S4, Chapter 11: Summer Vibes

In this episode, we are sharing a podcast filled with a variety of reading recommendations.  Grab a cool drink and settle in for a hefty list of books with a summery vibe.

Inspiration for this episode comes from  The Summer Vibes Book Tag created by The Cozy Reader: Summer Vibes Book Tag

Julia's Books

• The Cay by Theodore Taylor
• Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman
• What the River Knows by Isabel Ibañez
• What the Library Hides by Isabel Ibañez
• Empire of Shadows by Jacqueline Benson
• Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
• Dan Brown (author)
• As You Wish written and narrated by Carey Elwes
• The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
• The Binding by Bridget Collins 
• Verity by Colleen Hoover
• Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater
• The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
• Snow and Rose by Emily Winfield Martin

Stephany's Books

• The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton
• Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• Float Plan by Trish Doller
• Lost in the Summer of '69 by Eliza Knight
• Kate Morton (author)
  • The Secret Keeper
  • The Lake House
• Ravished by Amanda Quick
• Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, narrated by Ray Porter
• The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson, narrated by Fiona Hardingham
• The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion series by Beth Browers
• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
• Georgette Heyer (author)
  • Venetia (narrated by Richard Armitage)
  • Frederica
• Murder In Highbury by Vanessa Kelly
• The Perfect Hand by Ayelet Waldman

Other Mentions

• Life of Pi (movie)
• The Princess Bride (movie)
• Project Hail Mary (movie)

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Intro/Outro music:  Summer Fling by L-Ray Music

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:08

Hello, listeners and fellow book lovers. Welcome to the Book Snug, a bi-weekly conversational podcast about books and the reading life. My name is Julia, and I'm Stephanie. And we are mother and daughter who love reading and talking about books. The ones we adore and the ones we don't. We're delighted you're here. So grab your favorite hot drink or ice cold beverage and settle in for another cozy, bookish chat.

Speaker 0:38

Hello, Julia. Hi mom.

Speaker 4 0:40

How are you today?

Speaker 0:41

I'm good. How are you? I'm good.

Speaker 4 0:43

Good. I would be better if we were not re-recording this episode. Well Right. A little behind the scenes here. Friends, we have already recorded this episode one time. Completely. I was sitting down to edit it and realized the sound was very, very bad. We're not sure what happened, but it was not publishable. So we are recording this episode for the second time this week.

Speaker 2 1:09

We are chaotic. We don't always have our act together, but that was not something that would have fit into our chaos. We really don't have our act together. Yeah. It would not have been. Yeah.

Speaker 4 1:19

So that's our little story. Welcome, friends. Yes, hi. We are so glad that you are joining us today. Yes. If you are new here, we're so glad that you're here. And if you have been following along with us and spending time with us over the past couple of years, welcome back.

Speaker 3 1:33

Yes.

Speaker 4 1:34

We are so glad you're here as well. Yes. Before we start our discussion today, Julia, do you want to tell everybody what you're drinking?

Speaker 2 1:42

Well, I was gonna pull out my bottle of coke from the fridge and totally forgot before it got started. But just water. Okay.

Speaker 4 1:49

Yeah, what are you drinking? Any Earl Grey today? No, no Earl Grey. I am drinking a homemade mixed fruit smoothie, which is delicious. It has fresh strawberries in it along with some frozen fruit, and it is delicious. So that's what I'm having today. Yeah. Yum.

Speaker 2 2:08

Perfect for our conversation, actually.

Speaker 4 2:11

Right, right. Friends, I hope you have a favorite beverage. Yes. Settle in. Today we are going to be giving you some book recommendations that have a summer focus. Maybe the books aren't summary themed, but they feel like they would be good reading in the summertime.

Speaker 2 2:30

And maybe, maybe we should say that this is our northern hemisphere level of summer, not like when we say summer, this is hot temperatures, being at the beach, adventures, that kind of I think we even need to be more specific and say East Coast, middle section, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, New York, that kind of summertime.

Speaker 4 2:54

Yes. Where it is really hot and humid for the most part. Although today we are having lovely weather that isn't even 80 degrees. So we're all over the place this year.

Speaker 2 3:03

But there was a pretty good thunderstorm last night.

Speaker 4 3:05

There was and it was above 90 and extremely humid yesterday.

unknown 3:09

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 3:11

So all that is to say that when we're talking about summer, we are talking about our experience of summer. Right. Yeah. And I should also say we have a little baby who is fighting her nap really, really hard. So you will be hearing lots of baby cooing.

Speaker 4 3:23

Yeah. Because I'm holding her. Yes.

Speaker 2 3:25

Right where my microphone is. Right. And there she she is a roacher or mover, if you're unfamiliar with that word. Right. And is a talker.

unknown 3:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:36

She makes lots of little baby noises. Point in case. Case in point. Let's say that the correct order.

