Season 3, Episode 0: ReadICT 2023 Kickoff: Live with Books & Whatnot

In this bonus episode recorded before a live audience, co-hosts Sara Dixon and Daniel Pewewardy join Suzanne Perez and Beth Golay from the KMUW podcast Books & Whatnot to celebrate the 2023 kickoff of the #ReadICT challenge. A departure from the usual podcast format, these book aficionados and fellow podcasters talk about the history of the challenge and explore each category and how it might be approached differently by readers. This episode is full of great recommendations for each category (including some from a few very brave audience members) as well as their own reading plans for #ReadICT 2023!

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcription. Some errors may occur. If you find a transcription error, please contact us with any corrections and we will make those corrections as quickly as possible.

[MUSIC]

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Welcome to Read. Return. Repeat., the ReadICT 2023 kickoff!

ALL: Whoo!

SARA, VOICEOVER: I'm Sara Dixon, your host for Read. Return. Repeat. and I am here with...

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Daniel Pewewardy, adult programming librarian and co-host of Read. Return. Repeat.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Whoo!

Okay.

So basically, everybody thank you so much for joining us today. We are recording our kickoff episode for the 2023 ReadICT reading challenge. But not only that, it is our first episode of Read. Return. Repeat. season 3.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: 23-skidoo is what we decided to name it.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Because I don't think -- does anyone know what skidoo really means? Daniel?

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: No, like I read like a really long Wikipedia article about it and they don't have a definite answer. So no one knows what 23-skidoo means.

SARA, VOICEOVER: All right, 23-skidoo: a ReadICT reading challenge. That's what we're calling it.

So just to keep you guys, to let you know how we're going to run things today, it's a little different than our normal episode. But we're going to be joined by two wonderful guests from the Books & Whatnot podcast on KMUW our local radio, public radio station. We've got Beth Golay and Suzanne Perez.

SUZANNE: Hello.

BETH: Thank you for having us.

SARA: Yeah.

DANIEL: Thanks for coming.

SUZANNE: Hello, Wichita.

SARA: We really have an audience. Isn't that fun?

SUZANNE: Oh, it's so fun.

SARA: So we're recording live at the Advanced Learning Library today. And we're going to just talk about books, we're going to run through the challenge. We're going to share things that we can't wait to read, things that we love that we want to share with all of you. And then we'll actually hear from some of our audience members today so we're excited about that as well. So what we'll do is just kick it over to Suzanne. Suzanne, will you tell our listeners today about the ReadICT Reading Challenge?

SUZANNE: Sure. So seven years ago now, I just sort of got a wild idea to start a local reading challenge. And that was because I had been reading or seeing these types of challenges in other places: reading websites, blogs, podcasts, those sorts of things. And I just thought it'd be neat to do a local version of that. So yeah, way back when seven years ago, I just threw out 12 categories. Beth Golay was one of the first people I tagged, I believe on Facebook and said, if we did this, would you be up for this? And I believe you said yes.

BETH: I said yes.

SUZANNE: So and then it sort of took on a life of its own. We are now -- it's now a partner, it's now a very much anticipated annual event. It's super exciting. We love to develop the... the categories. But just to explain to those who don't know anything about what it's about, it is a 12 book, 12 month, 12 category challenge. And you can read pretty much -- you know, the first category this year for instance, we're gonna get to it, I know. But it's like a book with a nonhuman narrator. That can be anything you want to read. And then so you just complete the challenge. Our partnership with the Library means that you can go online to the Library's website and log your reading. If you are a completionist like I am and like to keep lists and mark things off and it makes you feel better about what you're doing in life, then the reading challenge is definitely for you. And we really, the other thing is just the whole idea is just to encourage people to read more, and to read more broadly. So maybe some books that you might not have thought about, about reading.

SARA: Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

I am not the kind of person that likes to like make my list, though. I know we... I've been looking at the Facebook page a little bit since we released the categories at the beginning of the year, and people are already planning out their full lists. I am more of the reader that reads what I want to read and then I figure out where it goes later.

SUZANNE: Yep. And that works for sure.

DANIEL: Same.

SUZANNE: I make lists, and then I completely ignore them. And I read what I want. So I sort of fall in both categories, I think.

SARA: That's fair. What about you, Beth?

BETH: I wait until two days before the end of the year. And then I plug in what I've read. But I do have, you know, my wish list today. I have some books selected for books that I'd love to read. And I think they will all just become my guilty pleasure. Because inevitably, I read what I have to read.

SARA: That makes sense. We didn't say it earlier Beth also runs a different podcast called Marginalia where she interviews a lot of wonderful authors. High profile authors, one might say.

SUZANNE: She's kind of a big deal.

SARA: She's kind of a big deal. We're excited to have her on stage.

SUZANNE: Yep.

BETH: Thank you.

SARA: Great. Well, then why don't we just run through the categories really quick? Suzanne, would you please inform our audience? All 12 of them, do all 12 of them.

SUZANNE: All 12 of them. Here we go. I know you guys are excited to hear these because you've never heard them yet.

SARA: Never heard them before.

SUZANNE: Okay, number one, a book with a non-human narrator. Category number two is a book with a long title. We just picked the arbitrary number seven, seven or more words. Number three, a book about friendship. Number four is a guilty pleasure read. Number five is a book told from a villain's point of view. Number six is a book about time. Category seven is a book with a color in the title. Category eight is a book featuring an LGBTQIA+ protagonist. Category nine is a book about death or grief. 10 is a book set in the Great Plains. Category 11 is a book about a secret or closed society. And category 12, once again, every year is a book by an author visiting Wichita. So that's our 2023 categories.

SARA: But thanks to COVID, it is something to keep in mind is that can be in-person or virtual, because there was that whole year where we had no in-person events and so it was only virtual. But we'll talk more about that later when we get into.

SUZANNE: All right.

DANIEL: All right.

SARA: So let's talk category 1.

SUZANNE: Okay.

SARA: Should we just jump right in? Who wants to go first?

SUZANNE: I'll go.

SARA: Okay, Suzanne.

SUZANNE: Okay, so this is a book by with a non-human narrator. I brought a book to show and tell about just like David Sedaris did when he was here. I don't know if any of you went to see David Sedaris at the Orpheum when he was here. But every time he tours, he promotes a different book. And this one happens to be a graphic novel told from the point of view of a house cat. It is called Penny. It is super delightful. It's beautifully drawn, it's funny. Penny, as most cats do, sits there and thinks about her life. And she's a very existentialist kind of character. And you see the world through her point of view, and you know, what's beyond the big door, all that stuff, and --

BETH: The garage.

[SUZANNE LAUGHS]

SUZANNE: She, you know, I'm not gonna give any spoilers away. She may or may not escape at one point. But it is just delightful. And you know, if you're, if you don't read a lot of graphic novels, I highly suggest you explore that genre. But this happens to be told from a non-human point of view of a cat. So that's my, that's my pick.

SARA: I love that. That sounds fun. I haven't read that one yet.

SUZANNE: Would you like to see it? I'll pass it down to you

SARA: Well, I don't want the microphones to pick up on the, you know, rapid turning of pages.

SUZANNE: It's real!

DANIEL: It's just adding texture to the immersive experience of the podcast.

SARA: It smells like a new book.

SUZANNE: It does.

SARA: So for all of us that was a full sensory experience.

SUZANNE: If only it was smell-o-vision.

SARA: It looks really cute. I like cats. So Beth, what did you pick?

BETH: I have several on my list because I think when you all recorded video to promote the challenge, I think Suzanne had suggested The Book Thief by Mark Zusak because it's narrated by death. I also have on my to be read stack Clara in the Sun and the narrator is --

SUZANNE: An AI, like basically an artificial intelligence being. Yes, that's a very good novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

BETH: And I have one that was, it was one of the Big Reads a few years ago, Circe.

SARA: I put that on my list, too.

BETH: Oh, did you? I'll let you talk about it.

SARA: No, it's okay.

BETH: She's, you know, she's a minor goddess. So that makes her non-human, right? I'll let somebody else talk about some, one of these. But one thing one that Suzanne mentioned is also in my 1000 books to read before you die. I have that book that I'm trying to get through as well. And it's --

SUZANNE: You have a big-time challenge. A thousand books.

BETH: I love this book. Watership Down is in there.

SUZANNE: Oh, perfect.

BETH: So I think that's the one I'm going to read.

SUZANNE: I do love that when I put out list of hints, sometimes I'll hint at the challenge right before the categories are announced. And I had Watership Down in my little stack and someone said, "A book about rabbits?" And I was like, that is very niche.

SARA: Only a few books that would maybe cover that.

Daniel, what did you pick?

DANIEL: For the book that I want to read is Interview with a Vampire. There's like made a bunch of different, there's a new show. And I figured, like, I'd go back to the source and like, read the original books. And one I read, I went with Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson. It's kind of, if you like World War Z, which is like a fake oral history book, it basically like it tells different perspectives, kind of like a Ken Burns documentary, and a lot of them are like from the robot perspective. So that's why I picked it. It's a fun book.

SARA: Yeah, those both are interesting choices. I think it's really interesting with this category is that like, anything that's not a human is so broad, right? Like we think of it, I think people are having a lot of trouble with this category on the Facebook page. And there's just so many things out there. You just start going down a rabbit hole as it were.

DANIEL: I've seen a lot of Giving Tree, I think.

SARA: We're gonna give you so many other options. Not that The Giving Tree isn't great. I mean, classic.

DANIEL: That's an easy one. If you guys need that category, just remember The Giving Tree.

SARA: Shel Silverstein.

DANIEL: Takes 30 seconds to read.

