ANNE: How old?
[00:38:36] LIZZEY: Definitely 1900s. Lonesome Dove is the earliest classic I would count, and I feel like that’s… Is that like 1980s or something?
ANNE: That sounds right.
LIZZEY: Yeah. I would say about 50 years, like what you said. That feels like a good mark for us.
ANNE: Okay. It’s possible that there’s something I think you would really like where I’m like, “Okay, is this old enough? Is this old enough?” We’re going to talk about it.
LIZZEY: I trust you.
ANNE: Okay. So tips. First of all, people come to the classics for different reasons, and I really want readers to hear and understand that. Like some readers just really are seeking to… I mean, people have explicitly told me, “I am seeking to recapture my lit seminar experience from college or grad school where we can just really get into all the things, the symbolism, the literary heritage, the meta-analysis.” Like they want to dig in and talk, and talk, and talk. And that’s not everybody, and that’s fine.
[00:39:35] Some readers are looking for an experience. They want the mood, they want to be immersed in the time period of history, nature, strong emotions, the power of imagination, timeless tales, old-fashioned feeling now customs. Like, that’s the appeal for them.
Some people are enchanted by history. Some readers just don’t want to miss out on all the good stuff available to them in the literary canon, whether that’s traditional or reconsidered.
Some readers are really drawn to the power and distinctiveness of language in the classics. And I’ve heard you say, Lizzey, “The language, the language, the language” over and over. Classic novels often use language that definitely sounds more notable to the modern ear, in part because it’s old, and it’s not how we talk or write anymore. And we’re really captured by older words and phrases or recognizable quotes that have become well-known over time. But these classics with striking language and also writing that just seems so well-crafted, that may have unique structures or groundbreaking at the time narratives, really appeal to a writer drawn to these linguistic elements.
[00:40:56] We did a great Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club class on this years ago, I think it was 2020 or 2021, on what kind of classics reader are you. And that may be interesting to book club members or those who are interested in signing up to check that out. But, for readers I believe… not like we can’t be drawn to the classics for different readers, but for those who really love the language, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez are reliably wonderful authors with numerous works to choose from to get started with. And you could keep quotes in a journal or a spreadsheet.
You said you didn’t do audiobooks much because you’re more of a mono-tasker these days, but if you really enjoy the language, listening to the audiobook while reading on the page might sound like overkill. It also might be a perfect way to just let the language wash over you. Experience it in your ears, but also not miss visualizing it on the page.
[00:42:02] LIZZEY: I think it also might help me focus, because it creates kind of a holistic experience, and you’re surrounded by it. So in some ways, I actually think that would be a great idea. I’ve thought about doing that with Tender Is the Night, because I’m having trouble focusing on what it’s telling me. And I think surround-sounding it would be a great experience.
ANNE: Yeah. And I think something I see a lot of readers do is they think, “Okay, I’m a grown-up, I’m a reader, I should be able to enjoy this classic work on my own, left to my own devices, no context.” But, if you were in a grad school seminar, you wouldn’t just go home and start reading the book. You would talk about it first, often in a group. So if you do really enjoy the language, or for any reader, just knowing what you’re getting into before reading the book, look, you can go into any book cold if you want to, but many readers find that old, dense, substantial books are ones that really lend themselves to knowing what the story’s about before going in.
[00:43:06] So if you read an essay, a summary, if you talk to another reader before sitting down to let the language wash over you, you can pay closer attention then to the writer’s craft, to deciphering what the older language is saying, or just paying attention to the beautiful turns of phrase.
LIZZEY: Mm-hmm. I love that you said that, because the language and then the lit class experience are the two types of classic reader profile that you shared that stuck out to me. I love a footnote. I love knowing what the chapter, the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov is trying to tell me about, like what is the overarching theme that I’m supposed to get when I’m reading through that chapter. That is one of my very favorite parts of reading the classic is getting to get the full context of what is happening. So I think I would do well with some prior study.