Speaker 4 3:43

Yeah. Today we are, like I said, talking about some summary book recommendations. We are organizing our book talk today by using the Summer Vibes book tag from BookTube. We I watch a lot of BookTube and so I get a lot of inspiration from there. This particular book tag was developed by the Comfy Reader. And I will post her channel in the show notes if you want to go check her out. And if you do a search on YouTube for the Summer Vibes book tag, you will see a lot of different creators who have also participated. So you would probably get some good book recommendations by doing that as well. I think what we're going to do, Julia, is just dive in. This tag has 10 prompts. Yep. And instead of each of us giving a book for each prompt, which would give you 20 books. Which is a lot. It is a lot. It's a lot to talk about. It's a lot to edit. It's a lot to listen to. We have divided the prompts up basically in half. I think I have one more prompt than you. And we have a couple of prompts at the end that we're just going to do together. Let's start. Okay. And I am going to go with the first prompt, and that is the beach. Sure. And the beach is a book set somewhere tropical. I decided to pick Florida as my tropical destination. It is part of the United States, but it is very hot and humid. In the summertime, if you are in Florida anywhere, you will see that there are beaches all over the place. There are palm trees and bug and via and just all of your tropical goodness is there. You don't have to look very hard for it. Especially if you stay along the coast. The book I want to recommend is The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Clayton. And this is the story of the hurricane that came through the Keys in 1935. It was devastating and it did destroy Flagler's Railroad, which was the way that people were, for the most part, getting to the Keys from the mainland U.S. during that time. This is historical fiction, obviously, and it follows three different women. So you have three storylines that are going to converge, obviously, when the hurricane hits. The reason I'm recommending this is it is just a good summertime read. It happens in the summer, Labor Day weekend. You are invested in each of the stories. It's very interesting some of the historical perspective you get, things that are happening during that time that were real. And then just the experience of the hurricane. She writes it very well and you feel like you're there. So this is just a great, I would say, beach read, by the pool read, um, in your air conditioning read. However, you want to read it. If you're a historical fiction lover, Chanel Clayton does a really nice job. And she usually writes books. If you like this one, a lot of her books are based in Florida or Cuba, in that general area. So that's my first recommendation. The other book that I'm just gonna slip in here, because I think it's a wonderful book to read in the summertime and especially at the beach, is a nonfiction book called Gift from the Sea. And it is written by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who is, yes, the wife of Charles Lindbergh, who was the famous pilot in the early 1900s. If you know their story, you know that they had a son who was kidnapped for ransom and he was eventually killed. So Anne Morrow Lindbergh, when she wrote this book, had already dealt with some significant grief and loss in her life. This is, it's not necessarily a memoir, it's more of a reflection on her life. And she uses different types of seashells to introduce a topic. She reflects on motherhood, on marriage, on finding time for yourself as a woman. And she reflects over a long period of time. So this is a book that could be great for a new mom like Julia, for someone like me who has raised my family and is looking more into the period of time of retirement where my husband is going to be around a lot more. It's just a really nice book. It has a real feel of the ocean and the sea and the timelessness of that. And I just recommend it as a good meditation. I love taking it with me to the beach. You can read a chapter a day, you can sit and read the whole book at one time. It's very short. So I recommend that as well for this, even though it's not really tropical. I thought it was a good place to slip it in.

Speaker 2 8:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And when I was, I mean, I know that you said that we split this up so that we're kind of doing one prompt or the other. Yeah. There's so many that I could put here. But I and I think you are the same way that we tried very hard to pick books we haven't talked about before. We've not talked about much. Yeah, yeah. But one I want to mention just briefly is the K. And I didn't pull up the author for this. But this is the story of a young boy who is living on an island in the I believe it's the Caribbean. This is written by Theodore Taylor, who is shipwrecked during World War II and is stranded on a Caribbean K with an elderly black man, Timothy, and a cat. And so it's there's prejudice because it's around World War II. It's an island in the Caribbean, so check, check, check, check, check all the tropicalness. But then it's also building up to a storm that happens. So another storm book. Yeah. Yeah. I read this one in fifth grade, as in more like my teacher read it to us. So I don't remember all of it, but I do remember very vividly the scenes of the town on this island. And I think it's another good one for the summertime and for the beach. Right. Obviously, there's heavier themes in it, but it's short. I would almost call it middle grade, um, in terms of the length of the story. So another good one. If you're looking for beachy stuff that's kind of just not the like when I think of a beach, it's a typical romance, fluffy romance or something like that. Right. There's some stuff to this, but also still good for the beach and tropical environments. Yeah.

Speaker 4 10:27

Yeah. Well, since we're just pulling stuff out of our brain and talking about it, I'm going to add one more book in here. And this is your typical, and I have mentioned it many times before, your typical sunny tropical romance, and that is called Float Plan. Yeah. By Trish Dahler. I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of detail. It is about a woman who sails the Caribbean on her own for reasons. She needs a first mate and she hires a man, and then a romance ensues. Yeah. There is, it's open door, but not much. And it's just so much fun traveling through the Caribbean, being on the different islands. You feel it feels so summery and light and just perfect for this time of year. So that's just one more little suggestion I'm gonna add in there. I feel like you've talked about that one a few times. I have. That's why I'm not gonna push it too hard. Okay. The second prompt is Music Festival. And this is a book with a focus on music. So, Julia, this is your prompt. Do you want to give us your suggestion?

Speaker 2 11:29

Yes. So before I actually give my suggestion, which is one that I have talked about before, I do want to mention that there is a trend right now, and I'm gonna pick on the Laurie Go more books, like the Pumpkin Spice Cafe or the Christmas Tree Farm, that kind of stuff. So there is a trend where authors are putting together Spotify playlists to go with their books. And so you can listen to those songs while you are reading those books. So that could be another way that you could kind of enjoy music while you're reading. I know that there's other books out there that will do that, but those Lori Gilmore ones are the ones that I have direct experience with. Anyway, the book that I actually want to bring to the table I have talked about before, and I believe it was even this time last year because I had read it for my popular book, Bingo. Um, it was Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reed. Yes. And so I won't, like I said, I won't dive into that too too much, but it's just the story of a band in the 70s trying to make it big and rock and roll, and so you can imagine rock and roll in the 70s, what kind of stuff goes along with that. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I think that's where the phrase came from. Yep. There is a tragic female singer that gets involved and how that impacts the group and some of the dynamics that come into play. But the story is really fun and it reads really propulsively because it's you want to know what's going on. And I feel like the atmosphere is done very well in that you feel the rock and roll, you feel the 70s, you feel Hollywood. But it's also written in the ver like in the format of a transcript of an interview. Yeah. So it's not written out like a story, it's written out like a documentary transcript, which is I think a really fun way to do the story as well.

