[SPEAKER_03]: Hi and Megan, and I'm Sarah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're two women in our forties who live in different states and have a lot of different interests between us.
[SPEAKER_03]: On this show, we talk about all the mid-life lady leisure pursuits we're enjoying at the stage of life.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like travel, hobbies, food, wellness, style, and more.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm excited today to chat about books because what a perfect way to end the year together on this show, a little cozy reading chat.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I can't wait.
[SPEAKER_03]: Today's episode is brought to you by our exclusive season sponsor and a longtime partner of ours, Vionic Shoes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vionics are the perfect combo of stylish and super comfortable and they really help keep us moving.
[SPEAKER_03]: Use the promo code midlife at vionicshoes.com for 15% off when you log into your account and be sure to check out the special page we've set up where you can see our favorite vionic styles.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can look for that in the show notes for this episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, thank you to Vionic for sponsoring this episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Megan, let's dive right into talking about books.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are both readers and in mid-life, I feel like we're reading more than ever before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we're just gonna go back and forth and mention the titles that have stood out to us recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure that will launch a million-sized conversations about what's catching our eye lately.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Megan, do you wanna start?
[SPEAKER_03]: I do, and this is a great, um, I think, I have actually two for my first share because they go together and I think what they show is that our tastes can change and the things that we think about ourselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, can evolve.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would never have thought of myself.
[SPEAKER_03]: as someone who is particularly into mysteries.
[SPEAKER_03]: I read a mystery series called Tricksie Belden, when I was growing up, that is a classic, you know, it's a classic like pre-teen into teen.
[SPEAKER_03]: A little bit like if you weren't quite an antsy drew girl and you liked Tom Boy, heroin, it's like, tricks who's for you.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's really the only one.
[SPEAKER_03]: I never really got into any other mystery.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just never been a thing of mine.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I've had two different,
[SPEAKER_03]: books or series in the mystery genre lately that I have been loving and they're very very different but it just kind of goes to show you that good books are good books and I don't need to be, I don't need to think that I'm not into a genre just because I don't think of myself as that kind of person.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the first one is a series by an author named Alan Bradley about a 11 year
[SPEAKER_03]: Flavia deluce, I think that's how you see that, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you say Flavia or Flavia?
[SPEAKER_03]: Flavia.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I know both.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I'm going to say Flavia, this series is so good.
[SPEAKER_03]: My sister recommended it years ago, and I just never got around to reading it, and I picked one up at the library.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is when I was doing one of those things where I was just walking the stacks, and like, I kind of run my hand along.
[SPEAKER_03]: the stacks and it's a bunch of stuff out of you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And within a page, I was completely hooked.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm now on the fifth or sixth book.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of them, I think the fourth one is a Christmas book.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they don't, they move really fast.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it doesn't take long to get through, to get through one.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the main character is this 11 year old girl.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's very precocious.
[SPEAKER_03]: She solves crimes, but she's also really into poisons.
[SPEAKER_03]: and she has a laboratory in her family's crumbling English mansion in the country side and it's set in 1950.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's all this like mid-century stuff, quirky characters, also like a world war two,
[SPEAKER_03]: plot line that's kind of like comes into the setting of the 1950 setting.
[SPEAKER_03]: Her dad and mom had both been kind of involved in wartime efforts.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, it's incredible.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything is incredible.
[SPEAKER_03]: A quick question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is the target audience also 11 years old?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or like, oh, this is not a children series.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I mean, and I would have no judgment if it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I, so I don't think it was age.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, it wasn't in the children's section.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's written for adults, but it moves fast.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I think a child could read it if they had the reading level for it and enjoy it, but it's really, it's not written for kids.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I also don't mind that the heroin is so percosious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes I don't like books that make
[SPEAKER_03]: the child characters too smart and you're like, what?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it doesn't even, it's not like that she's very flawed and quirky and her family is odd and like, it's just great.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I just can't say enough about how much I love this book.
[SPEAKER_03]: This series of books and I feel like if you dig in with in a couple of pages, you will also be hooked.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm very honest, just delightful.
[SPEAKER_03]: very invested and it feels great for this time of year too, just because it's like the spooky, but like cozy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking at the listing and it looks like it was published first in 2010, so it takes place in the fifties, but is written more recently.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he might still be doing them.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't, there's a whole bunch on the shelf.