SUZANNE: The other one I need to mention that's on my to be read list is Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. It's told from the point of view of an octopus, I believe, or at least the octopus is a major character. And that was on a lot of sort of best-of lists for 2022 so I'm excited about that one.

DANIEL: What about you, Sara? Did you have some recommendations?

SARA: Thank you so much, Daniel. So I went with one that I actually last year as a guilty pleasure, even though like we'll talk about this later and I will never feel guilty about anything that I read. But it was a Y.A. book and I just really liked it. It was a Cinderella retelling. And it's called Cinder. And she is an android or part android, part human. So she's not full human. Anyway, and she's Cinderella, but she's an android and it was so cute. I loved it. And then the other one that I did talk about in the video that I just can't help but constantly tell people about is Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton. Told from the point of view of a crow that has to... I mean, I can't say he saves humanity because he doesn't, but he's trying to figure out what went wrong because everybody turned into zombies. It's very, very colorful language. So if you are easily offended by foul language, skip it. If you're not, and you dive right into that stuff and you like some humor with your apocalypse, like it's pretty great.

SUZANNE: And who doesn't love a little humor with your apocalypse?

BETH: Does anybody have Nutshell on their list? Ian McEwan? It's told from the perspective of a... well, see this might cause a debate because it's told from the perspective of a nine month – well, an unborn child, nine months, yeah.

SARA: Oh, well, we're not bringing that debate to the podcast.

BETH: I listened to it and this character, you know, has this British accent and sounds like an old man. It's really funny to listen to, the audio, yeah.

DANIEL: Oh, that's cool.

SARA: I love that.

SUZANNE: And I need to add to Jennifer Thornberry on the ReadICT Facebook page -- which if you're not part of that page, definitely, definitely join it -- mentioned a book by Mitch Albom called The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto that's told from the point of view of music.

BETH: Interesting.

SUZANNE: She really loved it. She says it's one of her all-time favorite reads so I plan to check that out.

SARA: I wouldn't even know how you would like start to tell a story from the point of view of music.

SUZANNE: You have to read it. Read and find out, I guess.

SARA: I'm so glad that I don't have to write these titles down and that they're going to be in our show notes. Because now I'm like, oh, man, that's six books that I could read. Maybe more, whatever, it's fine.

Let's talk category 2, right? Let's move on. So category 2 is a long title. And as Suzanne said, we kind of picked an arbitrary number and we chose seven. But we wanted it to be harder than you might normally, right? Most titles are maybe a couple words up to maybe five. So this is a little bit further than that. But it's not like 12. Because we almost were gonna make you have a title with 12 words in it, but that seemed mean.

SUZANNE: Right. So this is a little bit, yeah, more doable.

SARA: More doable. Beth, you want to start again?

BETH: Sure. And I didn't realize there was a seven word limit, but I think I passed with these. So this could be --

SUZANNE: Seven word minimum.

BETH: This could be a guilty pleasure as well: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain in Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading and Life by George Saunders.

SARA: I ran out of fingers so I think you're good.

BETH: I love this book. I have the audio as well as the hardcover George Saunders narrates it. He, you know, he's probably best known for his short stories: 10th of December but also Lincoln in the Bardo. Well, in this book, he basically guides readers through seven classic Russian short stories because he's been teaching these for 20 years at Syracuse. And so we just get to take a masterclass from George Saunders.

DANIEL: Oh, that's fun.

BETH: That's one of mine. And then I was visiting with a friend from Random House today and he wanted me to mention this one. It's, he said, it's one of his favorites and it just went nowhere when it came out: The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe by Romain Puértolas.

SARA: That hurt my brain a little bit.

BETH: I know.

SARA: Can you repeat that, please?

BETH: The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe. He says it's really charming.

SARA: Okay.

SUZANNE: And he's usually right.

BETH: Yep. Yeah.

SARA: So if you're looking for a charming read with a long title, look for the one about the IKEA wardrobe.

Daniel, what about you? Skipping over you, Suzanne, for just a little bit. Trying to mix it up here.

DANIEL: So I'm in the middle of reading this one but I'm still counting as one I read. We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans in Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff. And it's a... Kliph Nesteroff is a comedian historian. His first book was about standup in general and it goes way back to like the beginnings like during the Civil War and all the way and he's really good at chronicling everything. And you just like learn a bunch. The one thing I did notice about books with long titles is they also have long chapter titles. They tend to do – and they're even longer than the book title, like it's like a two sentence chapter title. And then The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home: A Welcome to Night Vale Novel is my one I want to read. I'm a big fan of podcasts. Well, I guess I'm on them.

[LAUGHTER]

But I also listen to podcasts and Welcome to the Night Vale has been a fiction short, like it's a fictional podcast I've been listening to it since like 2016 and they have some books out and that was one of the ones that I wanted to read in. And Mara Wilson does the audiobook 'cause she plays that character on the podcast.

SARA: I have not listened to it. But I remember when it was like all the big rage in podcasts because it's fictionalized and interesting. It's like creepy.

DANIEL: It's weird. It's kind of like it's like Twin Peaks, but funner.

SARA: "Funner."

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: Okay, Suzanne, your turn.

SUZANNE: Oh, okay. So the one I just finished on New Year's Eve that ended up being on my best, my top 10 books of the year is How to be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur. And Michael Schur is the creator of The Good Place, the TV show The Good Place. He also had a hand in The Office, he was a writer for The Office and Saturday Night Live and part -- he helped create Parks and Recreation. So funny, funny, funny guy. The Good Place show was based on a lot of the research that he did into moral philosophy. So he basically has done all of the reading on moral philosophy and then boils it down into layman's terms about some of the moral conundrums we face every day in life. He's super funny. I highly recommend the audio, that's how I took it in. So that's my... that's my recommendation for that category. The one I want to read won a National Book Award last year, the year before: Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliot. And this is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who reported on a family living in poverty over seven or eight years. And she just follows really, really long-term sort of feature reporting and I can't wait to dig into that one. So those are my two.

SARA: Cool.

BETH: I already went.

SUZANNE: Oh, you want already. Sara?

SARA: Want to go again? That's fine.

But I guess I could share the ones. I did, I did look them up. So the one I talked about before, and again, it's another author that I just love her so much that I'm going to talk about her to anyone that will listen. And it's Phoebe Robinson, you -- wait, she's got two of them that actually fit this category. So I'll give you them both. Her newest book is called Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes. Trust me, it's like 10. And then the other one is You Can't Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain. She's funny. She's insightful because she... she's a comedian. She started on Two Dope Queens with Jessica Williams, who was a correspondent on The Daily Show. And so they would have comedians come out and just kind of like... anyway, I won't go into it, but she... trusts me: she's hilarious. And she has a really funny, interesting way of seeing the world. She also likes to make up new words, which are just shortened versions of real words. So like anyway, so you just kind of have to say it out loud to understand what she's saying. It's fine. She's funny.

SUZANNE: Do you read it or do you listen to the audio?

SARA: I have... I read her other two. I have not read her newest one, the Please Don't Sit on My Bed. But I follow her like on Instagram. And so when I read it, I still read it in her voice.

SUZANNE: Yeah, she sounds like someone who would be fun on audio to listen to.

SARA: And the other one that I picked up that I thought would be a good recommendation if you haven't read it is Good Omens because the full title is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. And that's by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. That book I did listen to on audio and it's hilarious. I listened to it before the the show came out on Amazon. And the British like older narrator is just perfect. It's a perfect way to read that book. So those are my two.

DANIEL: Those are great suggestions.

SUZANNE: So many options.

SARA: So many options. I did struggle with that one a little bit and I had to kind of look it up. I didn't want to share the same stuff --

SUZANNE: Basically any kind of nonfiction book that has a subtitle is gonna count for that. So yeah, that's, that's helpful.

SARA: All right, category 3 is a book about friendship. Who wants to go first? Daniel, why don't you start?

DANIEL: All right, I will kick it off. What I read was My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. Grady Hendrix is a newer horror author. He wrote Horrorstör was kind of his breakthrough novel. This was the second book. There's actually kind of like a sequel that... so it's takes place in the '80s about these two girls in high school and one becomes possessed by something. And that's kind of a TL;DR on the premise of it. If you like Stranger Things or if you like old Stephen King books, it's a great read. And they kind of go into like a lot of the stuff that was going on in the history of like, the '80s with like Satanic Panic and Grady Hendrix is just like a really cool imaginative writer and I like really like their stuff.

BETH: He has another book coming out this month, I think.

DANIEL: Yeah, next week.

BETH: Is it called How to Sell a Haunted House? I'm talking to him for Marginalia.

DANIEL: Oh, cool.

SUZANNE: Of course you are. She talks to everyone.

SARA: It's fine, we're not jealous.

SUZANNE: No, don't be jealous.

SARA: Suzanne, you want to go next?

BETH: Did you do both of yours? I'm sorry, I interrupted.

DANIEL: Oh, the one that I wanted to read is Good Omens, which you already mentioned, because it's about an angel and a demon that are friends.

SARA: But I think it really works for that category as well.

SUZANNE: Would that also work for non-human as well?

DANIEL: Yes!

SARA: It would. And I also heard that you could use it for villain. I saw that on one of my lists, because he's technically --

SUZANNE: The devil, right?

SARA: A demon. He's a demon.

BETH: Is it set in the Great Plains, by chance?

SARA: That one is not.

SUZANNE: It's also a guilty pleasure and also could be about time. That's the thing, though, and that's how I kind of like to read the categories as I... you know, I'll sort of jot down the numerous categories it might fit into and then see where I need one at the end of the year.

Okay, it's just me?

SARA: I think so.