Speaker 4 13:08

I think that would make it good as an audiobook, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then each character could be a different person.

Speaker 2 13:14

That's I would listen to that. Yeah, that would be cool.

Speaker 4 13:16

I feel like that story is the perfect story to have a playlist with. Yes. Like if they could have come up with songs from this group and then made a playlist for it.

Speaker 2 13:25

I do know that there's a TV show. I have not watched the TV show. But that could be another way that you could get music into this too.

Speaker 4 13:31

Yeah. I again, we're not following our rules. We started off not following them, so we still are going to go that direction. Yes. I have a book that I want to read. It's not out yet, or that's not true. I think it is just published last week called Lost in the Summer of 69. Okay. Written by Eliza Knight. And I do have that it was just published on the 9th of June. And this is about an elderly woman who finds out that she is losing her memory. She has some kind of dementia, I believe. And so she decides, as like this final last fling, she is going to visit all of the music festivals that are going on in the summer of 1969. She leaves without telling anyone. And so her daughter and her granddaughter are very worried about her and they go looking for her after the daughter has heard her mother singing on the radio and figures something's going on and she better find out what it is. I just think this sounds like a ton of fun. It's a road trip. Plus, it's based on all of the music festivals that happened in 1969. So you'll get a good historical perspective, at least I'm hoping. I think it's going to be funny. I think it's going to be heartwarming. And I think it's just going to be the perfect type of book and tone for a book for just a light summer read.

Speaker 14:55

Yeah.

Speaker 4 14:55

So I I think I might listen to this as an audiobook. And I have a feeling I'm going to purchase it pretty soon because it just sounds good to me. Yeah. The next prompt is Watermelon, and that is a book with a juicy secret. I decided to go with an author instead of a single book for this prompt. And the author I'm choosing is Kate Morton. She's an Australian author. She tends to write historical fiction that has some suspense associated with it. There's always at least one huge secret that has generational impact. Usually there's more than one secret. So they they read very much like mysteries. They tend to be pretty propulsive. They always have a historic timeline and then a more they always have a historic timeline and then a more contemporary timeline. And the person in the contemporary timeline is figuring out what happened in the past. I like all of Kate Morton's books. I haven't read her most recent one, which is The Homecoming, but that is on my pile of possibilities for the summer. I'm going to recommend two of her books here, but you could read any of them and get a secret and have an enjoyable reading experience. The first book I want to recommend is The Secret Keeper. This story is about a girl who is 16, and one summer evening a man walks down their driveway and her mother goes out to meet him. And this young girl, this 16-year-old, watches her mother shoot and kill him. And that's how the story starts. And then when the woman is much, much older, she finds out what happened and how that man came to be at their house and why her mother shot him. So that is the big secret there. Who is this man and what was he to her mother? It's a very good book. I think it's my favorite of hers. The second book I want to recommend, because it also happens in the summertime, is called The Lake House. And this is about a family whose baby boy was taken or disappeared on the night of a big party that they were having in the summertime. And so you the story is based on what happened to this baby, events leading up to the kidnapping, quote unquote.

Speaker 17:30

Yeah.

Speaker 4 17:30

And then the the consequences of that and what happened to the family. The person, the contemporary timeline, I think is a detective who's on vacation and just stumbles across this estate and then gets drawn into the story and she figures out what happened. Both very summary reads, both very fascinating in the storylines and the secrets. And it's they're always suspenseful. Some of her stories have a little bit of a gothic feel. So if you like historical fiction, if you like a mystery, if you like a little bit of suspense, it all works in these stories, and I really, really love them, and I highly recommend Kate Morton.

Speaker 2 18:10

Yeah. I think with this one, I'm gonna spitball a few here as well. I think for me, when I think of Juicy Secrets, I tend to think of like thrillers, right? Things that are revealed in the very last possible second. Right. And I don't have good a I don't have a good track record with thrillers, so I'm not. But as I was looking at my bookcase as you were talking, We Have Always Lived in the Castle came up for me. Yes. In terms of like how that, because I wouldn't necessarily call that one a thriller. It's like a mystery to kind of figure out. It's very unsettling. Yes.

Speaker 4 18:43

And there is a huge secret in it.

Speaker 2 18:45

Right, right. So that is by Shirley Jackson. We've talked about that on the show before, so I won't kind of talk too much about that. I would maybe even almost say the 13th tale by and I totally spitballed. I that is Diane Setterfield.

Speaker 4 18:58

There's another huge secret. Right. And you don't ever really get a full answer with that. So you have to be okay with an ending that is a little bit open.

Speaker 2 19:10

Yeah. Right. It unsettles you just to touch. Yeah. So those are two good ones. Now those almost fall more like summer ween. So if you're looking for like some funky stuff to read, that's more like, oh, I would read this in the fall.

