LAURA HOWARD: I get so excited when people want to talk about books with me. I've had a friend literally call from the bookstore, and he was with his daughter, and he's like, "We need some new books. Can you just tell us what to get?" I was like, "Oh, yes. I definitely can."
ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel, and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we'll talk all things books and reading, and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.
[00:00:50] Readers, Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which means many of us are traveling or gathering with family. This is a great opportunity to talk books and reading and maybe discover a new-to-you title or author. Over in our Patreon community, we often share mini matchmaking episodes, and you might enjoy giving that a try with your family or gathering group too. Invite your people to tell you about three books they love, one they didn't, and then see if you can match them with a book you might recommend.
It is also a great time to explore our archives of more than 500 episodes. There is a matchmaking episode here for any style of reader, and it might be the perfect way to start a bookish conversation with your friends or loved ones. Thanks for listening in this season, and whatever plans you have or don't have for the coming days, I hope you will be able to pair them with a good book.
[00:01:37] Now for today's episode. I am talking with a reader whose reading habits taught her something surprising over the past few years. After reading quite a bit of popular historical fiction, Laura Howard realized two important things. Not only does she dislike the genre, but she also discovered she had more gaps in her knowledge of actual history than she'd expected. She would like my help today in finding nonfiction that reads like a novel while filling in some of these gaps.
Laura is no stranger to reading for education. She works in an Atlanta-area university as a faculty developer and part-time professor. She has always seen reading as both a personal joy and a form of connection, whether with the fellow members of her longstanding book club or with friends and neighbors.
Laura has already identified one reason she is resistant to historical fiction. She would prefer to learn about the actual history of events before reading fiction inspired by real life. And she has a specific list of topics she would love to explore via engrossing nonfiction books. A high priority is keeping those books on the shorter side, as you will hear.
[00:02:36] Laura has tried to research on her own to find titles that meet her needs, but she has found those options online to be totally overwhelming. That brings her here today. I am so excited to see if we can find Laura great nonfiction about history. Let's get to it.
Laura, welcome to the show.
LAURA: Hi, Anne. Thanks so much. I'm so happy to be here.
ANNE: Oh my gosh, I am so excited to talk today. I love the theme you have brought to us, and we are going to get to it in just a moment. But first, would you tell us about yourself? We want to give our readers a glimpse of who you are.
LAURA: Yeah, absolutely. So I live in the South in a suburb of Atlanta, and I work in higher education, which I have done for a very long time now as a faculty member, but most recently as a faculty developer. I think this is a field not everyone knows about.
[00:03:29] It is certainly not something that I first knew about when I was in graduate school, because I think I would have gone this direction earlier. But essentially, I do professional development, organizational development type things, creating learning experiences for faculty. People do not always think of college faculty as needing support in terms of their teaching, but many of us do, because not every discipline really trains its faculty to teach. So what I do in my role is support faculty who want to be more effective teachers.
ANNE: That sounds amazing. Also, I was drooling at the perks of your job you described in your submission. Would you tell us?
LAURA: Yes, there are so many. The best part of my job is that I get to go to class, and I get to go to different subjects and different courses within different departments that I would never have even maybe taken in college. For example, last week I was in a math class first thing in the morning, and it was such an interesting experience just to see how the professor was working to really build relationships with those students as they are also teaching this incredibly complex subject.
[00:04:46] I get to go to engineering classes and nursing classes, which are just fascinating. And I learn so much. The biggest part of my job is learning, honestly, from the people who I engage with, and it is just... uh, it's wonderful.
ANNE: Now, that comment is definitely going to inform the direction we go with your books.
LAURA: Great. Sounds good. Yes. Learning is my jam.
ANNE: Laura, tell us about your reading life.
LAURA: I am a big reader. I have always been a lifelong reader. I think I might annoy everyone in my life with how much I talk about reading, which is why I was like, this is the perfect outlet for me to be able to talk to people who really want to hear about reading conversations. But I read widely. I read everything. I do audio, eBooks, and print.
[00:05:45] I have a healthy balance of fiction and nonfiction, I think, in my life for the most part. There are a few times in my reading life where I have gotten really hung up on a certain genre or theme and have maybe burned out a little bit on it. So that kind of keeps me... that kind of lesson of, ah, don't just read too much of this or you will get sick of it. Kind of keeps me looking for variety.