SUZANNE: A book about friendship. And one of my favorite reads from last year was Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet. It is a very quiet kind of story about real -- if you like stories about people in real life, you will like Dinosaurs. I hate saying that. Anyway, it's the story of a guy named Gil, who's sort of independently wealthy, and he moves after a bad breakup from New York to Arizona. He moves into a house. And he lives next to a house that's mostly glass, and the family that moves into that house shortly after he moves in, he sort of befriends them. And especially, there's a... there's a teenage girl and a 10 year old boy. He becomes sort of a pseudo babysitter for the boy. And it's just a lovely, lovely story about a guy just trying to do the right thing as he goes through life. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful book.

SARA: What does the title have to do with any of that?

SUZANNE: Oh, Dinosaurs. So part of what Gil does is he gets interested in the birds around his house in Arizona and we know that birds are descendants of dinosaurs. Lydia Millet is also kind of a cli-fi writer. If you remember from previous challenges, cli-fi was a category a couple years ago, climate fiction. And so she... she writes sort of a lot of sort of environmental themes. So it refers to the birds, but it's also just sort of metaphoric for the novel, I think. So really, it means nothing. It's really a weird title for that book. Always, always have to put in a plug for A Little Life, but don't go into that one lightly. That is about friendships through the years very... it'll take your heart and stomp it into a million pieces. That's by Hanya Yanagihara. And the one I would like to read is Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Have you read that, Beth?

BETH: I have not.

SUZANNE: Okay. That's on my list to read. And also, I've never read Little Women.

BETH: What?

SUZANNE: I'm so embarrassed. I know.

BETH: Beth dies.

If you watch Friends, you know that Beth dies. Come on.

SUZANNE: You are a mean, mean person.

SARA: Oh, I thought that you were talking about yourself, Beth. And then I was like, you're dying at the news of Suzanne having not read Little Women. That makes way more sense about the plot.

BETH: That would be completely appropriate as well.

SUZANNE: So those are mine about friendship. What a great -- oh gosh, what a great topic though. This could be any any book.

BETH: I have a couple. I have a few, actually. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a great one about friendship, but I also want to move, I want to use that one in a later category so disregard that. Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie just came out this year and she wrote... she made, let's see, Home Fire is what she wrote that was on the Women's Prize for Fiction. She is Pakistani British. The one that I'm – oh, I also have on the stack over there, it's a book that I just picked up: An Evening with C.S. Lewis, and it's about the friendship of like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and then two other guys. But I have a book sitting over there if anybody wants to look at it later. The one that I think I'm going to read, I just found out today it's a book coming out in June and it's called The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue. And apparently it's... it's a funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three. It was described to me as Sally Rooney with a sense of humor. And basically two characters meet in a bookstore but then there's also a third character who's a married professor, and I'm not exactly sure what happens, but I'll find out when it comes out. Apparently Caroline O'Donoghue has several Y.A. novels published in the United States, but this is her first adult novel to cross the pond. And my friend from Random House said -- he added this which I think is kind of funny based on where I work: "There's an unexpected pregnancy plotline that demonstrates the importance of a woman's control over her own body in a way that it does in NPR stories never could."

SUZANNE: Whoa, shots fired.

BETH: So that's the book I'm going to read about friendships: The Rachel Incident.

SUZANNE: Another Irish book. What is going on with all the Irish novels?

BETH: They're just now becoming available to us, I think.

SARA: Well, my books about friendship, I'll throw out a few. Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reid. It's not about friendship, but like the parts that stuck with me are all this parts where she and her three girlfriends just like hang out and they go out and they do things and they talk about the things that happened in their day. And it just like reminded me of friends that I have, like friendships that I have. And so I just really liked it.

And then I was like, your Little Women. I was thinking really any Jane Austen writing, right? Because all of the sisters are friends or they're... the lady that lives, you know?

BETH: Charlotte.

SARA: Charlotte. Thank you, Charlotte Lucas. And so any Jane Austen novel would really fit this one. And if you want to go more Daniel's speed, It by Stephen King because it's all about four friends. But it's also weird. Get like 83% through it and the novel kind of nosedives.

SUZANNE: What?

SARA: So be prepared for that. Did you --

DANIEL: There's like the turtle --

SUZANNE: I only saw the movie.

SARA: It's weird. It's really, really weird.

SUZANNE: You're saying that It nosedives? That you --

SARA: I loved it. And then because I was reading it on my Kindle, and I saw that it was 83% of the novel. And then I was like, what is happening?

SUZANNE: Oh, okay.

SARA: Did you ever read it?

SUZANNE: No, I haven't. I've unfortunately watched the movie.

SARA: Anybody in the audience read it? It? Read It?

SUZANNE: It. It, It.

SARA: You know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. Yeah.

SUZANNE: I'll get the story later.

SARA: It's great up until that point, but it's all about friendship. And then one that I want to read is, maybe it sounds like a heart wrenching book, but it's called My Glory Was I Had Such Friends by Amy Silverman. And it is a book about a woman who finds out that she has some sort of cancer or debilitating disease. And all of her friends come and stay with her at different parts of her recovery. And so each chapter is told from like that time with that friend. And I don't remember from when I was reading it if it was that each friend writes the chapter or like she tells about the time that the friend was there, but it just sounds really moving and sweet. And so anyway, but it sounded really good.

BETH: I have two more that I forgot to add to my list.

SARA: Go for it.

BETH: One is Love and Saffron by... Kim Fay, thank you. And it's epistolary.

SUZANNE: That means letters or diaries.

SARA: Thank you, Suzanne. [CHUCKLING]

[SUZANNE STARTS LAUGHING]

BETH: And then another one...

SUZANNE: Sorry!

SARA: Oh no, I'm sorry!

BETH: Oh, Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane.

SUZANNE: That's right, that she goes and visits her, all of her friends.

BETH: Yes, she's gifted a month off and decides that she wants to like spend a week or two weeks with every -- I think she's does a fortnight with every one of her friends. But she'll... she reads, like she's guided by Emily Post. And so she learns like when she shows up at this at this first house -- and I mean, getting there is just very difficult, like flights are delayed and whatnot. But Emily Post tells her when she arrives and her host says, "How was your flight," she's not supposed to start complaining. So she just learns and she grows through this process of reading Emily Post and visiting her friends. So I loved it.

SARA: And Emily Post is the adequate etiquette king -- queen?

BETH: Uh-huh.

SARA: I can't speak words now. Words have left me.

SUZANNE: Words.

SARA: But yes, we have her reference books --

BETH: Oh, nice.

SARA: -- for the last several editions if you are interested in what Emily Post has to say.

BETH: I am.

DANIEL: You can like learn what fork to use and all that stuff?

SARA: Mm-hmm, yeah.

DANIEL: That's great.

SARA: I had look up linens once.

[SUZANNE LAUGHS]

BETH: So sorry to tack that on. I just forgot to write it in.

SARA: Please never --

DANIEL: I hope they have like an appendix for podcast etiquette. That would be great.

SARA: I don't think Emily Post got that far.

DANIEL: "When you come up to a podcast..." Yep.

SARA: All right. Moving on category 4. Guilty pleasure, which I think we can all agree is actually not really a thing, because you should never feel bad about what you read. Agreed?

SUZANNE: Agreed. Yeah, I... it's like it's this is like your free space on the bingo card in my estimation. This is your freebie. Read what you want, whenever you want category.

SARA: So I'm taking it to mean like, what do you truly enjoy to read? What is something that gives you pleasure just sitting down and reading it? And that's what I'm gonna use for this category, I think.

SUZANNE: I'm gonna read a middle grade, probably middle grade or Y.A. novel. That's my guilty pleasure. Again, I don't feel guilty about it. I suggest that a lot of adults who have not read children's fiction in a while sort of explore that genre because it's really good. Really some really, really good novels.

SARA: Do you have any specific titles you want to throw out?

SUZANNE: You know, The Girl Who Drank the Moon is one that I truly adored. One I want to read this year is Nevermore than which is sort of magical -- yeah, magical school or magical children kind of thing. I also have not read The House in the Cerulean Sea which is everyone is talking about and loves, so I need to read that too.

SARA: That's on my list as well.

SUZANNE: But then if I feel like I need to read it, it's not really a guilty pleasure, is it? It needs to be like the book that I just pull off the shelf because the cover looks cool or something. For you, it's going to be like any book that it's not in school.

BETH: Or any author that I've not scheduled for the podcast. Because once I say I'll interview you, then I have to read the book. So I do have one. My one of my favorite books ever is Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. And he has a new book coming out in May titled The Covenant of Water. And this is even an early preview copy. This isn't even what the title or the cover looks like because they put out another preview copy after I got this one. And I don't know if I'm going to be able to interview him, but I'm reading it anyway. So that's what makes this my guilty pleasure.

SARA: It's like a huge book, too.

DANIEL: Dang, Beth!

SARA: Just for people who are not watching and are listening --

DANIEL: Book flexing.

BETH: Use your legs.

SUZANNE: Book flexing.

SARA: Yeah, it's quite large. But there was also for people who can't hear, there was some excitement from the audience.

BETH: So this is coming out in May, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.

SUZANNE: That's big stuff. People love that Cutting for Stone.

SARA: Daniel?

BETH: Should I hide this?

DANIEL: Guilty pleasure. So like, I love reading celebrity autobiographies and Kelsey Grammer's is one of my favorite. There's no real value to it, it's just fun to read about like how other people live. But Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. And when I do the audiobook, I can just hear this guy talking about his life.

DANIEL & SARA: "All right, all right, all right."

DANIEL: "When I was born..." I don't know, I can't do it. I'll just stop.

SARA: "L-I-V-I-N."

DANIEL: "Got a lot of rule breakers out here."

SARA: That's like my best Matthew McConaughey.

DANIEL: World War Z by Max Brooks. It's a zombie book, you know? Everyone needs to read a little bit about zombies every now and then.