[SPEAKER_03]: But this author may still be cranking them out.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other one that is also technically a mystery or a crime book, I guess, is Vira Wong's Guide to snooping on a dead man.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did we talk about this already at one point?
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is a podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think that's not on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, good.
[SPEAKER_03]: This one is set in modern day San Francisco and it is this older woman who owns a t-shop in Chinatown and Stumbles across a dead man and then goes down and she's kind of like an overbearing mother her son has grown up and moved out but she's literally lonely anyway it is so funny like
[SPEAKER_03]: It's laugh out loud on every page, funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's great.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the character, so she kind of pulls together this
[SPEAKER_03]: rag tag group of people because she thinks they're all suspects and she's trying to figure out who did it and then it's very heartwarming and they all need her in some way and blah blah blah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean like it it checks off all the boxes yeah but it's charming and and like I said very funny and kind of like I mean there's I'm sort of invested in the mystery I guess I don't really care who done it that's not really the point and I don't think you're really supposed to it's not really set up like um
[SPEAKER_03]: like a solve the mystery kind of mystery.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's more like there's a mystery as a backdrop to a lot of character yeah and relationships and so anyway um you know these are the the only two mysteries I've enjoyed recently there was also the uh that whole series of books the number one ladies detective agency that I thought about oh every single one I think
[SPEAKER_03]: So those are also technically mysteries, but again, I think what I'm finding is that like when the mystery isn't the point The who done it isn't really the point.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the development of the character and thing and the storytelling and the setting I really do like them.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm gonna not I'm not going to shy away quite so much from this genre anymore
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you're inspiring me because I also don't really read mysteries, but I don't think I have any hang ups about thinking I wouldn't like them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think if anything, it's that it feels overwhelming to know where to start.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go much like darker crime and thriller.
[SPEAKER_02]: you can go very cozy and like, you know, not scary and I just think there's so many and this is true of a lot of fiction, subgenres where I'm like, I just don't know what's for me and duh, it's books and the library, you could just try one and right enough to like it but I can get stuck on that like where to start so you have given me places to start.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you would really love the Flavia delusbooks.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I just, okay, I could really see you digging those so.
[SPEAKER_03]: Start there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_02]: I will.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, my first book is a memoir called Joy Ride.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's was just came out in the last couple of months, maybe September.
[SPEAKER_02]: By Susan Orlene, who's a nonfiction writer, primarily a long-form nonfiction writer for the New Yorker, and then she has a bunch of nonfiction books.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is her memoir, so if you like
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will also preface this by saying Megan, you and I were discussing another creative person's memoir right before I read this book and I won't say who because we're not here to disparage writers works But neither of us thought it was very good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you remember?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yes, but I remember the conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes
[SPEAKER_02]: And we both were kind of like, okay, this is obviously a very accomplished and creative and interesting person.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the memoir didn't somehow satisfy our curiosity for what that person's career had really been like.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is the opposite.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like this is so much of how the sausage gets made.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you were ever curious about, and I know you were Megan, but about like magazine
[SPEAKER_02]: how a writer sits down and gets the work done, how a writer goes from idea to pitch to collaboration with an editor to publication.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so satisfyingly detailed and then duh, she's a really good non-fiction writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the writing of her memoir is quite good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I found her pretty self-aware, like, um, and, and, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought there were parts of her story that I would have not guessed she would talk about some of the stuff from when she was younger.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't spend a lot of time unlike family of origin and childhood stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: It gets pretty quickly into, I mean, she says she's never had a paid job.
[SPEAKER_02]: Other than maybe babysitting or like a paper route, she has been a professional writer since she was like 21 years old.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's never had another job.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's written for magazines and written nonfiction books.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, I loved it and
[SPEAKER_02]: She's not a writer that I was like intimately familiar with all of her work.
[SPEAKER_02]: I read one of her books, and I'm sure I read some of her New Yorker pieces without even realizing they were hers over the years, but anyway, so that is, I would recommend for anyone who likes memoirs about creativity and writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just, I thought the whole thing was great.
[SPEAKER_03]: This reminds me a little bit of the Ruth, is it right, Cole?
[SPEAKER_03]: I never know how to say her last name.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was a food writer in the 90s, so she's probably a similar age to Susan Orlene, and she wrote a book that called Saviour Me the Plums, and it is about food writing at that time.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's something about that era.
