[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: I will say that one of the secrets of adulthood I think I learned when I was in college is that dorkiness is where the fun is.
MEGAN REILLY: I can definitely agree with that. My whole life is dorky.
ANNE: Hey readers, I’m Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that’s dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don’t get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we’ll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.
Readers, today the conversation went a direction I was not expecting, and that was to the pink book’s prompt in a previous Popsugar Reading Challenge. As it turns out, Don’t Overthink It, my book that was released on March 3rd, 2020 is such a book with an adorable pink cover, if I do say so myself.
[00:01:10] If you’re interested in checking out the other potential covers from back in 2019, there’s a blog post on Modern Mrs. Darcy where you can do exactly that.
We talk about the fact that the book has a pink cover, but not about the book. But now feels like a great time for reminder that you can start a new habit, or set a new goal any time you want, not just on January 1st.
If you’re like me and this fall has not been unfolding the way you expected, you can always start over again. Now could be your time to pick up my book, Don’t Overthink It, which is, as you have probably guessed, about overthinking.
If you want to make easier decisions, stop second-guessing and bring more joy to your life for the rest of the season and in the years to come. I hope you’ll pick up Don’t Overthink It. There are life-changing ideas in here, some of which are small and easily achievable no matter what else is going on in your world in this season.
[00:02:06] You can check your library. If they don’t have a copy, you can ask them to purchase one. You can pick up your own copy at your local independent bookstore or wherever you buy books online. You can get a signed copy from our shop and get other stickers and pen back buttons and good stuff while you are at it. Visit our shop at ModernMrsdarcy.com/shop.
Buying books like Don’t Overthink It or my Reading Journals, Reading People or I’d Rather Be Reading is a great way to tangibly support the work we do here each week. Thank you so much and happy reading!
Readers, we rely on your submissions for our podcast guests many weeks. When we reopened our submission form at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guests late last summer, we suggested a few fall prompts that we thought would be fun to talk to readers about.
One of those was your stories about the books that haunt you. And in response, today’s guest sent in a submission that caught everyone on our team’s eye. We loved her interpretation of this theme.
[00:03:08] Megan Reilly is joining me today to talk all about it, the books that haunt you by getting their hooks into you and staying in your brain for years.
Megan is a professional theater designer and a college professor who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She loves to travel and spend time outdoors, and reading is both a beloved hobby and a stress management technique.
In addition to dealing with what Megan describes as a reading challenge addiction, she’s also always on the hunt for intelligent thrillers that aren’t afraid to go dark.
Today, we’ll talk all about the books that haunt Megan, what that means, and what titles she may find captivating for her upcoming season of reading. Let’s get to it.
Megan, welcome to the show.
MEGAN: Thanks. I’m happy to be here.
ANNE: I’m so excited to talk today. Megan, would you start by telling us about yourself? We just want to give our readers a glimpse of who you are.
MEGAN: I’m a college professor at UW Madison in the Department of Theater and Drama, and I’m also a professional lighting and projections designer for theater. I design professionally in addition to teaching, so I was recently designing Into the Woods and also David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face.
[00:04:17] ANNE: That sounds so cool.
MEGAN: Yeah, I really love my job. My job is really stressful. I’m getting close to tenure and dealing with the stress of that with reading.
ANNE: Would you say more about that for those who aren’t in academia?
MEGAN: Oh, God. Tenure is when I go from being an assistant to an associate professor, and in order to get tenure, you have to do a certain amount of what others have called bean-counting. So it’s like so many articles that you’ve published, so many books that you’ve written, or in my case, so many productions that I’ve designed, or conference presentations.
So there’s a real pressure to keep your numbers up every year of everything that you’re doing constantly, in addition to maintaining a productive life as a university teacher and colleague. So it can get really stressful because everybody’s doing that. Everybody’s trying to get their own job and keep their own job.
[00:05:14] ANNE: So it’s high pressure and high stakes.
MEGAN: High pressure and high stakes.
ANNE: High volume is what I meant to say.
MEGAN: Yes. And also my tenure case should come up in two years, so I’ve got only two years left.
ANNE: And so you are dealing with the stress through reading.
MEGAN: Yes, I am.
ANNE: Well, I find that to be a tried and true strategy. Would you say more about what that looks like for you?
MEGAN: Well, on bad days, it’s avoiding the work I need to do. Like right now I am writing a book chapter and need to finish it pretty soon. So the days that I just don’t feel like doing that, I come home and I just lose myself in a book.
ANNE: And lest anyone not speak theater, you’re not talking about writing a novel.
MEGAN: No, I’m not. I’m talking about writing… So it’s a book that’s going to be about immersive theater, which is one of my research specialties. Immersive theater is when you lose the fourth wall and people can mingle with actors and sometimes interact with them.
ANNE: Oh, I’m so curious if this means things for your reading life, but carry on. We may touch on that later.
MEGAN: A lot of theater-related books, some talk about immersive theater quite a bit. It’s so emotionally resonant. It’s so, I hate to use the word dramatic, but it is.
[00:06:19] So that’s the kind of thing I’m writing right now. It’s just one chapter. My chapter is on neurodivergent labor, which is going to sound highly academic, I’m sure.
Days that I am actually doing work, I try to end the day with a half an hour of reading, but frequently I’m even too tired to do that. So I miss books a lot, but I read pretty quickly.
ANNE: So you said in your submission that you want to deal with the stress by losing yourself in books, but also your professional life is so much right now.