I think there are lots of ways to get that variety, especially through listening versus having the book in my hand. I know I mentioned in my submission one thing that I do with my book club ladies is we will go to literary festivals and other kind of bookish events and I will find out about a lot of things that I might enjoy reading through those opportunities.
ANNE: Laura, what else do we know about your reading life right now? Where are we finding you?
[00:06:38] LAURA: I am really in a season where I am loving reading about growth and reinvention. I really like when, if it is fiction for example, when characters are going on these journeys, sometimes literally but sometimes figuratively, often deeper inside themselves.
Interestingly, I do not love a coming-of-age story. I really do not like meeting the characters when they are children, necessarily. I really like to see how this unfolds, how these journeys work later in people's lives. That's true, I think, for nonfiction for me as well. It's something I also look for there. I really enjoy kind of reflective, meditative type reads. I am also in a season of life that I think a lot of other people are in, which is like it never feels like there is enough time to really enjoy reading.
[00:07:36] So, anyway, I mentioned to you in my submission that there are a lot of people in my life who have said, "Oh, I really love to read, but I just cannot find the time." I think that is when you need reading the most. Some tricks that I have kind of used in my own life to read more are audiobooks on my commute or when I am exercising, and also keeping a book with me at all times.
Sometimes my Kindle, sometimes I use my Kindle app, but also sometimes, very often, I will have a physical book in my car, or a purse book, as I like to call it, which is a paperback that you get at a thrift store that you keep in your purse in case you find yourself waiting and your phone is dead and you cannot read on your Kindle app or something.
So I think we have to grab the minutes that we can grab and read during those minutes rather than this fantasy of, Oh, I am going to be in my comfy reading chair in my perfectly stocked home library and be cuddled up with my tea and reading for hours. That is not really how it works for most of us.
[00:08:42] What is interesting is I always have thought of reading as kind of a solitary hobby. I remember, in fact it was your podcast, Anne, where I realized, oh, these are people connecting over this hobby that I have always seen as something that's really independent, done on your own, done in silence, and you are not always in conversation with people about what you are reading.
So sometimes I would not even talk much about reading as a hobby. Like when I was asked what my hobbies were, I would always be like, "Oh, you know, spending time with friends and family," and things that are a little bit more kind of extroverted, what people typically think of what we do in connection with other people. But I've since learned and really changed my mind about this. I think reading absolutely can be a way to connect with other people.
And it's something I've definitely seen play out in my own life. The more I started kind of talking to people about what I was reading, what they were reading, what they were interested in, the more people kind of started coming to me for book recommendations, or just they wanted to kind of unpack their thoughts around something they were reading.
[00:09:48] And that is the greatest honor to me. I get so excited when people want to talk about books with me. I've had a friend literally call from the bookstore, and he was with his daughter, and he's like, "We need some new books. Can you just tell us what to get?" And I was like, "Oh, yes. I definitely can. Tell me a little bit about what you like, and then here's some things I've been reading." And I was kind of like navigating them through the sections of the bookstore.
I had a sweet friend who's a neighbor just leave a little gift on my porch one day with a note saying that I had really helped her rekindle her love of reading just by talking about it, bringing it up, and that it was really kind of enhancing things for her. And she really appreciated it.
And then some dear friends of mine who probably bear the brunt of my book talk, actually. For some reason, it's like my entire personality when I'm with them. I always just want to talk about books, but I think it's because they're smart, interesting people, and they bring a lot of insight. But I talk about books a lot with them.
[00:10:49] And the mom in this family comes up with some kind of challenge for the family every year that they start in January. And sometimes it's like hiking a different area of Atlanta at least once a month. And she's come up with these different kind of family challenges.
But this year, they're doing a book club, just the four of them. So each month, each member of the family reads at least one book, and then they alternate choosing a restaurant and going and talking about the book over dinner.
I'm just obsessed with this idea. I think it's so great. The kids are not old. They're in elementary school, but they're participating. Both parents are participating, reading multiple books per month. I just love to see it. It's just so exciting to me.
[00:11:36] ANNE: That sounds delightful. Now, Laura, we're going to get into your books in just a moment, but I think first it would be helpful for me and for readers to hear a little bit about what brought you to What Should I Read Next? right now. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm thinking of what you said about what you've discovered about yourself as a reader and what you're looking for right now that you've not really gotten anywhere with on your own.