[SPEAKER_03]: of, there was really a golden era for our magazine journalism and like a certain kind of, at least for me, I mean, I'm sure at people who are maybe older would say, no, the 60s were the golden era, or what I'm writing.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm looking at this as thinking, I was really coming of age in the 90s and looking at these people and thinking, what a life, you know, you're watching movies about newsrooms or you're shooting magazine stories and thinking, like,
[SPEAKER_03]: life-side career that would be.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Susan Orlene is one of those names, like, she's been around forever.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't, I also wouldn't say she's someone who, like, I follow her work really closely.
[SPEAKER_03]: But she's always been on my radar as someone to look to as a heavy weight in this field.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also, the stylistic choice of the cover.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Look good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Very 90s to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, yeah, it doesn't remind me of like a Daniel steel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the font.
[SPEAKER_03]: It has that sort of like flowers in the attic look or something from that era.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know there's something about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure that was very intentional.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I will add that to my list.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really love a well done memoir, especially about an industry that I'm interested in for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think you'd like particularly, so she has both magazine writing and then bookwriting experience and they're quite different.
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of her book publishing stories I feel like would be satisfying to you Megan just because you are a book author and like she just there's just a lot there's a lot about how that sausage gets made Well and not well the the type of things that never see the light of day she said books option for film and television She's just like she has done it all and and she's a beautiful writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think you'd love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm adding that to my list
[SPEAKER_03]: So, have we talked, I keep asking, have we talked about this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Just because you and I have talked about it, does not mean we've talked about it in the show, but I have shared with you that I've tried to get more and not tried to get more into.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been more open to cozy fiction for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and I feel like maybe on one of the later episodes of the Mom Hour before we wrapped that podcast earlier this year, we did a books.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and then you on the kettle sometimes talk about books.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I cannot promise you that we haven't discussed this in some way, but we haven't done a books episode on this podcast yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're safe.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm safe.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I ordered some books that were about tea to carry in my shop.
[SPEAKER_03]: And without relieving knowing what they were, I just like add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card, add the card
[SPEAKER_03]: and taking it home.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that one was called a cup, hold on, I have to think about this for a second, because it's not the first one in the series, but it's what got me into this series.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll think of it in a second.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, a cup of magic or something like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, the author's name is Karen Hawkins, and it led me to her series about a little southern town called Dove Pond.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the first one in the series is called the book Charmer, and then the second one is Charming.
[SPEAKER_03]: it it is and this is the kind of book that honestly if you a cup of silver linings that's the one that I read first out of order then there's one called the bookshop of hidden dreams and anyway goes on I've I've read I think four of them this particular author also I believe writes some bodice rippers no and because if you go to her
[SPEAKER_03]: bookshop, page and scroll a bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: You will see some beard chests and a man who looks like he's carrying a sword.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my, okay, swash buckling.
[SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, these are definitely not that kind of romance.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are small town family stories and it's about this family
[SPEAKER_03]: where at any time this family has lived in this town forever, they're the dove family, they're ancestors settled the town, and anytime there are seven daughters born in one generation, they have magic powers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh wow.
[SPEAKER_03]: So one of them, like, books talk to her, one of them can make tea that, uh, you know, cures very specific hills, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is not the kind of thing I usually would get into, but I just loved them.
[SPEAKER_03]: I loved the first one that I read, which was actually the second one.
[SPEAKER_03]: I went back and read the first one and I've read now.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think for them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're just like,
[SPEAKER_03]: The stories are good, kind of low stakes, drama, you know, no one's getting chased or but like there's always something happening that needs to get solved.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some problem that needs to get solved often, there is a small town plot like we need to save the town kind of a plot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then like some family drama thrown in and T and books and all of the things and I have just found them very like cozy and escapist in the best way.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I also think this author went back and wrote, like, in-between books.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if that's the thing authors are doing now, but there's like a 1.5, a 2.5, a 3.5 that might only be an e-book form, so it's like the book that slides in between the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the series.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think of Lion King 1 and a half, which was a...
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that my kids loved.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think straight wednesday to DVD.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just streaming.
[SPEAKER_02]: Weirdly my kids loved it.