[00:44:02] ANNE: Yeah. And just even simple things. Okay, I recently read Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel, and now I’m going to talk about it in every episode for a year. I think I’m kidding, but time will tell. But she talks a lot about various classics and what they’re doing. And I just remember her… Like, I’ve read Anna Karenina twice, it’s been a long time, which is very succinctly she says, “What you need to understand is this is what’s happening with Kitty, this is what’s happening with Levin. These are their roles in the story.” I think she said like three sentences, and my brain went, “Oh. I wish somebody had told me that going in. It would’ve helped me experience the story more as opposed to trying to discern what Tolstoy was up to.” Being told what the author’s up to so you know what to look out for is just so helpful. Even if somebody tells you, “Pay attention to the water imagery,” something real simple like that changes the way you read.
LIZZEY: 100%. I agree.
[00:45:00] ANNE: So, okay, just a couple quick tips. And we wrote a blog post… We. We as I. That’s the royal we. Wrote about helping you tackle kind of intimidating classic novels years ago. We’ll link it in the show notes. But immersing yourself in context, using a tool like SparkNotes. Like, you’re not plagiarizing an essay. It’s a great resource for comprehending classic lit, or it can be, used well, review the character list, read the plot summary, see what themes and symbols are to be paying attention to. And then you’re not reading it as a substitute for the story. You’re reading it to appreciate and get more out of the story.
Having a copy that you can mark up is really helpful. Your brain processes the words differently when you’re interacting with them on the page. And like, don’t make this feel like homework, unless you really like homework. Just mark down what interests you or sparks your curiosity, what you want to look up later.
[00:46:00] One of the most helpful things that I didn’t start doing until my 30s was taking the blank pages in the beginning of a book that often exist, or just writing right on top of the title page, and writing down something like, “Page 18, quote. Page 374, theme restated.” Just things that I can refer back to that are really important in helping me understand the core of the book, like to think deeply about it later.
Some readers like to make character lists or sketch out family trees. Some like to sketch maps. My art skills aren’t that good. But the act of putting pencil or highlighter to paper helps readers retain what they’re reading. Maybe you have a different system that works for you that doesn’t involve a pencil. That’s great, but think about how an interactive kind of experience might help you.
[00:46:56] Audiobooks are great. Honestly, movies can be great. I remember reading an interview with Jennifer Ehle, who was Elizabeth Darcy in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth, and she said, “Reading the Jane Austen novel, it’s so tricky to get your modern ear around the language, and I had to hear it out loud to get the hang of it.” And that felt so affirming to hear her say that. Because when you’re watching the movie it doesn’t sound stilted. Like it sounds like people talking. And when you’re listening to an audiobook or watching the movie, they’ve interpreted it for you. Like, you can hear it as spoken speech and not like you stuttering over, “I’m not used to this sentence structure.”
LIZZEY: Mm-hmm.
ANNE: And talking about it with other readers, and look, that’s why you’re here today, because this is something you’re already doing.
[00:47:45] LIZZEY: Yes. Ah, I love that. I agree wholly. That’s why I love Shakespeare in the Park, the free play New York City does every summer, because Shakespeare’s so confusing to me when read on a page, but then seeing how they act it out and put a modern interpretation on it but still using the old language, I have such an appreciation for Shakespeare that in the past when I was reading it in my English classes, I was like, “What? What are you saying? I am not following anything.” And as soon as I saw it performed, I said, “Oh, I get why this has endured for as long as it has.” It is miraculous. But I never got that until I saw it in person.
ANNE: Yeah. I hear that. Oh, and also, so many classics have an introductory essay in the front. And some readers are going to want to be careful with those, because they often do discuss the entire book start to finish. And maybe you feel like just by living in this world, “I know how Pride and Prejudice ends,” that’s totally fine. I tend to feel that way about Jane Austen. There’s no such thing as a spoiler in Jane Austen, but you may have another opinion.
[00:48:50] But those essays can be really helpful in that they often will tell you, “This is when the book was published. This was the context. Here’s a little bit about the author’s biography. Here’s the reason they wrote this book when they did. Here’s the difficult path to publication, or here was the easy path to publication. This is what the initial critical reception was. This is how it hits differently today.” You know, just curated nuggets that somebody believes will inform your reading experience or how you understand the book and its meaning.