SARA: Every now and then. Helps you stay focused on the positives, maybe? I don't know.

Well, my couple, I'll just throw out some titles. I don't know if you know this, but I love Jane Austen. So Eligible was a really fun book by Curtis Sittenfield -- or Sittenfeld? Sittenfeld?

BETH: Sittenfeld.

SARA: Thank you. And so it's a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, but with like The Bachelor going on, it's quite fun.

DANIEL: That sounds fun.

SARA: And then also, it was a Y.A. novel that I really enjoyed the last several years. It was called The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee. And it's like Gossip Girl, but like 100 years in the future, so they live on the thousandth floor, which is like the penthouse and drama happens. So intrigue, teen angst, it's quite fun.

SUZANNE: Okay. Those both sound good.

SARA: Those were my two.

So let's go on to category 5: villain's point of view.

DANIEL: Villains! Dun dun dun!

SARA: Thank you for that.

SUZANNE: This is a goodie.

BETH: I'll go first because I was going to say The Unfolding by A.M. Homes, but really anything by A.M. Homes because she really loves to write about characters who leave the reader a bit unsure about how we feel about them because we're not sure if we're supposed to like them or not. And as far as books that I want to read, I went first because I really don't have anything and I want suggestions.

SARA: Fair enough. But I like that you said that because I think that that is a theme that we're going to see a lot in this category that like, is it good? Is it bad? It's hard to say one is absolute when humanity is flawed.

SUZANNE: And then there's the whole unreliable narrator trope. So you might not know it's a villain until the end. You have to take someone's word for it for a recommendation.

SARA: Or you just take a stab at it later because it made sense.

SUZANNE: One I would like to point out -- I'm sorry, am I --

SARA: No, please. I'm ready for you.

SUZANNE: A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne. Oh my gosh, that novel. John Boyne wrote Boy in Striped Pajamas. And he wrote Heart's Invisible Furies. What a fabulous, fabulous novelist. A Ladder to the Sky is about one of the most despicable human beings you will ever read about and I loved it. I adored that novel. So that's my recommendation.

I have heard that The Picture of Dorian Gray is told from --

SARA: Oh, that was on my list, too.

SUZANNE: Oh, I'm sorry.

SARA: No, don't feel sorry.

SUZANNE: I just learned that today. So I have not read that classic by... Oscar Wilde?

BETH: Right.

SUZANNE: So yeah, that's kind of on my list.

SARA: So that was on my list. No, please don't apologize. I think that just means that we have, you know, similar take on the category. And then my other book that I wanted for this category that I really enjoyed last year that I'd never read was And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. And there's not like a clear cut villain, because everybody's kind of awful. And anyway, I don't know, I don't want to give any spoilers but also, it's fantastic and fun, and it's really short and quick.

SUZANNE: That's a good idea, Agatha Christie.

SARA: Thank you.

And then my other one that I think has shown up on a lot of the lists, but it is good if you haven't read it is My Sister, the Serial Killer. It just is... it's fun, it's short, but also she's a serial killer. So not great. You know?

SUZANNE, LAUGHING: Not great.

SARA: Daniel?

DANIEL: All righty. Those are great. Everyone's suggestions are great. The one that read my suggestion was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and I'm only mentioning it so I can use this platform to say it's okay to call Frankenstein's monster Frankenstein. Let's not... it's okay. You don't call your car – you call it a Ford, you don't call it Ford's automobile. You could just call him Frankenstein, it's okay. I'm a librarian. We're cool with it, we won't correct you.

And then the one I want to read is I finished Dune during COVID. And I want to get to God Emperor of Dune. Because the God Emperor of Dune -- spoiler alert -- is a giant worm king. And it's like one of the character's grandsons from the first book turns into a giant worm, like a giant sand worm. Like he merges with the sand worms from the first book and then he just like rules over everything. And yeah, I don't think they'll ever make a movie out of that. So I want to find out what happens. So that's my suggestion for that.

SUZANNE: I also need to pipe up Wicked by Gregory Maguire.

SARA: Okay, yes.

SUZANNE: The obviously the book that the musical is based on but told from the point of... the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West.

SARA: Is it okay to say that I liked the musical better?

SUZANNE: Yes, it's always okay to say that because musicals are wonderful!

DANIEL: We have talked bad about that book before on the podcast. Jaime, when we interviewed the Director, she's like, we asked her a book she wasn't a fan of it. She's like, I'm not a fan of those books.

SARA: Unless you loved it, in which case everybody gets to decide for themselves, right? We all have differing opinions and tastes. That's how I make that okay.

SUZANNE: Thank you, Sara.

SARA: One more category before we take a quick little break and hear from our audience members. Let's talk about the category about time. Anybody want to --

DANIEL: I'll just shoot one off real quick: Watchmen by Alan Moore. It's got a... it's got watch in the title. And it's totally about time: past, present, future like and like it's a really great graphic novel if you haven't read it. It's like an essential read so check it out.

SARA: That's a good one.

BETH: I had Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, again by Gabrielle Zevin, and then also This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub just came out this last year. It has some time travel in it. And then The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer.

SARA: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is on my list of ones to read.

SUZANNE: I did love it.

BETH: It was one of my favorite books of the year.

SUZANNE: Yes, loved it.

Okay, so I'm listening to one now called Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It's translated from Japanese and it's basically about a coffee shop where people go to travel through time, they can pick one place they want to go to and they have to get back before the coffee is cold. It's a coffee shop. So that's... and I like it so far. 11/22/63 by Stephen King, I am not a horror movie -- I'm sorry, I'm not a horror novel fan or aficionado but I loved that book. And I know it looks really intimidating, but it is a speedy read and but it's all about time travel and the JFK assassination.

SARA: Is it a horror book? I'm sorry, I'm just going to interject --

SUZANNE: It is not, no, I'd say it's suspense. I mean, there's some creepy elements in it. But it's more just suspense.

SARA: That's the vibe I was getting.

SUZANNE: Yeah. And then I have to put in, I always put in a plug for A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

BETH: Oh, yeah.

SUZANNE: Which is, I read it many, many years ago. It actually wouldn't be bad for a reread because I remember that was one of those novels I just finished and I was like, "Ah, that was so wonderful." So there's some time travel and different generations appreciating each other and yeah.

SARA: Cool. Yeah. Love hearing all of your suggestions. Mine are Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. That came out what, last year?

SUZANNE: Last year.

SARA: It was definitely her COVID story, but it jumps around from different time periods and way into the future. And like 100 years ago, I think like 1920 to... I don't even remember what the timeframes are. But anyway, it was really fascinating and interesting. And I love Emily St. John Mandel. Really, you could probably use Station Eleven for this category as well since it jumps back and forth on the timeline if you haven't read it, although we had it for Big Read a few years ago. And if you haven't read it, I've got a copy of it in my office. Just stop by and ask for it.

DANIEL: I have a copy of it over there, actually, that I can just give someone if they want to take it.

SARA: Okay, awesome.

And then Oona Out of Order is just kind of a cute little fun one. She lives her life completely out of order. Every year she wakes up and it's a different time in her life on her birthday, so she doesn't live her life chronologically.

SUZANNE: Oh, what is one called?

SARA: Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore.

SUZANNE: Okay.

DANIEL: Yeah, like the Slaughterhouse-Five trope, right? Like the unhinged from time kind of thing? Like is it like that, like it's out of order?

SARA: It's not unhinged.

DANIEL: Well, he's unhinged from time. Like, he's --

SARA: No, she learns to accept it. And it's quite beautiful.

DANIEL: Okay. That's cool.

See, time travel's really confusing! So we'll just skip.

SARA: Well, you don't always have to like --

SUZANNE, LAUGHING: So confusing.

SARA: -- fight against the time. Like you just... I don't know. Quantum Leap, he figured it out so...

SUZANNE: Oh, my gosh, Quantum Leap, blast from the past.

SARA: I got it on DVD so no problem.

Okay, so we reached the halfway through our categories. And we wanted to take a quick break from you hearing from us so we can hear from you in the audience. We've got a short little time and a microphone in the center of the room. If you have a category you're excited to share about from the first six, just tell us your name, where you're from if it's not Wichita -- or if it's Wichita, you can say that too -- then the book title, author, and one or two sentences about why you would recommend it.

And if you do it, I'll give you a free book after we're done that'll fit one of the categories.

Did that entice you? Yes! Yes, sir. Please come. Watch out for the cords.

ANDY: Andy Tade, Wichita. So I'm one of those that does make a list. So I have all 12 categories and I have at least one book in each category. Some have two or three to get through. But for my friendship one or time -- it fits in both -- I just finished Fairy Tale by Stephen King.

SARA: Okay.

ANDY: And it's a fascinating story. It's a little... it's a little bit horror in some spots. Definitely fantasy. It's... was just very enjoyable. I started it just a few days ago and it was one of those that I just could not wait to get home from work and just sit down on the sofa and just start reading so I think I finished it last night around 12:30 because I was only 100 pages away from the end and I wasn't going to finish. Fairy Tale by Stephen King.

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: That sounds like it's right up my alley. Thank you for the recommendation.

SARA: Would anyone else like to share?

Yes, please. Please come up.

SUZANNE: All right. Come on down.

DANIEL: Come on down!

SARA: Whoo!

SHERYL: Hi, I'm Sheryl Esau from Wichita and I've got two for the non-human. One of my favorites is The Travelling Cat Chronicles. I'm going to attempt the name -- by Hiro Arikawa, I think. Maybe Japanese translated?

SARA: We will definitely have the right spelling in the show notes.

SHERYL: Thank you.

SARA: Yes.