MEGAN: It is.
ANNE: You miss reading when you’re not escaping into your good books. Tell me more about your reading life.
MEGAN: Oh, I’ve been obsessed with books since I was a kid. I was the kid who got in trouble in their class by reading Wrinkle in Time under her desk. Literally that did happen several times.
But somewhere along the line, reading kind of stopped being a priority as I was growing my career. And it’s only in the past, I want to say five or six years that I started getting really into it again. I read as often as I can now, but especially when I’m traveling. So I love to travel.
[00:07:21] I recently went to Norway and read five books in two weeks. I also saw all of Norway.
ANNE: Oh, I’m so jealous. I would love to see the pictures that go with that declaration. Megan, I’m so curious. I find I read less when I travel simply because I’m so occupied all day long. And then at night I’m often planning the next day. What does it look like to be someone who reads more? How does that work?
MEGAN: When I’m traveling, I usually am traveling solo. And so there’s plenty of time, like downtime in between hiking adventures or whatever it is that I’m doing to just kind of regroup and read and enjoy the nature because that’s really what I travel for is the nature.
Reading more now in general, it started because I got really into completing the Popsugar Reading Challenge, which I’m almost ashamed to admit.
ANNE: I can hear you kind of laughing as you say that.
MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like such a dorky thing. And a lot of my friends are like, “Oh, why don’t you just read what you want? Why do you have to read according to this challenge?” And really it got me into reading a lot of different books that I would normally not have touched.
[00:08:26] ANNE: I will say that one of the secrets of adulthood I think I learned when I was in college is that dorkiness is where the fun is.
MEGAN: I can definitely agree with that. My whole life is dorky.
ANNE: Okay. I would love to hear more about that. So tell me about getting into, in your submission, use the all caps, REALLY into completing the Popsugar Reading Challenge.
MEGAN: Well, this will be the first year since 2019 when I started completing them that I have not finished it. And I’ve sort of given up on this year’s.
ANNE: How’s that feeling?
MEGAN: It’s hard because I like… Oh my God, I’m going to be such a dork. I make spreadsheets.
ANNE: So many people are like, “Oh, Megan, you are my people.” Please tell me more about your spreadsheets.
MEGAN: Yeah. I make the spreadsheets for the Popsugar Challenge, but the one this year, the prompts are so specific that it’s been really hard to finish them. And I’m just looking at all these books on my shelves that I have not read that I want to read and they don’t fit any of the prompts.
[00:09:27] ANNE: Well, I admire that, that you’re able to say, “These are the prompts. These are the books I want to read. They’re not overlapping to the extent that makes this feel like a good time.”
MEGAN: Right.
ANNE: “So let’s not.” If you needed a gold star or other kinds of affirmation, I hope I can help in that area.
MEGAN: Thank you. I appreciate that.
ANNE: What is it about the Popsugar Reading Challenge that appealed to you in 2019?
MEGAN: Oh, I like to-do lists. I like things I can check off. I like that feeling of like, “I did this. I read all these books.” And also that it really pushed me to read things I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. Like, I think I remember there being a prompt back then about reading a book with a bird on a cover. And so I had to go find such a book, right? Instead of looking for just the books I wanted to read, I was now looking for a specific book with a bird.
And I don’t remember what I read for that prompt, but I ended up loving it. I loved all the other ones that just pushed me to read either writers from a different demographic than myself or writers who had had different experiences than I had. It was really good to get outside of my comfort zone in reading.
[00:10:37] ANNE: This sounds so mundane and not at all about comfort zones, but I know a lot of people read, or at least tagged me as an author for the Popsugar Reading Challenge back in 2020, because that’s when my book Don’t Overthink It came out. And one of the Pop Sugar prompts that year was a book that has a pink cover. And Don’t Overthink It does.
I was really surprised by the amount of activity I saw as an author, because people were sharing lists of pink books and talking about what they read for that category. So a pink book is maybe not like, Oh, this changed my entire life, but the influence of the Popsugar Challenge on people’s reading lives seems to be very real.
MEGAN: Okay, for that prompt, I read The Truth About Melody Browne.
ANNE: I don’t know that book.
MEGAN: It’s Lisa Jewell. It’s an early one of hers.
ANNE: And…
MEGAN: I didn’t like it very much.
ANNE: Okay. How was the cover?
MEGAN: Cover’s pink.
ANNE: Okay. What I’d really like to hear more about is more about the appeal of challenges to you, and what’s that meant in your reading life.
[00:11:45] MEGAN: I can tell you one good thing that it did was it really sparked my reading again. It made me want to read, first of all, 50 books per year, which I hadn’t been reading at that point.
ANNE: Okay, I’m putting some pieces together. Megan, I was wondering what happened, I think you said five, six, seven years ago, when you got back into reading. Was this it?
MEGAN: Yes.
ANNE: Oh, thank you, Popsugar. Can you remember what caught the attention of 2019, Megan, and made her think, “I gotta do this. I haven’t been reading, but I gotta do this Popsugar Reading Challenge”?
MEGAN: I know my design career… I was between teaching positions at that point, and my design career just started to kind of take off a little bit. And I was actually traveling for design work, and I remember I was in Arkansas, and designing a show, I was designing Christmas Carol, I needed books to read. I remember I wanted more books to read because I was traveling for these shows.
[00:12:42] I found the Popsugar Reading Challenge in 2019, so I thought it would be a great way to start 2020.