LIZZEY: Yeah, I love that.
ANNE: Any of that helpful?
LIZZEY: Oh, so helpful.
ANNE: Anything missing, I mean, of course, lots of things are missing, but anything you would add that’s helped you?
LIZZEY: No, I think I need to be a little bit more disciplined to do the pre-work, because I think I know myself, and the pre-work helps me appreciate the novel I’m reading so much. Yeah, exactly like you said earlier, I can get out of having to try to parse through the sentences to see what it’s trying to tell me, and because I already know what it’s trying to tell me, I can enjoy it so much more on the second read.
[00:50:04] I had that experience with East of Eden. I read it in high school and enjoyed it, but it didn’t stick out to me that much. And then when I reread it recently, because I already had a basis for understanding it and I’d studied it in that class, I could just sit back and appreciate the novel in its entirety. So I think the more I can do that and do a little hard work upfront, it’s going to pay off a lot.
ANNE: That sounds good to me. Okay, I am, in the back of my mind, thinking of books and literary excursions, but would you please first tell us about some of your memorable literary excursions and book pairings that you’ve done with book club?
LIZZEY: I’ve already referenced some of these, so I will be repeating them, but I’ll highlight my three favorites, because I just think I love it. I love the different seasonal settings we explore. So last fall, we did Picture of Dorian Gray and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and we went upstate to Sleepy Hollow, the town, for the day, and we went to Washington Irving Cemetery. And they were doing a half-marathon for Halloween, so everyone was dressed in costumes as they were running the half-marathon.
[00:51:21] So we were just watching the half-marathon go past, and the leaves were changing, and we were talking about these creepy old books that, at least for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, it had been set in that town. I think that was really fun for our book club to also get out of the city and have a whole day together, because it helped with bonding. Because not all of us knew each other initially, so it kind of helped us coalesce as a group even more. And we just loved that excursion, so I’m really excited for our fall trip this year.
Another memorable one was The Brothers Karamazov, and then the New York City Ballet, and the vodka martinis. I just loved that. We ended that book club at 2:00 in the morning in formal dresses in the West Village in New York, and I was like, “This is so weird, but I’m loving every second of it.” Like, I just feel so charmed by the setting we found ourselves in.
[00:52:18] And then our spring book… I think all of us after The Brothers K needed a break. And so we were like, “Let’s do something a little unconventional.” So we picked Anne of Green Gables and we picked Hotel Ludwig, and we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens when the cherry blossoms were in bloom. And we had just named ourselves the Blue Stockings and bought our matching socks, and so we were all in our little blue stockings, it was so cute, and wandering around the gardens. And then got to go to Bimbleman’s Bar and just have a drink and enjoy the person that wrote Hotel Ludwig. So really, really special.
I think one reason I love the excursions is because even when we don’t like a book, meeting for book club is like a non-negotiable for me. It’s always one of my favorite things. I love being with my friends and talking about it, even if the book wasn’t enjoyable. Like, I really did not enjoy Hotel Ludwig, but that day with my friends, having this curated fun experience in New York City, made it so worth it. You know? It didn’t feel like a bummer that I hadn’t enjoyed that book. I still got to go to the botanic gardens and hang out with my friends and talk about it. So that felt really special.
ANNE: That sounds amazing.
LIZZEY: So good.
[00:53:38] ANNE: Okay, thanks for sharing those with us. Gosh, I am overdue for a trip to New York. It’s been a few years. All right. Lizzey, I have some ideas for you. Tell me what you think. I’ve really confined myself to New York City here as a way to rein in from the classics. There’s so many. But we’re thinking about destinations you could actually go to, and I’m aiming for a range of years and content, and also just how the books land emotionally, what the literary tone is, variety of language, that kind of thing.
LIZZEY: That’s perfect.