SHERYL: Yeah, it's just a really sweet story about a man and his cat. I don't want to say too much more. But it's... it's just wonderful. So that one for the non-human. And for... I just thought of this while listening: the one book about time, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch is fabulous.

DANIEL: I keep getting that recommended to me.

SHERYL: And kind of a time travel-ish story, but --

SUZANNE: Sort of parallel universes, right?

SHERYL: Yes, parallel universes, even better. But it's outstanding and that's not normally my type of book.

SARA: It's funny you should say that because I don't remember the plot points but like, I remember I really liked it. And I was like, "This is not a book I wouldn normally pick up." So good suggestion.

SUZANNE: Very good. Thank you, Sheryl.

SARA: Thank you, Sheryl.

Can we get one more? Anybody?

SUZANNE: Oh, here we go.

SARA: Oh, here we go. Yes. Watch out for the cords, please.

PAUL: Paul Leeker, Wichita. I think I'm gonna read The Pickwick Papers for friendship, by Charles Dickens. I've been reading that book off and on since I was in high school. I've never finished it. But they're all these like little vignettes and friendship, and it's chaotic. And it's Dickens at his funniest and I think this is the year that I'm gonna finish it.

SARA: Awesome.

SUZANNE: You go for it, you can do it!

DANIEL: You can do it, Paul! Give it up for Paul! He's gonna finish this book.

[APPLAUSE]

SARA: Thank you, Paul and Sheryl and Andy. Those are great recommendations and find me after the show. I'll get you a free book because I have that power.

SUZANNE: Librarians are the best.

SARA: Okay, were we gonna do anything else between, on our break time.

BETH: Don't let Suzanne sing.

SUZANNE: Oh, I will sing now. I will sing extra for you because of that.

SARA: We could turn this into a whole sing along if you want to.

DANIEL: Butterfly in the sky

DANIEL & SARA: I can fly twice as high

SARA: Yeah, okay, we won't do that.

SUZANNE: Take a look

SUZANNE, DANIEL & SARA: It's in a book
A reading rainbow

DANIEL: Reading rainbow

SARA: You're welcome. We'll be here not all week.

DANIEL: All right.

SARA: All right, so let's go on back to the categories since I'm sure you guys are enjoying our commentary.

DANIEL: This one's difficult.

SARA: Category 7. This one's difficult?

DANIEL: Because I'm colorblind.

SUZANNE: But not to the words.

DANIEL: But not to the words.

SUZANNE: That's interesting about you, though.

SARA: It's a color in the title. So Daniel, do you want to tell us your choices?

DANIEL: All righty. So Redbone: A True Story of a Native American Rock Band by Christian Staebler. It's French. IDW, it's a graphic novel about the Native American rock band Redbone from the '70s. And that kind of ties into like Native American issues at the time. And it was actually a French book. And like, because this guy in France was like super obsessed with the band and wrote it. And they, IDW, released it like two years ago. So it's a pretty good graphic novel if you like historical graphic novels. And then Redshirts -- I just stick with red -- by John Scalzi. John Scalzi is a sci-fi writer and redshirts is kind of about the guys that die in the Star Trek episodes like the like extras that are always like dying when they have -- they call them redshirts or whatever.

SUZANNE: Did they wear red shirts?

DANIEL: Yeah, like it's a trope from like the Star Trek show. But it takes place with another like fictional space fleet. And like it's about the guys that are like the grunts for the space fleet. And it's been on my like to-do sci-fi read list for a minute.

SARA: Okay. Suzanne, go ahead.

SUZANNE: The one I suggest is The Red Tent. Can't remember who wrote it.

BETH: Isn't it Anita --

SARA: Anita --

BETH: Diamant.

SUZANNE: That's the one. It is fantastic. That was one of those book club reads from the '90s I think and it sticks with me. I still think about that book. It's fantastic. Because Sheryl's here, I'm gonna say The Goldfinch. She hates that book. [LAUGHS]

Only because you're here, Sheryl. But the one I'm going to read this year is Red Rising. I want to read Red Rising, the series. Do I get extra points because the author is Pierce Brown?

BETH: No.

SARA: Okay, that's reaching. okay. No, you don't get extra points in ReadICT but that's fine.

Yeah, go ahead, Beth.

BETH: Okay. One I'm recommending is White Teeth by Zadie Smith. It's also in the 1000 books to read before you die book. You know, I've not read... isn't Woman in White, is that Wilkie Collins? That could be an option for somebody.

But I'm going to read Brown by Kevin Young. It's a book of poems. Kevin Young was born I think in Lincoln, but he... his family moved to Topeka when he was 10. And so he was raised in Topeka. And he's kind of a big deal poet. And, you know, five years ago, I would have never attempted to read a book of poetry. But now I love it. I took a nature of poetry class from my school, Suzanne.

SUZANNE: Went to grad school.

BETH: And it's especially great if you can get an audio of the author reading it to you. So anyway, I'm going to do a book of poetry: Brown by Kevin Young.

SUZANNE: Sorry.

SARA: That's okay.

SUZANNE: Out of out of order. I'll wait.

SARA: Oona out of order. Just kidding.

Okay, my book that I really liked was The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. If you haven't read that yet, definitely put it on your list. It's a true crime about the white -- no, the World's Fair in Chicago in 1889 or something like that. And H.H. -- what's his name?

DANIEL: H.H. Holmes.

SARA: Is that right?

DANIEL: Yes, his tales of death.

SARA: Yeah, and he's a serial killer. And it was gross. But it was... so I guess it could be a villain too, technically.

SUZANNE: Oh, yeah. And a long title.

SARA: Does it have a subtitle?

SUZANNE: Of course. It's like The Devil in the White City: The tale of Blah Blah Blah, Blah, Blah.

SARA: Murders and Mayhem in Chicago.

SUZANNE: Something like that.

SARA: Yeah, so probably it does.

Also, when we recorded our video for announcing all the categories, I had not read The Color Purple. The Color Purple has been on my list. I was gonna read it like last year for a book that intimidates me just because I just have never read the book. Anyway, I read it before the end of the year and so I can't count it for the color category. But it was so good. And I'm sorry that I put it off. Like it really was sweet and wonderful.

The book that I want to read though, is The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid. It's... I think you have, you know what I'm talking about. So I think the guy wakes up and he's the last white man in the world. And so what would that be like?

BETH: Well, he wakes up in his skin has turned dark.

SARA: Oh! Backwards.

SUZANNE: And everyone is turning.

BETH: Then he, then other people start to wake up with dark skin until there is one final white person.

SARA: Oh, I think... okay, so I just skipped over that whole thing. Okay.

SUZANNE: That's the basic gist.

SARA: That's why we have people who read books who can surprise me.

SUZANNE: It was a Literary Feast pick.

SARA: Yeah, sounded really good and I want to read it, even if I don't have the plot details just right.

SUZANNE: And I was at our local bookstore on New Year's Eve and picked up Demon Copperhead, which is the new Barbara Kingsolver based -- or inspired by David Copperfield and I realized I could use that for this category because copper is a color.

BETH: And valuable.

SUZANNE: Yes, a very valuable ore. So that's another. And I read Anne of Green Gables during the... during the shutdowns of COVID. And that was delightful. It was so nice.

SARA: Would you call it a guilty pleasure?

SUZANNE: Yes. Oh, so beautiful.

SARA: I watched Robin Henry's copies of the movies, but I need to read the book.

SUZANNE: Loved it, loved it.

BETH: And I think that's in this 1000 books --

SUZANNE: And now I want to go to that place and you know, Prince Edward Island and just be her. But maybe one day.

That's why we read. Okay.

SARA: All right. Are we talked about that category?

BETH: I think we've exhausted it.

SUZANNE: We've exhausted it!

SARA: So category 8 is a protagonist with an LGBTQIA+ protagonist – or no, character.

SUZANNE: Protagonist, yeah.

BETH: One I recommend that I've read is Matrix by Lauren Groff. It's, the main character is is a real person, but she reimagines her life as Marie de France who lived in the 1700s. And it is, it's a fantastic book. And then one that I have not finished would be Less by Andrew Sean Greer. He won the Pulitzer for that one. Or even the sequel to that which I have in one of these stacks somewhere. Or actually any book by Andrew Sean Greer would probably work.

SARA: It's on my list for sure.

BETH: Yeah.

SUZANNE: Okay, so I recently read A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, which is this beautifully written little novella and the main character is non-binary. So they are referred to as they throughout the book and that is just sort of like a... I guess, they people are calling it comfort sci-fi. It's just sort of like charming and wonderful. The book I'm reading --

SARA: You don't really get that with sci-fi really. It's like hard and gritty, right?

SUZANNE: No, this is sci-fi where the beings... it's just really about real life and enjoying the moment and that sort of thing. It's just a really feel-good thing. The one I'm reading now, totally opposite of that. Extremely bonkers novel called Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin. The only reason I picked it up is it's on the -- well, I got it as a gift -- but it's on the the 2023 tournament of books bracket, which is done, Field Notes sponsors this every March. This is a horror, post-apocalyptic body gore horror novel. I don't know if I'm gonna get through it, but I think I will because I keep reading it. But basically, the characters are all sorts of different genders and sexualities. And it's, it's quite a ride.

SARA: Go ahead, Daniel.

DANIEL: All right. So one I recommend is Alice isn't Dead by Joseph Fink. I mentioned Joseph Fink from the Night Vale podcast. They did a, this is a book based off the podcast. And there was -- Alice isn't Dead was about... I forgot the character's name because it's been a minute, but she's a truck driver who's looking for her wife, Alice, and she's traveling through America and finding, uncovering this like secret agent, like a secret conspiracy. And Fink is like really good at -- most of the books Fink has written all have LGBT characters and they're just fun science fiction novels.