Speaker 4 19:22

A little spooky. Yeah.

Speaker 2 19:24

But sometimes those are the good ones to read, like sitting on the beach. Yes. Because I I need the contradiction of the hot sun on my neck to like counteract this, like yeah, ice in my veins kind of feeling.

Speaker 4 19:34

Just on a side note, we have always lived in the castle was probably the book that got me interested in and started my love for weird, creepy fiction. Nothing that's full-on horror, but that is just so completely unsettling that it makes your heart race. Yeah. Okay, moving on to the next prompt. The next prompt is Water Park. Water Park is a book that has a setting that is on or near the water. Yes. So this is your prompt, Julia. Even though we keep interrupting each other's prompts, what is the book that you want to share with us?

Speaker 2 20:13

Yes. So um the first one that I want to share is Island of the Blue Dolphins. Okay. This is a book I've never brought at all. It is by Scott Odell. Now, this is a book that I read in elementary school. So again, I'm like really throwing it back here. It is a true story of the Native American girl, Karana, who was left alone for 18 years on San Nicolas Island off the coast of California. So if I remember correctly, her entire people leave the island for whatever reason and she's left behind.

Speaker 4 20:47

I think they're attacked by whalers or something. Something. And their chief is killed, and everybody else decides to leave.

Speaker 2 20:54

Right. And so she is fairly young when this happens. This is a story, I would almost make it um a middle grade comp to like where the crawdads sing. Oh. In the sense of survival and nature writing and abandonment. Not a ton of other characters, very singular character-focused, and this is their experiences. Yeah. But it is, it's a little island, so you get lots of water. Dolphins are involved and important in this story. Now, like I said, I have not read it in years, but I I just remember just the nature writing with the water and the survival. The other one that I'm gonna mention here, I have not read this yet, but I do know that this is gonna be a good fit here is Life of Pie. Yes. Of being on the water.

Speaker 4 21:40

100% great book together.

Speaker 2 21:42

And again, I don't, the author is not in my head. Jan Martell. Yeah, yeah. So if you want something that's more truly sitting on the water, that's Life of Pi.

Speaker 4 21:51

And there's a good movie that goes with that too. So you could read the book and then watch the visually stunning movie.

Speaker 2 21:58

Yes, yeah. So those would be two options. Options that I would say here for water park and being on the water.

Speaker 4 22:02

Yeah. Very good recommendation. So much so, Julia, that when you recommended this the first time we recorded this episode, I went and bought the ebook.

Speaker 2 22:13

So I could Which Island of the Blue Dolphins.

Speaker 4 22:15

Yes, Island. I already read Life of Pi. Yeah, yeah. But Island of the Blue Dolphins, I I actually purchased so I could experience it.

Speaker 2 22:22

It's short. Like it's I already have it tucked in my like when my child is old enough to read.

Speaker 4 22:28

Like it's a story you want to read with her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Our next prompt is ice cream. A book or genre that is a guilty pleasure. I don't really have guilty pleasures. I read what I want to. I don't feel guilty about it.

Speaker 2 22:44

Well, and I think guilty pleasure is such a strange idea anyway.

Speaker 4 22:48

Right. It's something that you do that you don't want other people to know about.

Speaker 2 22:51

Right.

Speaker 4 22:52

There are books I don't recommend because I don't know the sensitivity of other readers or like when it comes to romance, how much they care about open door versus closed door. So I am going to say that my guilty pleasure is reading Beauty and the Beast retellings that are in the genre of romance and they usually have open door parts to them. That's what I'm going to go with here. I have two books that I want to recommend that I just had a lot of fun with that are basically Beauty and the Beast retellings. They are Regency romances and they do have a little bit of open door. Now I didn't pick them because they were open door. Frankly, I skim or skip the open door scenes because 99% of the time I just think they're cringy and I don't want to read them. Yeah. The first book, and this is the one that I recommend the most, is Ravished by Amanda Quick. This is a Beauty in the Beast retelling. Beauty is a quirky protagonist who loves fossils. She is not considered to be your traditional beauty. She has crooked teeth. Her hair is really curly and hard to control. She's very outspoken and says exactly what she thinks. She is the one who goes to the beast character who is a lord and wants his protection because caves in the nearby village are being utilized, I think, by smugglers and abused, and there are fossils in there that she thinks are very important. So the two of them go and stay in one of the caves to catch these people who are defacing them. And because of the tides, they get caught and have to stay overnight. And then so that her reputation isn't ruined, they get married. The story goes from there. It is just delightful. They're delightful independently, and they're delightful as a couple. The reason I say that is they're so much respect. Like the Lord, I forget what his name is. He just respects the beauty character almost from the beginning. And they are fun to read. And of course, it's a happily ever after because it's a romance. But it's just a light, fun, frothy version of Beauty and the Beast that is great to read this time of year. Yeah. The second book is Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare. Tessa Dare writes Regency romances with a very modern viewpoint. So the people talk like modern language. There's a lot of feminist themes and things like that. But her, a lot of her female characters are not your typical beautiful, skinny little main characters. And in this story, her main female character is an authoress who has no money whatsoever, and she inherits this crumbling castle. And when she gets there, there is already a scarred, damaged Duke living there. And he thinks it's his castle. And some there's been some mistake somewhere. And so they have this situation where they both have to live in the castle. She has no money, she doesn't have anywhere else to go. And he's scarred from a war, so that he's beast, and he's kind of beastly the way he acts. But the thing about this book is Tessa Dare is making fun of a lot of stuff. And one of the things she makes fun of is fandoms because the female main character has a fandom based on the books that she's writing. And they cosplay and they hang out outside the castle because they want to meet her. It's just fun. And this fandom actually is part of the story, and they do something to help. But again, light, fluffy, completely useless read, but very entertaining and very good for the summertime. So that is my that is my suggestion for ice cream. Yeah. Good one. Not truly, I don't feel guilty about reading them. I just reserve recommendations because if you don't like open door, you probably won't want to read this. But you can always skip those parts. They are completely unnecessary to the storyline.