ANNE: Okay. I’m also keeping in mind I want to get you at least a couple of books that would definitely offer an extremely rewarding reading experience if you read all the essays and researched in advance and knew everything about the whatever era or the literary society that the author was a part of. But also, you could just get in bed and read a chapter at night, and you would know what was going on in this story. So that’s what I’m aiming for.
LIZZEY: I love it so much.
[00:54:43] ANNE: Okay. Have you read Passing by Nella Larsen?
LIZZEY: No.
ANNE: I love this for you. I’m not the boss of your book club, but I love this for your book club, too, because it’s so discussable, it’s short, and it lends itself to a field trip. It’s just 141 pages. And for those who tend to think that the classics are dry and dusty and boring, check out this book. And then you could watch the adaptation, which I haven’t seen, but it has Tessa… Tompkins? I’ve loved her since the Veronica Mars days, and I’ve heard it’s good, so that’s hearsay, but there’s lots you could do with this book.
But Nella Larsen wrote this in 1929. It’s set during the Jazz Age in Harlem. It’s the story of two childhood friends who reconnect after they’ve chosen very different paths, very different ways to lead their lives. Both women are Black and light-skinned. One has chosen to pass for White, and is even married to a White man who doesn’t know anything of her heritage or history. The other friend is married to a successful African American physician.
[00:55:50] As the women start to spend more and more time together… you know what? I didn’t identify these women by name, but one of their lives, the one who has chosen to be active in the African American community in this day and age, starts looking better and better to the woman who’s chosen to pass for White. And what unfolds as envy starts to creep into the relationship and take over this woman’s mind. It feels like a psychological thriller.
The ending is perfect and shocking. This story feels so fresh and modern and unexpected. I couldn’t believe it was written nearly 100 years ago. Obviously, I’m reading this as a White woman in the 21st century in Kentucky. Like, these are not my people and not my place. So I really need those introductions to really understand the context and the history and how common were these characters’ actions at the time. The answer surprised me, what I read in the literary commentary. But, what a portal into a different time and place.
[00:56:55] This could be a great entry point to Nella Larsen and the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance, which is right up the road from you. I mean, I’m definitely not going to pretend to be your Harlem Renaissance tour guide. Like, I walk the streets of the area, but I don’t know any. I want to read this and go visit Harlem. But I know that there’s a lot there you could do, from formal walking tours to just like, “Hey, friends, let’s go check out some of the sites and intersections that were name-checked in this book.” How’s that sounding?
LIZZEY: I love this idea. I also love it feels very fall-themed because of the psychological thriller aspects of it. So this book sounds fabulous. It sounds a little bit like The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett in some ways.
ANNE: Oh, my gosh. That is a wonderful flight pairing for this book. Just excellent.
LIZZEY: Yes, I loved that book a couple of years ago. So that would be amazing. We could do a walking tour and end at a jazz bar. I’m loving it.
[00:57:56] ANNE: Yes. Okay. I love that for you. Okay, vibe shift. How about some Edith Wharton?
LIZZEY: Okay. Never read Edith.
ANNE: Well, she was a New York City author, and she did not like New York. She describes it constantly as ugly and bland and boring, but her books are set in New York City, and there are so many different places and locations. I haven’t read everything, but my recommended starting points would be either The House of Mirth or The Age of Innocence. And I really like the locations that are on the pages of The Age of Innocence, and it’s probably her best-known. So let’s start there.
This is a story about fashionable, rules-driven, turn-of-the-century New York society. And she was born and raised in elite New York society. She married into New York elite society, as she was expecting to do. Her novels were both very much in this world while being critical of this world, and yet we see the characters struggle with wanting to break free of the norms and conventions, but when they do, they are punished on the page.
[00:59:21] So in The Age of Innocence, we meet a gentleman lawyer named Newland Archer. He’s of elite New York society, and he’s getting ready to wed his fiancée, who is also of elite New York society, and they are going to cement their legacy and their wealth by uniting these families in marriage, as you did back then in these social structures. So his fiancée is like the platonic Victorian female. She’s beautiful. She’s rich. She’s… Oh, gosh, my mind is thinking Jane Austen. She is an accomplished woman. She’s a society lady.