ANNE: Did the structure appeal to you?
MEGAN: Yes, the structure did, as well as just being able to finish something and feeling accomplished with it. Because I wanted to get back into reading, but the stress of my job, my previous teaching position, as well as just the years before, I just hadn’t been doing very much of it.
ANNE: You said that you felt like such a dork for talking about your commitment to the Popsugar Reading Challenge, but it’s done great things for your reading life.
MEGAN: It has.
ANNE: I’m grateful to it. You said in your submission that you’re addicted to challenges.
MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, even non-reading challenges. I found on Facebook a 50-mile hike challenge, and I was like, “Oh, I should do this.” And I’m like, “No, you’re not going to hike 50 miles this fall. It’s just not going to happen.”
ANNE: Like 50 miles at once, or 50 miles total?
MEGAN: In the fall, total.
ANNE: Okay, okay. That’s…
MEGAN: And I just had to be frank with myself and say, like, “This is not a thing you’re going to do because you have too many other things to do that aren’t challenges.”
[00:13:43] ANNE: Well, Megan, I’m excited to hear more about how this plays out in your reading life, and what kinds of books you’re looking for. Megan, you know how this works. You’re going to tell us three books you love, one book you don’t, and what you’ve been reading lately before we turn our attention to books that you may enjoy reading next. And I’d love to hear how you chose these.
MEGAN: Well, the reason why I chose the three books I love is because we were talking about books that haunt, and so I focused specifically on the books that I love that have haunted me.
ANNE: That’s right. Thank you for reminding me that we put out a call to our… we let our newsletter subscribers know first. So if you’re not on the list, you can sign up, it’s free, on whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter.
And when we reopened our submission form in late summer, we said we’re looking for fall themes. And we’d love to talk about, and you’re right, that books that haunt you was one potential idea to explore. And I remember really loving your spin on that concept.
[00:14:42] MEGAN: I really jumped at that particular opportunity to talk about books that haunt me because it’s one of my favorite kind of reading categories. I even have a shelf on Goodreads devoted to books that haunt. So I chose the books that I’m going to talk about based on that prompt primarily.
ANNE: Tell me about the first book you love.
MEGAN: It’s God of the Woods by Liz Moore. This is a book about a summer camp that’s kind of run by these rich people, this rich family, and their daughter goes missing while she’s at camp.
So I loved this book because the woods surrounding the camp had kind of a character all of their own, and I could just picture them as being like these kind of mist-filled woods. And the idea that this family had previously lost their son, who was never found, I just imagined these woods kind of swallowing him up, just making him disappear, which is how I also imagined the loss of their daughter as well.
ANNE: What was the reading experience like for you?
MEGAN: Oh, I devoured this book in a couple of days. There was so much atmosphere in this book that just really called to me, I guess.
[00:15:49] ANNE: Had you read Liz Moore before?
MEGAN: No, I know I haven’t. And so her other book is on my list now.
ANNE: Her other book? Singular?
MEGAN: Does she have more than one?
ANNE: Oh, we’re going to talk about that. Okay.
MEGAN: Okay.
ANNE: We’ll talk. We’ll talk. I’m really glad that one worked for you, The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.
Megan, what’s the second book you love?
MEGAN: The second book was All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, which I knew I had to read when everybody started putting it on. Jenna Bush put it as her favorite book of the summer.
ANNE: Oh, I didn’t know that.
MEGAN: Even you had recommended it in the Summer Reading Guide.
ANNE: It’s in the Summer Reading Guide. And I didn’t think I was much for serial killer books, but I loved this one.
MEGAN: Well, that’s the funny thing is that you described it as a serial killer book, so I was waiting for this really intense thriller. And it was really a character study of these two children, really. I think one of the things that really affected me about this book, and which is why it’s a haunting book to me, is that it shows how this one pivotal incident in a bunch of kids in the town’s life really impacted them going forward. And so you see them throughout 20 years of their life or whatever.
[00:16:56] And the choices that they’ve made all really stem from this one incident. I love books about how things affect people, about how we affect each other. That’s why this one was so special and resonant for me.
ANNE: Now, something you mentioned in your submission is that anything that others might think of as dark is right up your alley. Say more about that.
MEGAN: My definition of dark tends to be a lot darker than other people’s definitions of dark. So when I say like anything that other people find dark, I’m like, “I’ll read that, whatever that is. I’ll grab it.” But if I recommend something that I think was dark, most people are not going to want to read it.
ANNE: Are you able to put your finger on what it is about dark books that interests you? Or perhaps you just know that you have a track record of really taking to books that carry that descriptor.
MEGAN: It is the atmosphere, most part. I also love things where things are left unknown. We don’t get a full explanation of things in the end. I love horror books that just don’t explain everything.
[00:18:02] ANNE: So if there are two kinds of readers and one is completely comfortable with ambiguous endings and unexplained occurrences, that’s you.
MEGAN: That is me.
ANNE: I have a high tolerance for ambiguity as well. I’m happy to have an author set the table and say, Make of this what you will. But readers, I think it’s really important to realize there are definitely plenty of readers, maybe even the majority, I don’t know, tell me what you think, Megan, but who feel like their readerly satisfaction depends on a more conclusive resolution.
MEGAN: I have found that most people want closure. They want to have satisfying resolution. They want to know everything. And a lot of the plays that I’m drawn to, television shows I’m drawn to, are movies that, when I think of haunting, this is what I’m talking about. They make me think for hours or days or months or years afterwards, what was actually going on.