[SPEAKER_02]: When they really are.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's like, if you're looking for something, you know, kind of cozy and light, I recommend.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really love this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do think that like, it's just a good reminder that we are, our genre limitations are limitations of our own making.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if it helps you as a reader to kind of know what you like and to seek the familiar, then that's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, we don't need to do that at the expense of our own enjoyment.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I love that you're kind of branching out or maybe like removing some things that may be in the past you would have poo pooed or just that work for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, my next pick is not as light and full.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is the Underground Railroad, a novel by Colson Whitehead.
[SPEAKER_03]: That doesn't sound at all fluffy or light.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nope, but very good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, it was, it won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it is, and it came out in 2016.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is not a new, I think there's a movie in the making now.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not a new fiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: And often when I come to literary fiction,
[SPEAKER_02]: This is how I do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like five to ten years later, and I'll be looking through my Libby app, and I'll think, well, it has a gold sticker on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, probably means I do sometimes, or I'll think, you know, gosh, I've seen and heard of that book so many times.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll look a little further into it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And often on the Libby app, the newest fiction titles are not always available.
[SPEAKER_02]: They have a long way.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the ones that now are either ten years old.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just picked it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to say too much about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say two things.
[SPEAKER_02]: One, some of the content is very upsetting and if you know that that's not for you, I would just skip this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we all have different things that we just are not, we can't do for one reason or the other.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was okay with the difficult subject matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was really compelled by the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I thought the story telling, from, I thought, oh, this book might take a bit to get into.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a Pulitzer.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got, it's kind of this high-brow fiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought maybe I'll, like, from page one, I was into the story, and it's quite difficult subject matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So may or may not be for you, the other thing I'll say is that it is a very realistic and historically accurate account of slavery in the South except for one element.
[SPEAKER_02]: that is like a dash of magical realism and I found that I almost like when I realized that's what was happening and if you just read the description like I'm not I'm trying not to give too many spoilers but it's like in the description when I first encountered it I was like wait I thought this was like very hard hitting historical fiction what is happening
[SPEAKER_02]: To kind of recalibrate and then I loved it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a very powerful read Not an easy, not an easy subject, but kind of an easy like it was a page turner for me So it wasn't like a slog to get through.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just the subject matter was tough and the writing was great So that was that's my next one
[SPEAKER_03]: That sounds really good.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that reminds me of a book I read over the summer called James, were you familiar with that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know of James, and it's been on my list, but again, again, with the recent hits, they're never available in my library.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know a little bit about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: This was one I read on a plane, and I feel like I locked out, because I pretty sure it was Libby, and I think it was just like the timing, just grind up and...
[SPEAKER_03]: And that one is a fictionalized retelling of Huck Finn from the perspective of Jim, who, of course, is a fugitive slave.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the thing is, I don't know that I've ever read Huck Finn, or it's been a really long time.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'd be reading it going, wait, was that on the original?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, I just...
[SPEAKER_03]: I just...
[SPEAKER_02]: I just...
[SPEAKER_03]: I just...
[UNKNOWN]: I just...
[SPEAKER_03]: And I had to just let this story be what it was.
[SPEAKER_03]: Otherwise, I feel like the whole time I would have been like, wait, was that ripped from Huck Finn and retold?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is this totally new?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so anyway, it was funny and fast moving and adventurous and great and also hard.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, so I feel like sometimes those are the most powerful books.
[SPEAKER_03]: The ones that kind of sneak up and, I don't know, they kind of sneak up and surprise you a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm very glad that I read this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was kind of my prevailing feeling when I finished it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is I'm really glad that I randomly clicked, like, yes, I'm ready to read that one without knowing all that much about it, except honestly, like seeing Pulitzer and, oh, I've heard of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel really glad that I read it.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, well, I will also add that to my list.
[SPEAKER_03]: When I'm looking for something a little heavier perhaps, yeah, perhaps January.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, all right, well, my last book to discuss today, I was so delighted when I found this book which honestly I have no memory of how I found it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was suggested to me, maybe in Libby.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really don't remember.
[SPEAKER_03]: I definitely read an ebook version of it, but you can purchase it in paperback.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's called the proper place and the author's name is O Douglas.