And the gentleman lawyer, he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this is what I want. Of course this is what I want. I’m that kinda man, you know. Like, I want the best. This is what my culture says the best is.” But also, he then kinda falls in love with his fiancée’s cousin, who has just returned to New York after leaving behind a marriage to a European count that went badly, and she is flashy, and fun, and sexy. He’s intrigued, and he kinda wants to throw over his parents, and society, and everything that society has said he owes them, and do whatever he wants. So does he want to make the good match, or does he want to follow love, or what he thinks love is? That is the question.
[01:00:48] But, in this book, they go to Grace Church. They go to the little art museum up in the park, which is The Met. They wander the streets of the Village. They stop their horse and carriage in Union Square. They visit the intersection at University and Lower Fifth. They visit a brownstone on East 39th. They really get around Manhattan. And that could be really fun to be reading with the city you live in in your mind, knowing these locations. Like Grace Church, that’s going to look exactly the same. Like, you could stand on the little paved path going up to the doors and be like, “Yep, Edith Wharton was here. Her character was envisioned being right here.” And then, you know, things like The Met have changed a lot but also not as… It’s still The Met. It’s still the art museum in the park. And what I really want to know is how is this sounding?
[01:01:43] LIZZEY: I love this book. This was actually a book we considered for our summer read because of all the reasons you said, Edith being a New York City author. But it sounds so lovely. I would love to just go to The Met for a day and have lunch or dinner there, and then wander through the museum and talk about this book. It sounds amazing.
ANNE: That sounds good to me. I was asking you how you define a classic because I really wanted to put some Laurie Colwin on your radar if you hadn’t read her yet.
LIZZEY: I have not.
ANNE: Okay. So she is an American writer who died at age 48 in 1992. She was still writing at the time of her death, but that was not that long ago. She started writing in the late ’60s, and the books that I think you might really enjoy were published in the ’80s. But modern classic I don’t believe is a stretch at all. I hear those words associated with Laurie Colwin all the time.
[01:02:41] And Lizzey, I wish I could quote the words that came out of your mouth when I thought, “Ugh, Laurie Colwin,” but you said something about how you love food and friends and family and gatherings and…
LIZZEY: Mm-hmm…
ANNE: Yeah. Do you want to fill in the blanks for me, or is that enough?
LIZZEY: Yes. I just am a social butterfly. I love hosting people. I love eating and drinking with my friends and family. I feel like people are always at our house. It’s my favorite thing in the world to eat and drink with my friends.
ANNE: Well, Laurie Colwin shared a similar love, similar sensibility. She indulged hers in the Village, from her childhood in the ’40s through the early ’90s. And she wrote both fiction and nonfiction. Her best-known nonfiction book is probably Home Cooking. The subtitle is A Writer in the Kitchen. And she writes about… I mean, she writes about food preparation, but also what it means to gather people, what it means to cook, where the pleasure is in cooking.
[01:03:45] She tells these wonderful stories about meals that were lovely and perfect and satisfying, and also ones that just went horribly, terribly, disastrously wrong. If I had to pick one word for Laurie Colwin, she is charming. She’s consistently funny. It feels like she’s talking to you as a friend. She feels like a relatable kind of expert who’s wise and who’s seen things, but always gracious and understanding. Like, she’s going to understand where you’re coming from, and she understands when it’s been a hard day, and she understands when you want to make the meal really special, and she understands when things aren’t quite working out the way that you hope they would, and can she tell you a story to make you feel better about it?
So I was about to say, that’s Home Cooking, even though I didn’t tell you very much. But she’s also well known for, and listen to this very strong sales pitch, she’s well known for writing fiction in which not that much happens and yet, readers find themselves hanging on every word to find out what happens in these novels where not much happens.
[01:04:49] A typical kind of review of Laurie Colwin is, “How did I just read this book in which not much happens and still came away feeling completely charmed.” Or like my friend read one of her novels and said, “Okay, I think I just read this book about a woman quietly trying to destroy her own life. Why was it so winning?” Like, it was so winsome. And I’m smiling to myself as I’m reading about this woman sabotaging herself. How? And the answer to the how is Laurie Colwin. She has a whole collection of books to choose from. You know, not like in the tens, but 10-ish books. But I recommend starting with Home Cooking for nonfiction.