[00:19:01] I think specifically of like Battlestar Galactica as a TV show. Nobody liked that ending except me, or that’s how it felt anyways, because the characters were left just kind of inambiguous. Like, well, we don’t know what really happened to this one character.
And when I think of books that are just… I mean, that really brings me to the third book I love, right? Our Wives Under the Sea.
ANNE: Tell us about that Julia Armfield novel.
MEGAN: It’s really difficult for me to talk about ambiguous endings without talking about this book. I think we get like a two-second glimpse of something in the ocean that she might have seen.
This is about the married couple with the wife that has to go on a marine voyage. And she gets like a two-second glimpse of something in the ocean, but she comes back changed. And we never get an explanation beyond that of what she saw, what happened to her, why she changed, what happened to the other people on the sub. But from there, it’s just this kind of meditation on grief and letting go. And I just loved it because it felt so natural to leave it unsaid. Does that make sense?
ANNE: To you.
MEGAN: To me.
[00:20:11] ANNE: Well, okay. Because I think that wasn’t the point of Julia Armfield’s story. This is my theory.
MEGAN: Okay.
ANNE: That she wasn’t saying, whoa, listen to what this woman experienced out there on her voyage that she returned from changed. She’s saying, whoa, how we must deal with and move forward after we have been changed, regardless of how that happens.
MEGAN: Right.
ANNE: Although, gosh, the way she lays it out, of course, as readers, we have some curiosity about what happened, but also that’s not the point. It’s only where the characters are right now as they try to move forward. Okay. That’s my hypothesis.
MEGAN: Yes. No, I agree with that hypothesis. But I think that a lot of readers are going to want to know what specifically happened, especially after it’s just so beautifully described, the changes that she experiences.
ANNE: So many readers loved this book. Also, I heard some readers say, I can see that this is good, but it’s not the book I hope she’d write. I hope she’d tell us what happened out there.
MEGAN: Right.
[00:21:16] ANNE: Yeah. But that’s not the book Julia Armfield sought out to write. That’s not the book she gave us.
Okay, this is so interesting. I didn’t connect until you explicitly said how the books that haunt you and stay with you often have these unresolved, open endings. And that makes so much sense.
Okay, more hypotheses, because our brain doesn’t like to have open loops. It likes to close those loops to get the resolution. And I can see how in the absence of that, our brain is still just going to town, like trying to close it.
MEGAN: Right.
ANNE: Trying to get that resolution.
MEGAN: Right. I think that’s what I love, is I love that, like, I can’t let this go feeling. I love staying in that loop, trying to solve things. My brain likes to solve puzzles. And so it looks at ambiguous endings as a puzzle that it has to solve. And so that’s why the book stays with me.
ANNE: But is it a puzzle you can ever solve?
MEGAN: No.
[00:22:14] ANNE: And so it’s like when you say, gosh, this book was so good, I didn’t want it to end. Like, that’s kind of what you’re getting here.
MEGAN: Kind of, yeah.
ANNE: But I’m wondering how knowing this about yourself influences what you decide to read.
MEGAN: If I hear from somebody that the book didn’t explain everything, or that the book really disturbed them, or something along the lines like that, this is really dark, usually some people say, or I liked the book, but it didn’t have a satisfying ending or something like that. I tend to lean more towards those, because I want to see if that is why it didn’t have a satisfying ending, for example. Or I want to see what it was that disturbed somebody. Because often the things that disturb other people are things that I really love reading.
ANNE: Well, also, I think something that you touched on was, or at least the lines my brain is drawing, the books that are dark and disturbing are often so because they probe elements of human nature that we don’t want to look at. And yet, they’re present. They’re there to puzzle out and to ponder if we’re willing to go there.
[00:23:16] MEGAN: Why can’t I say things that eloquently? Yes, it is very much about human nature. It’s very much about the mundanity of what it is to be human. Like, she’s exploring change, and loss, and grief, and readjusting, and how you move forward. But that is a mundane part of life for all of us, almost in an everyday kind of way. So the exploration of something that is mundane and every day, but in such a way that is not, really sticks with me. Really drives what I’m reading.
ANNE: Now, I’m thinking about more books that haunt me. Because I love the way you describe that. Like, it sticks with you. And the unresolved ending is a big one. Because it makes you think, well, what happened? What do I know? You referenced All the Colors of the Dark being a character study.
MEGAN: Yes.
ANNE: And I’m also thinking about books that might not leave a big stunner of a, wait, what? It’s over? No. Ah! What happened? But just drop a nugget or an observation in the book someplace that presents an idea in a new way to me, or makes me think, Oh gosh, is that true? And I’ll come back to that part of it.
[00:24:27] So I’m finding for myself there are more than one ways for a book to be haunting. And yet, I really love what you put in front of me here because I never thought about it like that.
Something I’ve recognized for a long time is a book with an open ending or an ambiguous ending is great for a book club. Because when everyone’s not seeking to get the right answer, you’re free to discuss possibilities.
MEGAN: Yes.
ANNE: And opinions in a way that you’re not when the teacher’s going to be like, No, you’re wrong.
MEGAN: Well, I think haunting because it sticks with you. Meaning things that haunt you… like if you had a ghost, for example, they haunt you because they’re there all the time. I guess the explanation of it’s a ghost isn’t satisfying for me.