Speaker 2 27:51

Well, and I think those scenes often are. There's very few that I have read that I could be like, I can see why that was necessary to the story. Very, very few times.

Speaker 4 28:01

I feel like in romances like this, it's always gratuitous. Yeah. But the other thing about romancing the Duke is the main female character is not your typical beauty, and the male character is blind or like legally blind, so he doesn't see very well. And he is very scarred from battle. So that's ice cream. Okay. Let's move to road trip, Julia. A book that takes you on an adventure.

Speaker 2 28:25

Yes. So as I was thinking about this prompt, I was like, how do we define an adventure? Like, is it an adventure with an endpoint? Like I have to do this task to this task, like that kind of a thing. Or is it just a general adventure? So a quest. Yeah. Or just you're we're just doing a thing. Yeah, wandering around having stuff happen. So there's a couple that I want to throw in here, and a good bit of these we've talked about before. Okay. But if you want something that's really fluffy but fun and familiar, I am gonna recommend The Princess Bride by by William Goldman. Yes. So we know the movie, the movie's a classic. It's actually based on this book, right? So it's not the movie, then the book, it's the book, then the movie. And the book is really fun because the William Goldman kind of breaks the fourth wall a little bit sometimes. He's writing it as this as if he has received this manuscript from somebody else and he's making his commentary in it.

Speaker 4 29:22

Right. So a nested yeah, it's a nested narrative, like we talked a book within a book.

Speaker 2 29:27

Right, right. And this the story of the Princess Bride is just fun to begin with, right? And so you get the background of all the different characters, and it's a fun little adventure, right? And so it's fun, it's fluffy. You can sit on the beach and just read through it fairly fast. I'm also gonna throw in What the River Knows and Where the Library Hides by Isabella Banyas. Okay. Because these are like archaeological adventures, which I love. I'm all for that. I haven't read it yet, but I think you'd agree with me, Mom, that Empire of Shadows by Jaclyn Benson.

Speaker 4 30:02

100%, yes.

Speaker 2 30:03

I talked about Sword Heart by T. Kingfisher with Hala and I forget the guy's name. The sword. The sword did a little adventure. I don't remember which episode I talked about that one in, but I'll put that one there. And then I know it's controversial, but if you like kind of fast-paced mystery thrillers, as I think Dan Brown books, throwing his adventures, right? Or if you're like James Patterson or other like I the books that dad kind of reads. Yeah. Espionage, maybe. Yes. Things that are propulsive. Yeah. So those are kind of the ones that I would put there. Yeah. But the non-serious, non-serious The Princess Bride. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 30:50

And in our last recording of this episode, we mentioned as well that if you really like the Princess Bride, especially the movie, then you should check out As You Wish.

Speaker 2 31:02

As You Wish by Carrie Elwitz. Which is the companion. So it's the behind the scenes. I think he narrates the audiobook. He does.

Speaker 4 31:10

Plus, a lot of the other actors and actresses in the movie make cameo appearances in the audiobook. Okay. But Julia said that the book book has photographs. So there are benefits to reading and listening. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 31:25

Yeah. It could be one, and I've done this in the past, where I'm listening to the audiobook while I'm reading along. And then that way you get kind of immersion reading.

Speaker 31:34

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 31:36

I think those are great suggestions. I had a million that I could have recommended. Yes. So I was glad to let you talk about adventure books for once. Our next prompt is Picnic with Friends, a book about friendships. I have two. One is very obvious and it's very popular right now, but I can't help it. I have to throw it out there. And that is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. The reason I'm recommending this is it is an unusual friendship. And there seems to be this unspoken rule that we can't talk about it. Like it's a spoiler if we talk about it. So what I'm gonna say is just read the book. People are sometimes afraid of Andy Weir books because there's a lot of science in them, but you can skim those parts or skip them if they're just meaningless to you. Don't use that as a reason not to experience a really great story. There's also a movie out, and that is also excellent. I recommend both. If you're going to read Project Hail Mary, I recommend the audiobook. Okay. I forget who narrates it, but I will put that in the show notes. And I just, you cannot go wrong with this. And the friendship is lovely. It's wonderful to watch it develop and it's wonderful to watch it carry through the story into the ending. I think the ending is perfect. And in case you live under a rock and you don't know what Project Hail Mary is, it's about a man who wakes up in space, doesn't know he why he's there, and then something something crazy happens. Yeah. So that's all I'm gonna tell you about that. Just believe me when I say it's worth the read. And then the second book, I don't know if I've talked about on the show before or not. I read it last summer, and I think it's a great historical fiction summertime read. And that is the The Hazelborne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson. She is the author of Major Petigrew's Last Stand. I think that's her most famous book. This book is about is about a young woman who is finding herself in need of a job after World War II. During World War II, she managed completely a very large estate in the country. But when the men came back from war from war, she was deemed not capable enough and they gave the position to a man. And there were some laws that were enacted that didn't allow women to have businesses that men could have. And this story is based on a group of women who were trying to start a taxi service with motorcycles and what happened when the men came back from war and how that endangered their prospects. But this young woman, over the course of a summer before she actively starts looking for a job, becomes the companion of an older lady and they go to this resort area called Hazelborne, and she meets the women of the motorcycle club and gets involved in what they do, and then in the process of that, meets some other characters connected to them, like brothers or friends or whatever. This is kind of a coming of age story. You get a lot of background of what was happening in England after World War II. After World War I. Sorry, I said World War II. This is after World War I. Especially the plight of women and the struggles of women and how during the war they were given a lot of independence, and then that was taken away from them when the men came back. And just the plight of this single young woman who didn't have money and what was she gonna do with herself. There's a romance, a very, very slow burn. Like don't expect passionate stuff happening. A very slow burn romance. But it this book is basically about friendship and how friendships develop and the benefits and the beauty of friendship, especially during difficult times. Yeah. So that's the Hazelborne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club. Highly recommend. Yeah. I did this on audio as well, as an audiobook, and very, very good that way.