[SPEAKER_03]: I looked O Douglas up that's definitely a pen name, but I can't remember now what the actual author's actual name was.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you have ever had this sensation of the feeling of reading an old book,
[SPEAKER_03]: like a hundred years older or older and then being sort of sad because those books aren't being written anymore and you feel like maybe you've read all the ones that are like that and then you stumble across when you didn't even know existed.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's how I felt.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this book is about a
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, a family of gentle women, I guess I would say, in, like, you know, aristocratic family, but they're down on their luck in the early 1900s.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's somewhere in England, but then they moved to Scotland or maybe they're in Scotland, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: They can't really, they end up in Scotland.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, it's the character, the main characters are, especially there's one in particular, who's, I don't know, kind of like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Spunky and kind, and imaginative and creative.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's kind of like all the best things about an Anne of Green Gables book, for example, but sort of set in like a Downton Abbey.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so, you know, it's like the timing, it's a little, it's not Jane Austen because it's more recent.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: But a lot of that same social commentary of our classes, but then during a time when all the classes are being mixed up because of new money and industry and then the, um, the the gentry is now kind of going out of style.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's set right in that time and there's a little romance and then like another little sort of side story.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I'm on the second one.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's like at least one follow up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe another one after that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just find them delightful.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the the countryside descriptions are great.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of talking with people who have very thick Scottish brogs where I will read like an entire page and be like, I have no idea what I just read.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so glad you found this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I don't know how you would find this book if you went.
[SPEAKER_02]: looking for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, I don't even remember, you know, sometimes I read a lot of, um, I guess I just find myself reading a lot of blogs and newsletters that are of by people who have similar tastes in sort of this kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I bet someone mentioned it somewhere along the line.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I was like, ooh, that sounds great.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then of course, there's a woman pouring tea in the cover and I was like, okay, I'm intrigued and tell me more.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell me more.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it was
[SPEAKER_02]: was this author?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have never heard of this author.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Douglas.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I know it was a woman writer.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think she wrote under a pen name.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to look her up because, um,
[SPEAKER_03]: Anna, Masterton, but you can, she was a Scottish novelist who wrote under the pen name, Oh, Douglas, and I'm okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the proper place, the day of small things is the follow-up, and that's the one I'm reading right now, but she has several, um, I have delightful covers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this seems very, would you say it's like cozy, like winter cozy?
[SPEAKER_02]: Does it feel particularly seasonal?
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, not really because it kind of, it goes through, it goes through several seasons, but there's a lot of talk about, you know, the Scottish country side and all, yes, and seaside in all of the, yes, seasonal glory.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think you can't go wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: that sounds really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm adding that one to my list.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can probably find this one someplace because it is not hot, it is not hot new title.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, this one will probably be available if my library even has it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That sounds lovely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, well my last one is another nonfiction.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know if you call this memoir-esque because it's much more confined to a particular timer experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like we've had this conversation before.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I guess it falls in the memoir category.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is careless people by Sarah Win Williams, and you read this too, Megan.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is, I'm going to read you the subtitle, because I think it's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: A cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is a firsthand account of a woman who worked.
[SPEAKER_02]: at Meta, then Facebook in the early days, specifically in global and governmental relations, international affairs, and as data and privacy and globalization were quickly happening with social media, she was kind of the number one,
[SPEAKER_02]: person navigating a lot of like questions that had never been had to be asked before, about like where does social media cross over with, like say an uprising of people against an authority.
[SPEAKER_03]: Where's our government?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's our government?
[SPEAKER_02]: exactly like what is a tech company have to do with the a tech company based in San Francisco have to do with international affairs happening in another country was it being used for good because people are able to find each other and have a voice fascinating concepts.
[SPEAKER_02]: that I really, of course, didn't think about as a user of Facebook in the years where she was there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to say she was there like 2010 to 2017 or something like somewhere in the world in early years.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, she kind of invented her job too, which I think is really fascinating.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like she kind of went in and said, well, this is my background, you should, you need this, you should hire me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, she had much more of a traditional like diplomacy global international affairs background.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she could see the writing on the wall that this technology was spreading so quickly and so internationally that pretty soon heads of Facebook were going to be meeting with heads of state and that is exactly what happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: And let me just say this.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a juicy tell-off about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: in her workings of the tip-top of Facebook.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't think I would like this book because it's not usually the kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: I care that much about, not to say I don't care about tech companies.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just don't, this is not the kind of book I would usually find that interesting, and I was hooked.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I read it all in two settings.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a shock, parts of it are shocking.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like part of it you want your friend to read it which you did so glad because you read it just a couple weeks after I did and You want someone to read it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you'd be like are you like are is this for real?