Something else that sticks with me all the time that just either gives me chills to think about or makes me focus on it during the mundane parts of my day, I love those books.
ANNE: Okay. Heard. I’ve got ideas. First, tell me about a book that was not a good fit for you.
[00:25:31] MEGAN: The book that was not a good fit for me was The Return of Ellie Black.
ANNE: Always with this question, we’re looking for: how did it not align with your taste? Was it the wrong book at the wrong time? Was it about a topic you prefer not to read about? What was it with this book for you, Megan?
MEGAN: I think that lately I’ve been reading a lot of books that have some sort of violence against women. I was just recently reading I Have Some Questions For You. And to follow that up with this book, this book is much more specific. I mean, talk about something that is not ambiguous. It is unambiguous.
It is descriptions of what happened to her while she was gone and what happened to other girls who were taken with her. It’s about a girl who was kidnapped and kept for a period of time, I think two years. I think it was just too much for me and too specific. If they had never described what happened to her, I would have liked it much better. It would have haunted me.
ANNE: Yeah.
MEGAN: But I think that the specificity of it and then also I’m just… I’m real tired of women being the victims all the time in books.
[00:26:35] ANNE: I’m wondering if you’re really intrigued by books that say, Let’s explore this. Let’s think about how this happened and what it meant for people after. This was a different tone here.
MEGAN: Yes.
ANNE: Okay. Maybe the asking of questions and the exploration wasn’t as forward. This is a real plotty book, The Return of Ellie Black.
MEGAN: Yes. I think it was more that it answered questions that I didn’t want answered, if that makes sense.
ANNE: So a thoughtful exploration is more important to you than narrative drive.
MEGAN: Yes, I think so.
ANNE: The big questions are what keep you turning the pages? Like you said, you read The God of the Woods, which is a big book, in just a couple of days.
MEGAN: Yes.
ANNE: Because you were interested in the questions.
MEGAN: I was. But even though there was a satisfying ending to that, there still were a lot of threads that didn’t necessarily have full answers to them. Like they didn’t directly say, “Oh, that thing that they saw in the woods was this.” They gave you an explanation if you wanted to accept that explanation, but it wasn’t necessarily the only explanation for the hauntings that the campers would describe in their late-night stories.
[00:27:46] I love that they gave me the resolution, the specific resolution they gave me in that book for why the daughter was missing. But in the meantime, the getting there felt like they were never going to answer it, like she was just going to be another disappeared kid.
ANNE: Megan, what have you been reading lately?
MEGAN: Well, right now I’m reading Unsettled Ground and Love Theoretically.
ANNE: Is that Claire Fuller? I haven’t read that one.
MEGAN: Yes, Claire Fuller, yes. And Love Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood. I started Love Theoretically because the books recently were so… they were depressing. Even Unsettled Ground I know I’m only about a third to half the way through, but I know it’s going somewhere dark and I’m excited for that. But also at the same time, I’m like, can I just have a romance or something? What’s the palette, please?
ANNE: Tell me about how you fit romances into your reading life.
MEGAN: Oh, they are what I read when I’ve read too many dark things. And they have to be good and intelligent. I don’t pick up just any romance. Allie Hazelwood is good for me sometimes, but I really love is Abby Jimenez.
[00:28:50] ANNE: Yeah, I think in your submission, you said that you really loved Yours Truly.
MEGAN: I loved it. It was so the perfect romance. It was so feel good.
ANNE: I’m glad that worked for you. And yet, those characters had some stuff that they had to work through.
MEGAN: They did, but I identified with them so strongly that I knew their stuff. It was similar to my stuff.
ANNE: Yeah, yeah. I’m just noticing that in a different package, Abby Jimenez, I think, still asks a lot of questions that are the questions you find interesting.
MEGAN: I think in both cases, their characters are neurodivergent in some way. That’s another thing I love is exploring that in books.
ANNE: Oh, would you say more about that?
MEGAN: Well, I am autistic myself, which is something that everybody knows about me, and I’m loving just finding characters that are also possibly on the spectrum. I don’t think that Abby Jimenez or Allie Hazelwood ever says directly that they are, but there are traits there that are similar.
[00:29:51] And so when they’re exploring science or exploring medicine or whatever it is, you can see the love of the subject in them. And I think that the main character, the romantic male character in Yours Truly was really… he really exhibited a lot of similar traits to me, like this kind of dislike of social situations, preferring to be at home with his plants, sort of things like that. And I loved how she cared for him.
ANNE: Yeah. Oh, I just have a big smile on my face now thinking about my experience reading that book and the way you’re describing it.
MEGAN: Yeah, she cared for him so well. Like the kind of thing that I think most autistic people wish somebody would see in them, she saw in her as she saw in him.
ANNE: Yeah. Oh, I’m so glad that you connected with that book in that way.
MEGAN: Yeah, I did. So other books that I’ve read lately, I read Prophet Song. This is another book that haunts me, honestly, maybe not for the same reasons, although there are definitely unanswered questions in it. But there are just images from that book that I will never get out of my head.
[00:30:54] I read it in maybe a day. I just couldn’t stop reading it. I was almost like in a trance reading this book. And it was so dark, but so plausible at the same time, that something like this would happen. At the time, I had All the Colors of the Dark on my coffee table, like next to read, and I think that’s when I chose to read The Second Chance Year instead.
ANNE: Megan, what are you looking for in your reading life right now?