Speaker 2 36:02

The one that I just want to throw in here, we've talked about a bajillion million times, but I think one I have great memories of reading this over the summer. But that's Harry Potter. Like you there are beautiful examples of friendship in that story. Yeah. So, right, we've talked about we could do like series and a half one.

Speaker 4 36:22

I think it's a very real representation of friendship across a child into your teenage years, the hormones, the struggles, the difficulties, the loyalty. Right. Yeah, ride or die. Yeah, that kind of feeling. I thought about Harry Potter, but we do talk about it so much. I know. And then when we recorded this episode the last time, you mentioned the unselected journals of Emma M. Lion. Yeah. Those books taught they touch on so many types of friendship. But there is a friendship group at the core of those journals that is just magical. Yeah. Absolutely. 100%. Love those books. If you haven't picked them up, are you living under a rock? Oh mom. That's my question.

Speaker 2 37:09

But they they are getting their flowers right now. Yeah. They are the specifics.

Speaker 4 37:13

They are definitely getting recognition.

Speaker 2 37:15

Yes.

Speaker 4 37:16

All right, Julia, where are we? Oh, Sunburn. A book that you regret reading.

Speaker 2 37:22

Well, I will maybe for some humor say I've already gotten sunburned this summer. You have two or three different times. Yes, which is your normal MO. Yep. Cloudy days get me all the time. So this was an interesting one for me to think about because if I regret it, it's often a DNF, and I've often stopped it before I get too far. But what I was thinking about regret outside of DNF, I it I was more thinking about stories that I read that put stuff in my head that I wish I hadn't. Yeah. So there are books that I've DNF'd that I'm like, that was a time not spent well. I don't want to say wasted because I feel like that can be so awful to the author, but it was time not spent well. I'm gonna say that the books that I regret here are the the domestic thrillers that I've read. Whether because they just made me feel real icky or they dealt with themes that are too close to like my heart. So I'm not going to name them because I don't like them. But there there was another book, The Binding by Bridget Collins. I have talked about this. It was a DNF for one of our quarterly reviews. And this one is a regret, one because it was a DNF, because it it got dark really quickly, and there was a really unnecessary scene about how dark it was. But it was a regret because it was like I went into it thinking it was gonna be a different story. So, and I will talk about this coming up, where I had thought it was going to be a book about books and magic and the the the beauty of book binding, and that was not at all what it was. I'm also going to maybe jump on a bandwagon here and say, I regret ever purchasing Verity by Colleen Hoover and reading that, and I lasted three chapters and that was about it. So those are the ones that I'm gonna put here for for this category.

Speaker 4 39:22

I feel uh I will say that I always regret when I purchase a book and end up not liking it. That is always a huge regret for me. Yeah. The book I'm gonna talk about, I didn't purchase, thank goodness. But I did read all the way through, which I'm still questioning why. It is the type of book I knew about halfway through that I hated. I was not gonna have anything good to say about it, and I don't have anything good to say about it. But I'm gonna mention it here because it is just so highly publicized and and is so polarizing right now. I just want to put my two cents in. Just because of the way that it was marketed and how much it's being pushed, I'm gonna talk about it. Generally, I don't like to say really bad things about books because I know the author put a lot of work into them, but I'm I'm even questioning how much work the author put into this book. It feels like it was done quickly and without a lot of thought. So let me just let me just back up here. The book is Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burke. We Julie and I both talked about this in our anticipated reads for 2026. It sounded so fun. Premise is a tridwife influencer whose online personality does not match what her real life is like. A big shocker, right?

Speaker 3 40:51

Are we all shocked about that?

Speaker 4 40:53

She wakes up in the 1800s and has to actually live the life she's pretending to live in the 2020s. Right. The marketing pushes this book as an insightful satire, biting commentary about influencer culture and motherhood and being a woman. And so I was expecting this very intellectual, deep thinking book.

Speaker 2 41:26

On the nose.

Speaker 4 41:32

And and not only that, but having some really good commentary about it. If I would have gone into this book thinking that it was your basic wack-adoo, completely suspend your disbelief thriller, then I probably would have rated it a star higher. But I gave this book one star. It was poorly written. Objectively, I felt like it was bad. It was poorly written. The motivations of the main character were not well established. The main character's character was not well established. On the outside, she was one person. On the inside, she thought like a completely different person, and it there it didn't mash. Like, I don't even know how to explain it. It made no sense. Nothing about it made sense. The reason I kept reading was because it was compared to Shutter Island. And I know how that book plays out. I didn't read it, but I saw the movie, and I know what the twist is, and I'm pretty sure that's how they were comparing the books because of the twist. And I guess there is a comparison there, but it's not great. And the twist actually negates everything that the marketing said the book was doing. So anyway, I hated this book. I hated it, I hated everything about it, and I hated myself for finishing it. Right.