And then for a novel, she has one quartet, and I believe the others are all standalones. I haven’t read everything, but I aspire to. She did write a book that maybe is not for you. So I want you to know. It’s called A Big Storm Knocked It Over. It’s about a woman whose entire life is disrupted, made chaotic, and then needs to be rebuilt. The big storm that knocked it over, I am sorry to tell you, is the arrival of her firstborn child. So maybe don’t read that one yet unless you really want to.
[01:06:07] LIZZEY: I mean, Lucy is a storm, but a beautiful storm. So we’ll see.
ANNE: Well, Laurie Colwin wouldn’t deny that, but she would understand that it does change some things in a person’s life. Okay, decide how you feel about the new baby thing, but that would not be… It wouldn’t be a bad place to start. I can tell you that my first novel that I read by her was Happy All the Time, where… yeah, I was just going to tell you again, not much happens. It’s about two couples who are more or less happily married, and yet even though plots thrive on conflict, there’s a story there despite there not being a whole lot of conflict.
LIZZEY: Yeah. This sounds so, so up my alley. I don’t think I’ve heard of this person, but her novels sound like they fit exactly into themes I like. I read a lot of books about food and hosting, like Supper of the Lamb or Save Me the Plums, and this feels similar, adjacent in some way.
[01:07:07] ANNE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those books would nestle up very comfortably on a bookshelf. They have a lot to say to each other. And I think those authors would very much enjoy each other’s company. I know Ruth Reichl wrote an intro to one of Laurie Colwin’s reissues.
LIZZEY: Oh, well, maybe then I need to start there. I love Ruth Reichl and is one of my very favorite authors, so that pairs well.
ANNE: Oh, yeah. And for a book club… I mean, y’all have been really creative with this, but if I were making it up off the cuff, not an event planner, you go for a walk, you eat a good meal, you have a good conversation. You honor Laurie Colwin.
LIZZEY: Oh, that’s lovely.
ANNE: All right, I’m going to stop there. We’ve covered a lot of ground. Thanks so much for bringing your classics questions and also your book club adventures to What Should I Read Next?.
LIZZEY: Thank you for letting me talk about it. It’s been the delight of my life.
[01:07:56] ANNE: Oh my gosh. Well, the pleasure is all mine. But Lizzey, before you go, please tell me what you think you may read next. So we talked about Passing by Nella Larsen and the Harlem Renaissance adventures you could go on. We talked about Edith Wharton, and specifically The Age of Innocence, and how you could cover Washington Square, Grace Church, up to The Met. And then we talked about the works of Laurie Colwin and the associated potential food and dinner possibilities. So of those books, what do you think?
LIZZEY: They’re all amazing. Truly. I feel like… So my book club trip, our summer trip, is this weekend, so I will be bringing them all to the group, and we will decide as a group what we explore next. But if I had to guess, I would pick Passing by Nella Larsen. It just fits the fall theme so well. I love the psychological thriller aspect you talked about, and I think it would be really perfect for our fall book. But I’ll report back on what we choose, because I truly could see us doing all of them at some point in time.
[01:08:59] ANNE: Well, that sounds amazing, especially for fall in New York. I’ll be curious to hear what they think, and I hope you all have a great time with whatever you end up reading and doing next.
LIZZEY: Thanks, Anne.
ANNE: Thanks, Lizzey.
Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lizzey, and I’d love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Lizzey on her Substack. We have that link, as well as the full list of titles we talked about at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.
Make sure you’re following in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Instagram @WhatShouldIReadNext. And make sure you’re on our email list by signing up at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter.
Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by executive producer Will Bogel, Media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewski, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, community manager Shannan Malone, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and Modern Mrs. Darcy HQ. Plus the audio whizzes at Studio D Podcast Production.
Readers, that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” Happy reading, everyone.