MEGAN: One thing I’m really hoping for is more books that are of the haunting vein, especially this time of year with it being fall and Halloween coming up, that this would be really cool if I could have something that fits in with that, that feeling. But also the term haunting and just wanting it to stay with me, especially throughout the winter, would be fantastic.
I also want to get away from my need for these challenges so I’m not really reading books… so that I am reading books that I love and not books that I have to read, but I’m not really interested in.
ANNE: Okay. So I feel like if we can find books that you’re interested in, does that kind of take care of itself? Or am I oversimplifying?
[00:31:58] MEGAN: No, I think so.
ANNE: All right. Let’s take a look at what you may find compelling. Megan, I think we were talking about authors setting the table, but you’ve set a really appetizing table. I’m excited to see where it might lead you next.
Okay, so you loved The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, and Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.
You know, we didn’t directly discuss this, but you mentioned in your submission how much you’re drawn to a literary kind of thriller.
MEGAN: Yeah, I am drawn to that. Unfortunately, I don’t find too many of them that I feel are… what it means to me… I think the word literary kind of almost doesn’t have a meaning when it comes to describing a book. It almost seems like it’s supposed to describe the good books, quote unquote.
ANNE: You’re not wrong.
MEGAN: I’m not wrong. I like being right.
ANNE: It can be helpful. I often find myself using it myself, but it’s hard to have it feel descriptive and not pejorative in its absence.
MEGAN: Right. Right.
[00:33:03] ANNE: And it feels like a marketing phrase as much as anything else, but I think I know… I mean, I think what you’re describing is, with that phrase, what you’re trying to describe is The God of the Woods, All the Colors of the Dark, Our Wives Under the Sea.
MEGAN: Absolutely. But also, like, I really think going back to Secret History, right?
ANNE: Ooh, yeah.
MEGAN: That is the ultimate literary thriller, in my opinion.
ANNE: Books with that mood, with that tone, with that same kind of like challenge to the reader.
MEGAN: Yes.
ANNE: Like, you can’t watch TV and read me at the same time. You gotta pay attention.
MEGAN: Definitely.
ANNE: Okay, excellent. That’s super helpful. Not for you was The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean. And then you’ve been reading a variety of things lately. I mean, everything from Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song to Abby Jimenez’s Yours Truly.
And you love more books that haunt you, more books that we tried to describe as literary thrillers. Thank you for your grace, everyone. And you also really enjoy books with neurodivergent characters when you can come by that.
MEGAN: I do.
[00:34:04] ANNE: All right, let’s see what we can do. I’m finding that there’s a lot in the mystery genre that’s coming to mind, but that’s not the only place that we could camp out looking for books that ask these big questions and that do have… I mean, I’m in favor of some ambiguous endings for you, because I think that would be a lot of fun. Or also endings that make you go, Whoa, like, what just happened? I think that can perhaps also work.
I’d like to start with The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Is this one you’ve read?
MEGAN: It’s not. It’s definitely on my TBR list.
ANNE: Okay. For good reason, do you remember why you put it there?
MEGAN: I put it there because somebody on the cruise ship recommended it to me.
ANNE: Really? So you were talking about books with people on your Norwegian cruise?
MEGAN: I was, yes. All the time. I got lots of book recommendations.
ANNE: Is that because you were reading? How did those conversations happen? Is this the point of our conversation? Maybe not. But I’m so curious.
MEGAN: Well, yeah. So on the cruise, I met five women who were traveling together, and they sort of adopted me as their sixth person at the table that you ate at every day. And among them, I started talking about books.
[00:35:11] They were talking about books, but because I was reading all the time, they wanted to know what I was reading, what I liked. And so I asked for book recommendations from them. And one in particular gave me this long list, which I loved, and The Bee Sting was on it.
I’d heard about it because it was recent, so I had already kind of had it in the back of my mind when she recommended it to me. So I put it on my list.
ANNE: It sounds up your alley to me.
MEGAN: Okay.
ANNE: What do we say about The Bee Sting? A literary thriller definitely feels true. I think it nestles right in with your favorite books. It’s a long book.
We didn’t talk about you especially liking that, but The God of the Woods and All the Colors of the Dark were also well over 500 pages, as is The Bee Sting. Julia Armfield went in the opposite direction. She accomplishes a lot. And I think it’s 200-something pages in Our Wives Under the Sea. But I can see that the long isn’t scary for you.
For those who care, this was shortlisted for the Booker. And it’s an Irish novel that I happened to listen to on audio.
[00:36:11] MEGAN: I love Irish novels.
ANNE: I did not know that to be true about myself until I happened to read a big stack of them just coincidentally, serendipitously, all at once last year, and then went, Oh, wait. I’m not great at pattern recognition, but even I can recognize this pattern.
This is a multi-generational family saga about what really feels like the unending, unrelenting troubles and ultimate demise of the Barnes family. The points of view are all done so well and so interesting, and in a way that you’ll notice more if you read in the print and not on audio.
Like the mother of the family, Imelda, she comes from a working-class background with a father who wasn’t present, and when he was, was present in all the wrong ways to his family. She’s the least educated character in the novel. And you can see that on the page in the way her narrative is described. But you get to see the parents and then the children all share their perspective is what is happening.
[00:37:26] So the Barnes family has always been rooted, established, esteemed in their small-town Irish community, but the economic situation in Ireland is historically, when the story is set, not good.
And I read a couple of books at the same time that all focused on the same period of recession, including The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donohue, which I loved. Great resolution to that story. Might not be a book that haunts you, Megan, but maybe one that you will find interesting for other readers.