[SPEAKER_03]: How does this be how is she not getting sued?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's the thing that really made me realize it must be real because there's no way if This stuff wasn't true.
[SPEAKER_03]: It would never have made it through the league.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know through legal team and her publisher and It also just the way she got the job
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the way she was sort of treated in that job, besides all the weird interpersonal stuff, like that is its own book right there, like the stuff with, what's your face?
[SPEAKER_01]: Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl, Samburg.
[SPEAKER_01]: Samburg.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a different person, it's all right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, what?
[SPEAKER_03]: But then even aside from that, the sort of,
[SPEAKER_03]: shruggy carelessness.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, just to show you the name of the title of the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, of the people in charge not only the carelessness, but like, really how they didn't see any of this coming and failed so many times to actually address.
[SPEAKER_03]: these issues in any kind of a way was I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It made not like I had a whole lot of respect anyway at this point, but I was like this is just it's unconscionable and I think that's exactly the takeaway, which is like it's not like we thought these were people of super high integrity, but the absolute absence
[SPEAKER_03]: basic and the being so distracted by their own pet projects and their egos and running after stupid side things just for their own like gratification while ignoring really big, like really big elephants in the room.
[SPEAKER_03]: It makes me think they're either very corrupt or just really stupid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, it was shocking in kind of like that sort of like juicy way like I can't believe I'm like guilty pleasure kind of way and And it was honestly the end of that trip that because I was on a trip when I read though read that book and it was when I got home from that trip that I disconnected myself from meta
[SPEAKER_03]: Personally, I mean, I still use it for business, and I don't use it at all under my name anymore, and I Don't care too.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not like I think that there are any worse than a lot of other Companies, but it's like once you know this stuff, and you just see how you're being used and manipulated There was one part where she I think that this was in this book talked about how they had certain words They were trolling
[SPEAKER_03]: little children, like 12 and 13 year old girls, social posts for words like sad, depressed, fat, ugly, and then they would feed them ads based on like their own words, not liking themselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it makes me so mad.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so not a light and fluffy read either, but I think a worthwhile one and it moves fast.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does shock us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is a shocker.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, especially when you get through the first like third I felt like for the first third I was like kind of interested in the more like this more like international policy piece and then when like things get it was like watching a show or something where things just started like going off the rails and you're like like you said is this
[SPEAKER_02]: Happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, that was a good one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good one to end on because we both read it so we can.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I know that it was there was a big effort to suppress that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm hoping that this book gets I think it'll be a slow burn for her because I think a lot of the upfront chatter that there might have been obviously probably isn't taking place on meta if they can help it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I remember seeing a bunch of people who were very excited to read it when it first came out and those are probably people who follow this kind of thing naturally and stuff and I wasn't one of those and so I was probably six months later and I was like, I'm curious enough and I was very glad I read it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, we'll Sarah there's a little of something for everyone to take them into the holiday season right like whether you want to be informed.
[SPEAKER_03]: or read something really hard, or, you know, just read some fluff, or just really mad at him.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll say an international company.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well about your social networks.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can have it all.
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course we'll put links to all of these in the show notes as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: um yeah we're coming into the holiday season so we're going to be going on a hate as again and we will be back in January we're still kind of working on what our content plan is going to look like in January so I don't think it's going to be like the first week of January but we don't have that date yet so um go ahead and go to our substact that is the best place to just keep up to date with when you'll hear from us again and that is that midlife lady leisure pursuits dot
[SPEAKER_03]: Substack.com and that's where we're really going to let you know when you can expect to hear from us again and we can't wait to be back with a new season in January
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and we definitely will, and it will definitely be January.
[SPEAKER_02]: So check the sub-stack if you are dying to know precisely which Tuesday.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just a reminder that that's also where you can find our expanded episodes show notes for each episode with photos and links.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, it's midlifeladyleisurepresuits.substack.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's also where you'll find the special page we've set up with some of our favorite vionic styles.
[SPEAKER_02]: use the promo code midlife at vionicshoes.com for 15% off when you log in to your account.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for being here everybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: Happy holidays and I'll talk to you soon.