The one that I want to read was one you recommended to me, The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. And I'm excited about that. I was reading that and it said most of the characters are somewhere on the LGBT spectrum.

SARA: Sometimes I think it's like not clear and that's okay. And like, yeah, all our characters are very interesting and they all fit the bill. So her other series, though, is Broken Earth trilogy, and there's also some LGBT characters in that one as well. But it's just, it's not pronounced like it's not... it's just like a thing that occurs. It's also like people who can shake the earth with the power in their hands and cause earthquakes and you know, they're harnessing energy. Whatever, you know? She's a fantastic storyteller. I will, she's another one whose books I will just recommend until I'm blue in the face, because she's just really amazing.

SUZANNE: And one I just thought of -- I'll be real quick -- is The Guncle by Steven Rowley. I mentioned it, I think I mentioned it in our promo video, but just a really feel-good novel about some kids who go to live with their gay uncle in Palm Springs. And it is kind of an adventure.

SARA: So the one that I want to read, though, is Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I keep seeing that on a bunch of lists and so I'm gonna go for it. I see somebody in the audience being excited about it. But that one's by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I've read some of her other books. I like it. I hear this one is one of her best, so I can't wait to pick it up.

SUZANNE: That is a goodie.

SARA: Okay. Moving right along, category nine is a book about death or grief.

SUZANNE: Womp womp womp.

DANIEL: Fun one we got here.

SARA: Okay, but it can be still cathartic, right?

SUZANNE: It's very important.

SARA: Do we want to talk about why we picked this category? Suzanne, do you want to talk about it? You want to talk about it?

SUZANNE: I'm glad to talk about it. It's sort of a nod to this year's Wichita Big Read, which I'll go ahead and say is Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast. So that is a graphic memoir by a New Yorker cartoonist who tells the story of caring for her aging parents. And it is funny at times, and poignant and sad and all the feels. And it's also I'm gonna go ahead and say also going to count for category number 12, because she's coming to Wichita as part of The Big Read. So thank you to the Wichita library. That is super exciting. I read it a few years ago and just really loved it.

SARA: Thank you. That's exactly why I had you announce it, because then you can promote our stuff. And you praise us. "I like librarians all the time."

SUZANNE: Oh yeah, librarians are the best, I'm telling you.

SARA: Even though our book is chosen by committee and it wasn't necessarily just me. But yes, that is why we chose it. We loved this book. And we won't -- this is not a podcast about the Big Read, but if it was, I would tell you all about it. Otherwise, though, Suzanne's recommendation.

SUZANNE: Yeah, highly recommended. And one more on this. I'll go ahead and keep control of the mic for a minute. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. This is just about what's the truth, you know, about dying with dignity and dealing with... you know, dealing with those end-of-life issues. And I read it and it was... it's written by a doctor who, who sort of sees this from the medical standpoint of, you know, we do anything to preserve life, but then also kind of looks at it from the human standpoint. And it's very, very wonderful, highly recommended. That's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.

SARA: You know what, I'm gonna go number two because I want to and no one's looking up at me. Okay, so one that I actually just thought of while you were talking, and now I can't remember the title, but maybe you guys can help me out. But it's about the family who's grieving the death of the patriarch and they're a Jewish family so they have to sit shiva for like seven days.

BETH: Oh, is it by Jonathan Tropper?

SARA: Maybe.

BETH: This is why... This is Where I Leave You or something like that?

SARA: This is Where I Leave You, yes. That was so good.

SUZANNE: Ding ding ding!

BETH: Do I get a prize?

SARA: It was funny, because it's like this dysfunctional family. And it really... my family is wonderful and great and we're not dysfunctional, but like, it still reminded me like some of the relationships --

SUZANNE: Oh, Sara, every family is dysfunctional.

SARA: Okay, my family's perfect so it's not us. But anyway, so thank you for reminding me of that. And then The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui -- is that how you pronounce her name? -- is a family that immigrated from Vietnam. And... and so it's like this generational trauma of how that happened and how that impacts. At the beginning of the book, she's giving birth to her son and so it's like her parents and her and then how it's going to impact her son. And it's a graphic novel. So it's beautiful and poignant in ways that I think a novel with written with just words cannot be. And so it was really a great story.

And then also, because we interviewed him on the podcast last season, and I, it's another one that I just loved so much: Lark Ascending by Silas House and this would be another one that fits the LGBT category because the protagonist identifies as gay. And again, it's just part of the story. He has to go undercover because in this new world, gay people are hunted down. And then it's also like climate fiction and --

DANIEL: A non-human narrator because some of the book has a dog point of view.

SARA: Yeah, there's a dog point of view for part of it too, yes!

SUZANNE: If you can find a book that fits every category --

DANIEL: Probably, there has to be.

SARA: There has to be one. Okay, I'm done.

DANIEL: Oh, I'll go ahead. Abook about grief, one I will recommend is Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. It's a weird, bizarre science fiction book, but it takes place after the main character, she finds out her husband died. And then she's sent on this crazy mission in this weird, mutant like post-apocalyptic version of Florida. And it's the beginning of the Southern Reach trilogy --

SUZANNE: So Florida?

[LAUGHTER]

DANIEL: Yeah. So Florida. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of Florida men scaring everybody. But yeah, it's, it's kind of a weird book about grieving. But like as she's experiencing all these weird stuff, she's thinking about her husband who is also in this area at some point. So it's kind of like, it's weirdly like poetic about grieving and how it presents everything.

BETH: Okay, so two books that I've read and recommend. The first one is The Furrows by Namwali Serpell. It just came out a few months ago. And she starts the story by telling -- the protagonist's name is Cassandra and she is walking with her brother to the beach. He is swimming. He gets caught by riptide. She goes out to get him. She's walking or swimming to shore with him. She feels him die on her back. So she rolls up on shore, he's up on shore, she passes out, she sees a man in a blue windbreaker come and pick up her brother and take him away. So she doesn't know if he died or not. So she begins the story by saying I don't want to tell you what happened. I want you to know how it felt. So she tells that story. But then she starts another story where she's 12 years old and she's walking to this to the fair with her brother and he's clipped by an automobile and a man in a blue jacket comes to -- so in each story, she tells three different ways that her brother "died" if he died, but she doesn't know if he died because a body was never recovered. So she's just telling about the grief in all three stories and we don't exactly know what happened. But it was really, really well done. It's a fantastic read. Another one, sorry, is A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis.

And one I'm going to read, which is related in a way, is A Severe Mercy by Sheldon -- I'm going to pronounce this wrong. I'm not exactly sure. Sheldon Vanauken. It's an autobiography and this is according to my daughter, the first part is a mushy love story between the author and his wife, but the second part is about Sheldon grieving his late wife who died young. A big part of the grieving process is, you know, a big part would be the letters that he exchanged with his friend C.S. Lewis, and they're in the book and it helps C.S. Lewis grieve his own wife who died after Sheldon's. So that's going to be on my to be read list.

SARA: I really liked this category because I think it's something -- and I'm going to harken back to our Big Read for a second. But, you know, the whole point is no one wants to talk about death, no one wants to talk about their grief because it's a difficult topic. But the fact is that everybody processes it a different way. And it's a very universal thing, right? We have all had to experience death or grief in some way. And so talking about it is therapeutic really. So hopefully you find comfort in this category, even though it's kind of sad.

Okay, category 10. Any other thoughts on that? I am so profound.

SUZANNE: I like this. "Deep Thoughts" by Sara Dixon.

DANIEL: We are in category 10.

SARA: We are in category 10. Actually, we are because we are a book set in the Great Plains.

DANIEL: Yes.

SARA: So first off, before we do this, I know we've had a lot of discussion about what really constitutes the Great Plains. What would you say we would count?

SUZANNE: Oh, wow. You know, the flat part of the country.

BETH: Anything west of the Hudson.

SARA: But I've heard people say like Montana would count, right?

SUZANNE: The Dakotas. Nebraska.

SARA: Daniel, didn't you look that up?

DANIEL: Yeah, so it's basically everything east of Montana to Michigan, and then down south from that, so it's like --

SUZANNE: Does it include Texas then?

SARA: I think it might include northern Texas.

DANIEL: Yes, it does. It does include Texas.

SUZANNE: Oh, there's so many Texas books.

BETH: Ohio is in the midwest. I think it could be anything you want.

SUZANNE: Yeah. Anything between... yeah, the middle part of the country.

DANIEL: It could also be in Canada, too, because --

SARA: No!

DANIEL: Yeah, the Great Plains continues into Canada.

SARA: It does?

DANIEL: Yeah, but it's like Alberta -- I'm not sure exactly which provinces but I know it's like the two middle ones.

SARA: Okay.

DANIEL: Saskatchewan.

SARA: Well, there you heard it.

DANIEL: I am not a Canadian librarian.

SARA: You know what, as Suzanne would say, count it.

SUZANNE: Count it!

SARA: Okay, so what books did you choose for now that it can be set literally almost anywhere in the United States and Canada?

SUZANNE: I love to read about the Dust Bowl. And I read The Grapes of Wrath a few years ago and absolutely loved it. It's one of those classics that it is perfect to read on a hot dusty Kansas summer day or week. It might take you a week or so. So I highly, highly recommend that. The one I want to read is The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin. So that's a novel about that true story about the children leaving school trying to walk home in the blizzard and they were missing for a while. So that's the one I want to read.

BETH: I would say, you know, I have some William Least Heat Moon at home I could read. Kent Haruf, he wrote Plainsong. Kristin Hannah wrote The Four Winds, which is very Dust Bowl-related. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan if you want to go more than nonfiction route. One I'm probably going to read because I probably will talk to the author is Save What's Left by Elizabeth Castellano. It comes out on June 13. And this is what I love about it: "When Kathleen Dean's husband Tom tells her he's no longer happy with his life and their marriage, Kathleen is confused. She says, ‘Who says anything about being happy? We live in Kansas for goodness sake!'" It starts in Kansas. I believe she buys a beach house somewhere on the coast, but I'm counting it.