But like character by character, Paul Murray introduces us to these characters and shows us what they’re experiencing, what their troubles are and why, and also how they’re making really clearly bad decisions, but also decisions that make sense in the world of the character.
It’s so compelling. I mean, like, here’s the situation. Why is this character making that choice? Do you see the tension? Do you see why they feel driven to do what they do? And then by showing us these characters like one by one, we can see how their bad decisions are interacting and building on each other.
[00:38:33] The symbolism here is really intense. Pay attention to the squirrels. But we see each character… oh gosh, all kinds of potential analogies here that are all really dark. But we see each character like setting up their own row of disastrous dominoes. And we watch them just like flick them over.
MEGAN: That sounds so fascinating.
ANNE: It almost starts at the end, the story. You don’t know what you’re reading because you don’t know the characters and you don’t understand the symbolism and you don’t get it. But we almost start at the end. But the end of the book is both completely unresolved and also makes you think, Oh, please no. But the question’s not answered.
I have seen this described with phrases like a rollicking good time and funny and warm and I have no idea what those critics and reviewers are talking about. I thought this was utterly compelling. I could not put it down. As terrible as the decisions were the Barnes family were making, I wanted to see where those decisions led to.
[00:39:43] Also, it was fascinating as a reader to see some assumptions I made about other characters in the family based on the perspective of their children, parent, whatever. It was so interesting to see them be proved completely wrong once I got inside that next character’s head. Literary thriller, I think this is it. How does that sound?
MEGAN: That sounds fascinating. I definitely want to read that.
ANNE: I’m glad to hear it. I’m wondering if this book has that creeping sense of dread that our guest Evie described loving in an episode a few weeks back. This next one definitely does. Have you read Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent?
MEGAN: No, but that is on my shelf upstairs.
ANNE: Okay, good reason. Well, first of all, literary thriller, so interesting. Oh, gosh, this is another Irish story.
MEGAN: We’re on a roll.
ANNE: You said you liked those, so that’s good. And also there are two characters at the center of this story, but Sally Diamond, our protagonist of the title, is neurodivergent. Is that a factor in this landing on your list?
MEGAN: Yes, it was.
[00:40:48] ANNE: Okay. So this book has a really interesting opening. Oh, gosh, I wish I could read it to you. But Sally is in her early 40s. Her father has died of natural causes. He’s lived to be a ripe old age. And he has always told her, when he dies, put him out with the bins. So just put him out on trash day.
And Sally trusted her father to tell her what she needed to do. She is very literal in her interpretation of everything. And he told her to put her out with the bins and that’s exactly what she does. And very quickly, the authorities are involved and come talk to her.
We understand from the very beginning that the way she sees the world causes problems for her and just baffles the members of her community who think she is a good person, she is kind, she is good, and also, oh, my, what do we do with this?
MEGAN: I can relate to that.
[00:41:52] ANNE: Sally is a very likable protagonist, and we want good things for her in this book. So at the beginning, we know that she is neurodivergent. She doesn’t see the world the same way as other people and that she lived with her father, who she doted on and who loved her.
But we slowly find out that there is more going on. Her father was not her biological father, but a psychologist. And he adopted her years back and he had good reasons. And we slowly find out what they are.
And as we find out what those reasons are, we learn more about Sally and her background and her world. And even more reasons that she would see the world differently from others. And we learn more about the road she’s been on, which has been loving but also very isolated.
And when her father dies, her world has to open up. And she starts to make a small group of friends, almost family, there in the community.
[00:42:56] This story has two protagonists at its core. Sally carries one point of view, but the other is told by a man whose identity is not really… we don’t understand his connection to Sally at first.
The story starts further back in the past. There’s a young boy who’s being raised, also in isolation, by his father. And something is not right here. And the way he’s being raised just feels off. Like early on, the seeds of that creeping sense of dread are being sown.
With Sally, we go back in time to understand her past. But with the boy’s timeline, we move forward. And eventually, these two timelines converge, and we see how these two characters’ lives come together.
This may sound really innocuous so far, but this is a dark, dark story with so many content warnings. And the tone throughout is emotionally… not universally, but it’s light. It’s comical, especially in Sally Diamond’s storyline. That’s not as true in the boy’s. It’s not as heavy feeling as it could be. But the content is so, so heavy.
[00:44:15] Wait, I should have used the word dark, because you like dark books. Your ears perk up when you hear that description.
MEGAN: Oh, yeah.
ANNE: And it is definitely that. And readers, if you want to know, just give it a Google, and you’ll find out more. But something I think you’ll find interesting is knowing that Liz Nugent wrote two endings for this book. There’s the original Irish ending, which I have not read. I would love to. But it’s darker than the ending that she was asked to write for her American audience because her publishers thought that the Americans would not be able to stomach an ending as dark as the one she originally wrote for her Irish edition.
MEGAN: Please tell me that it’s somewhere online and I can find it.
ANNE: It’s findable. Even if you have to buy the… you know, you have to get online and order a book from out of the country, this information is obtainable. How does that sound to you?
MEGAN: I am so excited to read this book. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a long time now, and you just made me want to read it immediately.
ANNE: Oh, it’s already sitting on your shelf.
MEGAN: Yes, it is.
[00:45:13] ANNE: Okay, I love it. Have you… I feel like surely you’ve read Happiness Falls by Angie Kim.