LAURA: Yeah. So a couple of things. One is that sometimes, I mean, I do feel like there are plenty of people who probably enjoy these more kind of introspective reads, where it's a lot about the psychology of the character and that kind of thing. But I kind of want some recommendations that are just tailored to my really specific interest in that.
But also lately, I have been wanting to go in a different direction with my nonfiction. So nonfiction for me often is, I guess some people will call it self-help type books. Some of them are really connected to what I do professionally, but some of them are just interesting to me.
[00:12:40] And so I read a lot in that genre, but I've started to become really interested in and noticed some gaps for myself in history and become really, really interested in reading more history or historical nonfiction, which I just think is interesting because right now there's so much historical fiction.
I think it's about the marketing, like how it's marketed. I've heard people talk about this on the show before, but just like the market was so dominated by World War II historical fiction for a while. And you know, you see the ripples of that in terms of what's being promoted.
I wanted to read history about other time periods and other events, and specifically history about really specific moments or turning points or inventions that are shorter books that I can kind of keep up my three-books-at-a-time approach that I typically have, which is usually a novel, nonfiction, and an audiobook. I'm usually doing three at once.
[00:13:50] So I don't want super long stuff. That's the thing about a lot of history is that the books are long. I'm looking for shorter. And I'm also looking for stuff that's just super engaging that you just get into right away. And if you sit down and you Google "best history books," you get all kinds of responses. A lot of it's dominated by people on the bestseller list. A lot of it's dominated by, I think, probably periods in history that are just popular trends.
And I'm more interested in things that I wouldn't necessarily stumble across on my own. And so that's why I reached out. I've been listening to the show for years, but I was like, "This is a problem I know Anne can solve." So that's why I applied now.
ANNE: All right. Talk to me about historical fiction.
LAURA: A lot of people love it. And it's something that I will typically say... like to my book club, we're kind of talking about what we like, what we don't like. I've typically stayed away from historical fiction as something I choose for the group. I typically won't be drawn to that section in the bookstore or the library. Well, it's not a section in the library, but it's just not my first choice.
[00:15:03] And so I don't know what it is precisely, but I think some of it may have to do with just maybe a sense that some aspects of history are being kind of romanticized in some of the more popular historical fiction. And it just feels inauthentic to me in some ways. I want to engage with the primary sources. I want to learn from experts versus fictional characters. And so I think that's a little bit where I am with historical fiction.
ANNE: Interesting. Many people love to learn through historical fiction, not you.
LAURA: Right.
ANNE: Okay. Talk to me about the length. It sounds like that is a priority factor for you.
LAURA: I have a long to-be-read list like many of your listeners, I'm sure, and trying to make some progress. I don't want to get too hung up on a really lengthy book. I also think sometimes lengthy books can put us in that mindset where we imagine ourselves again back in that perfectly cozy home library with our tea and our chair and just hours upon hours to read. And so it's almost they're daunting from the get-go.
[00:16:14] I think being in a season of life, I've got young kids, I'm busy, shorter books are really appealing to me right now because then I can read more.
ANNE: I'm realizing, as you're saying this, how many excellent histories I've read that are so long, that are too long for what you're looking for, I think.
LAURA: Yes, probably. Yeah, that's probably the case.
ANNE: Okay. So, readers, as you shout titles that are amazing at your car speakers, they're 800 pages. Your suggestion is awesome. It's 800 pages, we're not going to talk about it today. But I'm sure all the history nerds time out to say we say that word with great affection on What Should I Read Next?.
If you want to share your favorite 800-page books in comments on whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com, maybe when Laura is in a different season, she will rely on them. And all the others who hear what you're saying, Laura, like, yes, I want great histories and not just whatever Google serves me up, we'll be grateful for those suggestions.
[00:17:11] Okay, so we know what we're looking for today. With that in mind, you ready to talk about your books?
LAURA: Yeah, sure. Happy to.
ANNE: Laura, you know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one you don't, and what you've been reading lately, and we will see what we can do for your history request.
Laura, what's the first book you love?
LAURA: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.
ANNE: Oh, fellow Atlantan.
LAURA: Yes. I was going to say she's an Atlanta author. And this book is set mostly in Atlanta. I just love reading this. Not even reading, listening to this book. I know I've heard you before on the show mention this is particularly good in audio. And I would put this at the top of that list. The voice actors are phenomenal. It kind of goes back and forth telling the husband and wife's point of view throughout the story. And it is such a great listen. So highly recommend.