SUZANNE: Oh yeah.

SARA: Absolutely.

Go ahead, Daniel.

DANIEL: All right. So I'm Comanche, I'm a member of the Comanche Nation and we're like the... there's a slogan on all our like symbols. It's actually my patch here. It's "lords of the plains" because we are the... we're plains Natives. And like the Great Plains is our tribal territory. So I was looking for books by native authors. One that I recommend is The Last Pow-Wow by Steven Paul Judd and That Native Thomas, who we actually interviewed, That Native Thomas. Thomas Yeahpau is a Kiowa writer. And Steven Paul Judd is a artist and writer who's Pawnee and Kiowa. And The Last Pow-Wow was kind of like American Gods, but it takes place with like Native American mythological like figures such as like, like the coyote and deer woman and they all show up in the story. So it's a fun like read, if you like magical realism and like urban fantasy. And it takes place different parts of the country, but Oklahoma and Minnesota is kind of like two of the big chunks of the book.

I was actually looking for books that were kind of like mystery books, contemporary mystery books by Native authors and one that kept coming up is one I want to read now. It's by David Heska Wanbli Weiden and it's called Winter Counts. And they said like a mystery thriller, they said in the style of Stieg Larsson that takes place on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

SARA: Okay, that sounds cool.

My... I have a few. Chicken Sisters was a cute little fun book I feel like everybody read two years ago. But if you haven't, it was really fun. And it's set in Pittsburg, Kansas. And then Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann is a real good one. We have that as a book set. If you want to read it with your book club, you can totally check it out from us.

SUZANNE: Before the movie, before the movie comes out.

SARA: Yes, you should because it's probably going to be better. But you know, the movie, or the book always is. And then Braiding Sweetgrass is one that I want to read by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She is a member of the... Pawnee? I'm gonna... I'm not gonna say it because I'm gonna mess it up. But I don't want to mess it up. So anyway, and it's all about I think how plants... you know what, I don't remember that either. I just remember that somebody is somebody that I love recommended it to me. And now I just really want to read it.

SUZANNE: It's called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. I actually had that as another recommendation for long title. I read it in November and it is gorgeous. I loved it.

SARA: Okay. Well, I think she was actually on something that was on KMUW because that's where I heard her, which I was like, "I need to get that book."

SUZANNE: And she just came out with a young adult version of that book. So that came out last year. It's awesome.

SARA: So you got a lot of book options for that category. Okay, category 11 is a book about a closed or a secret society. Beth, you look like you got some stuff to say.

BETH: Well, I mentioned this earlier, but The Unfolding by A.M. Homes. And I did this because basically, we meet this guy, we only know him as the big guy. And we meet him the night that John McCain conceded the election to Barack Obama. And he is very... he focuses on his relationship with his wife and his daughter during this time in which he fears for the future of America. And so he starts this secret pact with some gentlemen who liken themselves to the Eisenhower 10. And the Eisenhower 10, they were a group of U.S. citizens who were secretly tasked by President Eisenhower in '58 to serve as administrators in the event of a national emergency. And they were they were not in government roles at all. They would be like doctors or professors or whatever. And so these guys thought, you know, they just created this group, you know, and call themselves the whatever 10, I don't remember what it was. But that was a secret pact. And it's a great book.

And as far as what I want to read, you've mentioned Secret History. So I might --

SUZANNE: Yeah, I haven't actually read it, but it's on my list.

BETH: And is it called... is it When We Were Villains, or if we...?

SUZANNE: If We Were Villains.

BETH: Yeah, that's when I might want to read as well.

SUZANNE: That's a goody, too.

SARA: All right, Suzanne, go.

SUZANNE: Okay. So one that came to me recently that would really fit this category. And I was just noticing on Goodreads it seems like she has changed the subtitle of this book, which I find interesting. Okay, so the memoir by Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow, it used to be I think the subtitle was like growing up in Westboro Baptist Church or something. Basically, she grew up, she's Fred Phelps's granddaughter and grew up protesting funerals and doing all of that she wrote a memoir. Now, the newest edition, the subtitle is "a journey from hatred to hope," which is a better subtitle, frankly, for the rest of the country who might --

SARA: Does it count of seven words or more?

SUZANNE: I don't know. I didn't count them. Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope. It's exactly seven.

SARA: Okay.

SUZANNE: But that is basically her experience growing up and then moving away from that, and it's extremely well written. I remember being super just kind of surprised and engrossed by that story and I highly recommend it. And then the one I want to read is Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, I've never read that.

SARA: That was good.

SUZANNE: I hear that that's fantastic. So that's on my list.

SARA: I was also gonna say Under the Banner of Heaven if you haven't. It came out several years ago. I think they probably made it into a show because what book have they not? But yeah, definitely a riveting read. Daniel, what books did you bring?

DANIEL: Oh, for secret or closed-off society?

SARA: Yes.

DANIEL: My recommendations are all going to be comic books because that seems like what I'm all been reading lately. First of all is The Department of Truth which is about like a secret -- and now I just lost my notes. I forgot the name of the author.

SARA: Suffice to say it's about a secret or closed society.

DANIEL: It's about a secret or closed society.

SUZANNE: We'll have it in the show notes.

DANIEL: How it's... which it's about like these government agents that like, keep this like big national secret closed. And then the other book I was gonna recommend was a book called Rabbits, which is about this augmented reality game. It was by Nathan something and I had it over there. But again, I lost my card with my recommendations on it. But it --

SUZANNE: It's called Rabbits?

DANIEL: Rabbits, it's actually another book that got... it was like a 30 episode podcast and I liked the beginning of it, and I was like, I'm not gonna finish these 30 hour-long episodes of this podcast, I'm just gonna read the book they turned it into. It's called Rabbits and Rabbits is like an augmented reality game that like people play. And then once they get past certain levels, they become part of the secret society and they keep playing it and it gets like really deep and mysterious.

SARA: Would it also count as a non-human book?

DANIEL: No, it's human characters.

SUZANNE: Book about rabbits, though.

SARA: It's a book about rabbits.

DANIEL: Well, the game is called Rabbits.

SARA: For future challenges, we're keeping those in mind.

So mine that was Under the Banner of Heaven was gonna be one that I had read. And then the one that I also really liked last year was The Husbands by Chandler Baker. And I'll just briefly tell you, it's like Stepford Wives, but the gender roles are reversed.

SUZANNE: Stepford husbands.

SARA: I know, it's exciting. Okay. And then, yeah, that's it. The other two I'm not really excited about.

SUZANNE: One I wanted to pull the plug as well is -- and I haven't read it yet but I've heard wonderful things about it -- Amanda Montell's, actually a nonfiction book, called Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, where she actually does a lot of research into cults and what makes them so effective and why people are taken in by them. So that sounds fascinating.

SARA: Well, so the other one I could throw out there is Girls by Emma Cline.

SUZANNE: Oh yeah.

SARA: I didn't read that one, but it was inspired by the Charles Manson story. So not really into serial killers, it turns out, like, that's just not my thing. But you know --

SUZANNE: Secret society.

SARA: It's a secret society.

Okay, so we got to the end, you guys. We got to category 12. And everybody's like, "Well, I don't know who's coming to Wichita yet." But Beth, don't you have some thoughts on this category?

BETH: I do. Watch out. So Watermark, first of all, Watermark posts all of their author events on their website, they have a newsletter that goes out called News & Notes. And I just want to say, you know, these events usually start around six or seven and you get home from work and you don't want to go back out. I just recommend that you really attend author events. You will never be disappointed, whether it's at Watermark, whether... you know, the Library hosts some. Wichita State has the Reading Now, Writing Now series when they bring that back up. You just... you will never be disappointed. You'll learn something new about the author. You'll learn something new from the book, you might learn something new about yourself. Just, you know, put your clothes back on and go out to event is all I have to say.

SUZANNE: Yes. Hear, hear.

SARA: Yeah, for sure.

But we do know some authors that are coming. In fact, speaking of Watermark, we're working with Watermark to put on some author events in our spring... yeah, spring catalog, which I'll go ahead and share with you now. So Jeannette Walls, whose new book Hang the Moon is coming out, will be here at the Advanced Learning Library on April 12.

SUZANNE: Author of The Glass Castle, which was fantastic.

SARA: Yep. Also wrote Half Broke Horses. I read both of those. Just really good nonfiction memoir. You know, ties, brings it in. C.J. Box, his latest, Storm Watch, is coming out and so he'll be here on March 2. And then Sarah Penner who everybody loves, who wrote The Lost Apothecary, is going to be here on March 28. I did those totally out of order but this is the way that I looked them up. And her latest book is London Séance Society, which I think would also count as a closed or secret society. So we have those coming up. Does anybody know of any others?

SUZANNE: I saw at Watermark Cathleen Schine, the author of The Grammarians, is coming. I believe that's in March, late March or April sometime so that's another one.

DANIEL: So like I always look up like music people that might be here that aren't authors that also have books because like every celebrity has a book. So far for this year, Jo Dee Messina, country singer/songwriter, will be at Temple Live. And she actually wrote a Chicken Soup for the Soul book about being a mother so...

SUZANNE: Count it.

DANIEL: Count it.

SARA: I mean, like in the last couple of years, you know they have comedians that come, pro wrestlers --

DANIEL: Chris Jericho's written like nine books and he's a wrestler. Even Tallgrass, we had Lloyd Kaufman here at Tallgrass and we actually met him and he was like, "Do you guys have all my books here at the library?" We had one.