MEGAN: I loved it.
ANNE: Okay.
MEGAN: It’s a mystery about what happened to the father. It’s really about the family dynamics, I think.
ANNE: Yeah, a mystery about what happens to the father, but also what it’s about is why this family is the way it is.
MEGAN: Yes.
ANNE: Yeah. I’m wondering about a different kind of literary thriller, The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok. Is that a book that you’ve…
MEGAN: No, I’ve never heard of it.
ANNE: Okay. I wonder about that for you. This is a slow burn, but it really picks up speed. And I think it’s more explosive at the end than many of the books that you’ve loved. Like, it has a couple of big reveals. But she also does some really interesting things of a literary nature. The way she uses doubles in this book is fascinating.
[00:46:09] So what we have here is two women whose lives are on a collision course, and we know they’re going to converge. We just don’t know when and how. It’s a little bit family drama, a little bit… That’s not fair. It is equal parts family drama and gripping mystery. I don’t know that it’s a little bit of anything.
So one of these women is named Jasmine, and she became a mother in China, in her rural Chinese village, and gave birth to a daughter. She was told her daughter died. But then she discovers that her daughter didn’t die. Her husband actually gave the baby up for adoption, and she’s determined to go find her daughter.
And she has discovered that her child is being raised in New York City, and she knows a little bit about the family, I believe. She knows where she’s going. She’s not just airdropping into New York and going to find her child. She has some clues.
She ends up going deeply in debt to these frightening men known as Snakeheads, whose work is helping people like her enter the country without documentation. But she’s got to find her baby, who is living with her adoptive mother, Rebecca.
[00:47:21] And if you like books set in the world of publishing readers, and Megan, this is one of them, Rebecca is an influential literary editor who doesn’t know anything about the fact that her adoption was not conducted through the proper channels. And the circumstances are really pretty sinister.
So Jasmine wants to be reunited with her daughter, and is just trying to make enough money that she can get her daughter and live with her in New York. And that’s going to take a lot. Meanwhile, Rebecca is wooing this breakout novelist who’s written a new novel on the immigrant experience, and their conversations and the way Rebecca is trying to navigate that is so interesting.
There’s a lot of nitty-gritty about publishing in this book. There’s a bidding war for the book that’s really interesting. This is a slow burn until it really picks up pace in the third act. This feels like a highly structured three-act novel.
[00:48:22] So this is about a woman on a quest to reclaim her daughter but it’s also an exploration of what life is like in these individual families, and what it means to be a woman who needs to break herself into parts in order to survive and what it means to be an immigrant who needs to do the same thing in order to survive. And what does it mean to be a foreigner who’s moving in a new culture? What does it mean for them?
Oh, and I have to tell you, she and Angie Kim are pals, just knowing that you loved Happiness Falls. I was delighted to see Angie Kim appear in The Acknowledgements of the Leftover Woman.
Jean Kwok said that Angie read every word almost as soon as it was written. And they wrote their books at the same time. They came out about the same time. That feels like a real vote of confidence when I see that an author I love really trusts and respects the input of another author I love, or an author I’m thinking about reading. It’s fun to see worlds collide in that way.
[00:49:22] I do think this one is less similar to the ones you’ve already loved, but how does that sound to you?
MEGAN: It sounds really interesting.
ANNE: I’d be curious to hear how that goes for you. We can’t forget The Liz Moore. I imagine the one on your list is Long Bright River, because that book was big.
MEGAN: Yes. Okay. You need to know about The Unseen World.
My husband also loved The God of the Woods, and I tried to gently nudge Will Bogle in the direction of The Unseen World without making him feel like I was being bossy. He can listen to this and tell me if that succeeded or not.
But The Unseen World is a father-daughter story about math, coding, family secrets that have been buried with good intentions, but still have been buried.
It’s shocking and disturbing when you find out that in this book, your father, as the protagonist Ada finds out, has been lying about his past for a really long time. He is a brilliant, I’m going to say the word scientist, which might not be officially accurate, who starts experiencing symptoms of dementia before he actually dies and Ada is left behind to solve a mystery that he left her in code about her past.
[00:50:43] I don’t know what to say, except if you love The God of the Woods, this is a very different story that still has so many of the elements that you loved in it, because it’s Liz Moore. Literary thriller. I wouldn’t call this a thriller. I call this a literary mystery that is just as much a family drama.
MEGAN: That sounds great too.
ANNE: Long Bright River is great. It’s a different kind of book, and I am excited for you to read it. And also, I don’t want you to miss The Unseen World.
She has more books besides. She has Heft, and I think there’s one more. I haven’t read those two yet, but every time I talk about Liz Moore, so thank you for making that possible this day, Megan. I think I need to get to those.
Okay, we covered some ground today. Of the books we talked about, they were The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent, The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok, and then we slipped in The Unseen World by Liz Moore, of those books, what do you think you might read next?
[00:51:40] MEGAN: I’m really interested in all of them, but I think I’m going to go for Strange Sally Diamond because you just made me fall in love with it again. Why did I put this on my shelf? It must be because of you.
ANNE: That sounds like a really good fit to me. I’m excited to hear what you think.
MEGAN: Yeah.
ANNE: Megan, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for talking books with me.
MEGAN: Thank you. Thank you so much.
ANNE: Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Megan, and I’d love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Megan at her website. That’s meganreillydesign.com and on Goodreads.
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[00:52:45] Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” Happy reading, everyone.