Speaker 1 42:59

So I have huge regrets.

Speaker 4 43:01

And like you, Julia, there were things about this book that I I'm mad that I put in my brain. Yeah. I felt like my brain needed a good scrub down when I was done reading it.

Speaker 2 43:11

Yes.

Speaker 4 43:12

That's the worst. I could spend hours talking about this book. I have very specific reasons why I did not like it. I can explain exactly why what they were and why. I'm not going to do that now. I just really, really did not like this book. I gave it one star because it is readable. Like it's propulsive. Like any normal thriller system. You want to know what's happening. Yeah. But when I was done, it was very unsatisfactory. Ooh, that's the worst. So that was my sunburn, and I got burnt bad. It was a bad burn. Did it put you into a slump though?

Speaker 2 43:49

Or like made you angry that you needed to like read another.

Speaker 4 43:52

Yeah, I wanted to read something else that I enjoyed immediately.

Speaker 2 43:55

Yeah.

Speaker 3 43:56

Okay. Okay.

Speaker 4 43:58

Number nine, a summer. Our dress. Okay. A book that is light and cute. Yes.

Speaker 2 44:05

Yeah. There are many, many that we could say here. I mean, you already mentioned MM Lion. Oh, yeah. We've talked about Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater multiple times. Yes. Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and Ship of Her Homemaking by Catherine Valenti. Snow and Rose. I can't see the author from where I'm sitting. But that's a sweet little fairy tale. Good for the winter, but like fairy tales are fabulous for summer anyway. Yeah, there's like so many that we could put in this category.

Speaker 4 44:34

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to recommend an author again. I'm going to recommend Georgette Hayer. She is an author who wrote between the 1920s and the 1960s or 70s.

Speaker 2 44:48

She's a very popular author right now in some corners of the book, too. One of her specialties is Regency romance. Closed door.

Speaker 4 44:55

There's absolutely no intimacy like that. I mean, the characters barely touch.

Speaker 45:01

Yeah.

Speaker 4 45:01

But these are romances. They're comedic. They're very, very funny. That's one of her calling cards, is how humorous they are. And they are just light, frothy romances where the characters get in sticky situations and then they end up having to get married or help other people get married. Yeah. Yeah. They're just fun. So I'm going to recommend two. One I'm going to recommend as an audiobook because Richard Armitage is the narrator, and honestly, he could read anything. And I would be happy. I'm going to recommend Venetia. It's about an innocent girl who is kind of isolated from society, and she meets this well-known rake ne'er do well who ran away when he was young with an older wim woman and they fall in love. And it's their complicated story. Of course it's complicated. And then the second book I want to recommend is Frederica, which is about a young woman who is responsible for her younger siblings. They have no money. And so she appeals to a distant cousin to take them in in London so that she can introduce her younger sister, who's beautiful, into society because she's sure that she will make a very good match. And then Frederica and her cousin end up falling in love. But again, very funny. And because of the younger siblings and their kids, they get into a lot of scrapes and mishaps. One of the kids grabs a hold of the tether of a hot air balloon and ends up being like dragged around the town in the sky because he's holding on to the hot air balloon.

Speaker 2 46:46

Oh my word.

Speaker 4 46:46

So it's fun. They're fun books, very light, very frothy. Yeah. They have no deep meaning. It's just a good time, and I highly recommend. She has so many books you could choose from, too. Yes.

Speaker 2 46:59

And I know that Venetia is talked about all over the place, too.

unknown 47:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2 47:02

And Richard Armitage just top-notch. Top notch. We've talked about him maybe once or twice on the show.

Speaker 4 47:10

Our final, our final prompt is Mosquito. A book with an annoying character. Or Julia and I are changing this a little bit. We're saying anything annoying in books, publishing, reading, etc. So do you have any current annoyances, Julia, that you just need to get off your chest? Yes.

Speaker 2 47:31

And I know we've rattled out our annoyances in other episodes as well. One that, well, okay, I got two. Author ticks, right? If the character is always smiling, or is there's repeated words all over the place. Or if they're looking up through their eyebrows or squinching up their nose or I know I mentioned a book where even in like a kidnap situation, everybody's nodding and smiling at each other. Like it just was like, can we have a little bit more dynamic to these characters?

Speaker 4 48:00

Well, I just mentioned I read Murder and Highbury about Emma Knightley being the sleuth. And she, Emma Knightley, crinkles her nose at everything when she's happy, when she's sad, when she's frustrated. I mean, it was just never-ending.

Speaker 2 48:15

There's one thing to be said about establishing something as a pattern of behavior. It's another thing entirely to not make it a dynamic thing about a character. So that bugs me, or like repeated words. I know I've gone on rants about phrases that are said over and over. Right. Or dune. I have like that one. Like sphincter. We talked about that multiple times. So that always takes me out of the story. Sphincter was specifically bad. Even though I knew it was the correct word for what he was trying to do, it pulled me right out of a difficult story to get into to begin with. But the other thing that also really annoys me is convenience for the sake of the plot. So as I was looking over my shelves, I was reminded of the Dan Brown books that I have. And I'm gonna pick on this specifically because that's that's my example of this type of story that I have. Where there's in one story specifically where I caught this, there were a set of experts around trying to solve a situation, and the main character comes in and solves the problem better than the experts do. And they're not an expert. Right. Yeah. And I know that that's not the only situation where that has occurred. I know it's not the only like that's happened other places.