SARA: He signed it.

DANIEL: Yeah. He signed it, and if you look up Lloyd Kaufman, we have a signed copy in our collection you could check it out, take it home and look at his autograph.

SUZANNE, CHUCKLING: That's great.

SARA: And then also, I think it's worth pointing out that, you know, when we interview authors, for various podcasts, we're hosting them and we're an organization in Wichita.

DANIEL: A virtual event, yeah.

SARA: You can count that as a virtual event. So you really have so many options for this category. I know we can't tell you all of them right now and you can't make your full list -- I'm so sorry -- but I think it really opens it up quite a bit.

DANIEL: There's also like authors that kind of like live here or have a lot of family here that might be visiting but not publicly. Like James Lee and Aafair Burke are frequent visitors to Wichita.

SARA: Did Harrison Ford write a book?

DANIEL: He's had to have, right? Any Han Solo book counts for this.

SARA: I don't know that that's... okay, count it.

Okay.

SUZANNE: Alton Brown. When Alton Brown comes back into town.

SARA: Yes, right?

DANIEL: There you go. Yeah, there's local authors too. But they're visiting because they're here. So that counts.

SARA: Anything else to say? Okay, so we were gonna take another break and hear from you. But I don't know if maybe else is gonna be, we're gonna have to coerce you to come up.

DANIEL: We have some staff recommendations from our coworkers.

SARA: Oh, that's right. We do. Let's use those.

DANIEL: All right. This is from Ian. He's helped us -- if you listen to the podcast, he was the guy that read the short stories at the end and the poems. Book with a non-human narrator: Hollow Kingdom, which we've mentioned. So this is actually I want to read this one. This is his long title book: The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodward. It's like I guess the premier book on pirates is The Republic of Pirates. I was looking, like, I want a good contemporary book on pirates to listen to.

SARA: Is everyone saying that?

[LAUGHTER]

DANIEL: The Republic of Pirates.

SARA: I mean, I've never really like thought --

SUZANNE: A book about pirates.

SARA: "I need a book about pirates." Not that I would prevent anyone else from having a book about pirates.

SUZANNE: Maybe not for you, but lots of other people may be looking for it.

DANIEL: We have some from Jenny.

SARA: Yeah, so another member of our podcast team is Jenny. She helps us write the show notes. She's actually here tonight taking copious notes of all of the book titles that we're reading off.

SUZANNE: Wow. Good luck, Jenny.

SARA: So for Jenny's book about friendship, she recommends The Change by Kirsten Miller. A group of women who upon hitting menopause discover they have magical powers and use them to solve local crimes. So that sounds fun.

SUZANNE: That sounds god.

SARA: She also would like to reiterate that she does not feel guilty or ashamed about any books that she reads. But one that she really likes is Rat Queens, a graphic novel fantasy series about four rowdy, foul-mouthed adventurer ladies who go on adventures, slay monsters, and party.

SUZANNE: Nice.

SARA: That sounds like it's everything you might want to read.

DANIEL: I've read Rat Queens. It's a fun book.

SARA: Daniel, let's go back to Ian.

DANIEL: All right, Ian for guilty pleasure. The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, which is by Greg Sestero. If you haven't seen The Room or the movie with like, like about the guy that made the room, it's wild. It's a very like cult film. So the book is also very culty. And next for a book from a villain's point of view, Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots.

SUZANNE: Yes, I read that and it's fantastic.

SARA: I want, it's on my list for sure.

Okay, well, let's go hop ahead to book about time. Did I say Kindred by Octavia Butler? Because I love that book. And then The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. Three siblings get their fortune told or get their fortunes read as children and are told how old they'll be when they die. So that knowledge...

BETH: Yeah, I interviewed her. It was a good book.

SARA: Okay, good. And then for her color book, she chose Daughter of Black Lake by Cathy Marie Buchanan. It's set in Iron Age Britain around the time of the Roman invasion of the continent.

DANIEL: For a time, Ian also has a book about England, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the 14th Century by Ian Mortimer. And this book is, it actually is I guess it's a tongue-in-cheek nonfiction book that kind of tells you how bad and messy and gross the 14th century was and like because this is the time of the Black Plague. I've actually like listened to this, the person that wrote this podcast before and the book sounds like a lot of fun. Because you find out just like, it was gross. Like, medieval England, there's like no plumbing, no central heat and air. He just tells you how bad it was. It's a... if you're looking for like a fun, accurate book about – or a book to help you appreciate the times you're in now, that's a good one.

SARA: Less blood, less grossness?

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: Okay, so for category 8, LGBT protagonist, Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie. This was one of Jenny's favorite books of 2023, about a woman who meets the child that resulted from the egg she had donated to her friend 12 years earlier who wanted a baby and formed an unlikely friendship. It sounds good. Just go read it. And then on death or grief, Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune. A man who was kind of horrible in life, he unexpectedly dies but gets stuck in limbo. Which also happens to be a cozy tea shop. That sounds nice. Is it? I hope limbo's nice. Okay.

DANIEL: I think --

SARA: Yeah, secret society: We Write Upon Sticks by Quan Berry. And then for books set in the Great Plains, Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky.

DANIEL: Well, thank you Ian and Jenny for giving us recommendations. And I think we're almost towards the end here?

SARA: I think so. You're gonna give us all a chance to have some plugs for our different organizations and podcasts and everything. So KMUW, what do you have to share? What do you want to plug?

BETH: I kind of forgot about this. We have Literary Feast. It's a monthly book club.

SUZANNE: This month's selection is Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson.

SARA: Oh, that's on my list too.

SUZANNE: And it's on the 18th, I think it's coming up. Some Wednesday this month. Go to kmuw.org for more information.

SARA: But if you are listening to this later, they have it every month. Well, we have our book swaps for ReadICT right coming up. We have those setup semi-quarterly. And so that's really fun. You just really bring books, you bring a book or you bring a bag of books or anything in between. Take a book, leave a book.

SUZANNE: February 18 is the --

SARA: Is our next one. [Editor's note: The ReadICT Book Swap is on February 11, 2023.] And then we have set them up for, but we'll have them semi-quarterly. And then I just want to also call out the fact that as you're reading your books for this challenge, you should log them into Beanstack. We have -- that's our reading tracking app -- and as you log your books in Beanstack, you will be eligible to earn prizes. So we've got some fun bookish kitschy prizes. I think a couple years ago, we gave away Poe-ka dot socks. Get it? Because it was Poe.

SUZANNE: Oh, Poe-ka dots.

SARA: Poe-ka dots.

[DANIEL IMITATES RIMSHOT]

SARA: Yep, yep.

SUZANNE: Super funny.

DANIEL: And there's always stuff going on at the Wichita Public Library. Visit wichitalibrary.org. We have so much going on, we got so many new -- did you know you can get a New York Times subscription with your library card? I did. And you can like track your Wordle and have access to the Wordle coach if you're a Wordle fan. New York Times Games is also subscription, is also included with your library card.

Are my streamers in the house, we got streamers? Kanopy's a streaming service. You can check out all the movies they have on there. There's a bunch of A24 movies if you're a fan of those.

SARA: And great classes, too.

DANIEL: Great Courses Plus is also on Kanopy.

SARA: And I have one more thing to plug. I'm sorry, I was like, "We need things to plug," so I made a whole list.

SUZANNE: There's so much going on!

SARA: There is so much always going on at the Library. So for frequent listeners of our podcast, Read. Return. Repeat., we are going to handle our book recommendations -- we always have a book recommendation segment in our podcast. But this year, we're going to do things a little bit differently. We're actually setting up a phone message line where you can call in and just like you did today, you can call and leave a book recommendation for a certain category, whichever one we're using for that month. And so we'll ask for it. We're also gonna post some stuff on Facebook and collect your recommendations that way. We'll also have a form that you can fill out. So if you're not on Facebook. But anyway, we want to hear from you. We want you to be our recommendations this season. And so you'll find out more about that as we figure it all out. We're still figuring out the particulars. I wanted it to be like 1-800-Read-ICT.

SUZANNE: Oh, that would be great, wouldn't it? 316-Read-ICT.

SARA: It doesn't exactly work that way when you're working with the City, so we got to do with something else. We're figuring it out.

DANIEL: Thank you so --

SARA: That was really fun.

DANIEL: That was a lot of fun. Thank you for joining us.

SUZANNE: Thank you so much, you guys. Yeah, I'm very excited for another year.

DANIEL: Yeah, there's so many books to read!

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: This episode was recorded in front of a live audience on January 5, 2023 at the Advanced Learning Library.

SARA, VOICEOVER: A list of the books discussed in today's episode can be found in the accompanying show notes. To request any of the books heard about on today's episode, visit wichitalibrary.org or call us at (316) 261-8500.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Thank you Beth Golay and Suzanne Perez for joining us today. We'd also like to thank our in-house audience for sharing their evening with us. Thank you so much, guys.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Thank you. This has been a production of the Wichita Public Library team and a big thanks goes out to our production crew and podcast team.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: To participate in the ReadICT Reading Challenge, please visit wichitalibrary.org/readict. Stay connected with other ReadICT participants on the ReadICT challenge Facebook page. Find out what's trending near you, post book reviews, look for local and virtual events, and share book humor with like-minded folks. To join the group, search #ReadICT challenge on Facebook and click join.

SARA, VOICEOVER: And don't forget to log your books in the reading tracker app Beanstack. Each month you log a book in the challenge, you're eligible to win fun prizes. When you complete all the categories, you're entered into our grand prize drawing. If you need any assistance signing up or logging books, give us a call, reach us on chat, or stop by your nearest branch.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: You can follow this podcast through the Anchor app or stream episodes on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe and share with all your friends.