Speaker 4 49:29

You don't like plot devices that are too convenient.

Speaker 2 49:32

Right. Right. And so that was really frustrating to me and is something that I'm regularly annoyed about. Like, why, if this person has the qualifications, why are they not the one? Like I understand fresh eyes help, but they should be the one with the knowledge to make this decision. So yeah, convenience for the sake of the plot.

Speaker 4 49:52

Okay. We're my yeah, was my thing. Well, I'm gonna agree with you because I think at least with the repetitious words or phrases that you see over and over again, or how I was talking about Emma wrinkling her nose every other page, I feel like that's poor editing. And I feel like I'm seeing that a lot more, and not only the repetition of words, but also just errors, editing errors, seeing double words side by side or misspellings or a word missing. Right. I'm seeing that a lot more, and that does annoy me. Yeah. And then the other thing, and this goes back to yesteryear, because I think this is where my frustrated my frustration started, is that I feel like books are being marketed incorrectly or falsely, and it's starting to make me feel like I'm being bamboozled all the time.

Speaker 5 50:47

Yeah.

Speaker 4 50:48

Or that snake oil salesman just got me. If if yesteryear had been marketed, like I said, as a thriller, a suspense thriller, I probably would have been more tolerant of it because I would have known what I was walking into. But because I was told it was gonna be this very thoughtful, very insightful, very satirical representation, I was expecting a book that had been thoughtfully constructed, that made sense, and I didn't get that, and then that made me madder because I felt like I was sold a bill of goods.

Speaker 2 51:27

Right.

Speaker 4 51:27

And that's not I that's not the only book I've had that experience with. Marketing telling me one thing and the book I actually got was something entirely different. And it feels like marketing is is doing what it needs to to draw people in and buy the book, not tell you exactly what you're getting. Right. Not that I need to have a full, full-on plot told to me, but I want to at least have a good idea of what I'm picking up as far as direction that we're heading. That happened to me with a perfect hand. Remember the last episode? I said that's what I'm reading and I'm loving it. Right. It's gonna be five stars unless something happens. And something happened.

Speaker 52:08

Yeah.

Speaker 4 52:08

And it ended up being three stars. And it made me mad because it actually was a great story, but it was not the story I thought I was getting, and it's not the story I wanted.

Speaker 52:17

Right.

Speaker 4 52:18

So yeah, I don't know. That it's probably a me problem. I'm probably being ridiculous with this, but I will say that I'm going to be much more careful about picking up new, new authors that I don't know anything about based on what is being marketed about them. Right. I'm gonna use the library a lot more. I'm gonna wait and see how books do over time because I just don't I don't trust that I'm being told the truth and it makes me mad.

Speaker 52:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2 52:48

No, I agree. No, I'm not reading very many new books, but I agree with you. Feeling like I have been like taken as a fool is just so frustrating.

Speaker 4 52:57

I hate that. I hate it. And especially when a book is as bad as yesteryear. At this point, I'm just gonna come out and say it. Yesteryear will be my worst book of the year. Something is gonna have to come along and be horrendous to beat it out. And if you have a worse book, Mom, I yikes. Yikes. It's not gonna happen. I've been burned. It's not gonna, I'm not gonna be burned again.

Speaker 2 53:24

Okay. All right. Let the record show. Okay. It's noted, underlined in red. Got it. Well, somehow we still ended up talking about a ton of books. Yeah, we did. Even though we said we weren't. We weren't going to. I feel like we should just need to embrace the fact that we can't help ourselves. It's just gonna happen. We have a book podcast for a reason. Like but friends, I would be well, we would be very curious to know what books you would put in these different categories. Or if you live in a place where summer is different and you have a different understanding of these different elements, what what books would you put there or how would you categorize them? Up next, we have no idea. We have a few things that we're tossing around. I know that we've wanted to look at upcoming releases starting in June through the end of the year. So we might be able to do that.

Speaker 4 54:17

That's probably where we're gonna lean. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 54:20

We are, and I like this idea of doing a summer ween episode. Yeah. So that'll fall straight up. Middle of July, maybe. Yeah. Um, and if you aren't familiar with the idea of summer ween, it's just simply taking a time during the summer and looking at spooky stuff, kind of like how we talked about we've always lived we've always lived in the castle or things like that. If you have enjoyed the chaos and the baby noises and the book talk and the everything, we ask that you rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I know we ask this regularly. We're not needy, I promise, but it does help algorithm and it does help sharing us around. Yes. And I think that's all the housekeeping. It is. So thank you so much, friends, for spending part of your day with us today. Um, and we'd love to have you join us again in the Books Nug for the next chapter. Bye, friends.

Speaker 4 55:12

We'd love for you to continue today's conversation with us at the Booksnug underscore podcast on Instagram and at the Booksnug Podcast on Facebook. All of our episodes can be found wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as at our website, the booksnugpodcast.budsprout.com, where show notes for every episode can be found. We'd love to hear from you. Email us at the booksnugpodcast at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 55:42

As C.S. Lewis, one of our favorite authors, so famously said, you can never have a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me, and we wholeheartedly agree.