[00:18:07] This book really speaks to kind of that introspective, psychological journey of the self type thing that I enjoy. It's just insightful. There's so much here about human nature, social justice. You have the full range of emotions when you're reading this book or listening to it. From just anger, just deep anger, to sadness, to heartbreak, all the way to something kind of like hope. And it's just such a journey. And I really, really love it.
I'm interested too in like when life doesn't turn out the way you thought it would, what do you do? And where do you draw from? And how does inner strength look in those times? So it's fascinating. These characters are in a really impossible situation. And a lot of things change for them over the course of this story. I really just admired the characters in this book in many ways. It was a great read for me.
[00:19:15] ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. Something that I find always happens when I read Tayari Jones is I want to read more about Atlanta history. I remember reading some of her books going, "Is this real? Is this real?" when she'll reference specific Atlanta events or things that happen in certain neighborhoods. That could send you on a rabbit trail if you wanted.
LAURA: For sure. I think that's true for me too. I'm not a native Atlantan, I'm from a different part of the state. And interestingly, in my part of the state, I think at least growing up, I always felt like Atlanta was this kind of big, faraway place. We would go on field trips and everybody would just complain about the traffic. Driving in Atlanta was so terrible and all this stuff.
So I don't know that I always approached Atlanta before I moved here with that openness about like, I want to learn more about the city and the history of this place. I don't know that I've always had that. So that's something I am interested in.
[00:20:11] ANNE: Yeah. Well, you landed in a good place in your fiction for that, for sure. Laura, what's the second book you love?
LAURA: So I love, love, love The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a book... I was thinking about it and I think a case could be made that there are definitely elements of historical fiction in this book.
But it is set in 1956 and the main character, Stevens, is on this drive, kind of on a quest to reconnect with someone with whom he has worked. And on this journey, he, again, takes this deep journey into himself and kind of starts to realize that things in his life weren't always what they seemed at the time, and his relationships with other people, the choices he made, his values, his ideas about what was important. He just kind of starts to question some of those things. It's not so much that we hear the narrator doing that, it's the reader realizes that before the narrator does.
[00:21:16] I love the setting of this book, in England. I really think a lot about this idea of what's unsaid is so often as powerful or more powerful than what is said in our lives. And so that theme really resonated with me.
Interestingly, I read this book when I was preparing for comprehensive exams when I was in graduate school. So I was reading a ton of books, fiction after 1945. And it was such a long reading list. I was working my way through it. And this book just like stopped me in my tracks. I knew I have to spend a lot of time with this book. It kind of got me out of that mindset of, you know, I'm preparing for this other thing and just back into that mindset of a reader. So I think that's another reason that I love this book.
ANNE: Okay. Laura, what's the third book you love?
[00:22:11] LAURA: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The reason that I mention this one is because it's nonfiction. It's something else that's just got a lot of those qualities I like where it feels like a page turner. It is like a deep exploration of relationships. And again, things not being what we thought. They were finding out things that we thought we knew were completely different.
I love this idea of our parents' histories. Isn't that so fascinating thinking about your parents as people with these histories and backgrounds? We don't always even know all the ways that our parents have kind of shaped our lives and who we become. I also love this juxtaposition of kind of science and emotion and science and humanity, where those things meet. That's really, really interesting to me.
I love Deborah, Henrietta Lacks' daughter, when she's kind of examining her relationship. And she did not have a long relationship with her mother because her mother died. But she's thinking about what could have been. She's thinking about everything she knew, kind of just through this completely different lens by the end of this book. She has so many great quotes, I think Deborah does, that Rebecca Skloot captures. It's one I couldn't put down.
[00:23:41] I also read it during the pandemic. And I think it was interesting because we were thinking so much about the role of science then. And I'll just say that as I was thinking about this book and how I wanted to talk about it today, it also made me recognize that some of the same themes, I'm also interested in those themes in fiction. So I was thinking about Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, which is really one of my favorite books. I'm surprised I didn't put that down.
ANNE: We only gave you three.
LAURA: It's so hard to choose. But again, there is where science and humanity just kind of collide. And everything can't be understood through science, everything can't be understood through emotion and our experience of it. I love the complexities of this book. I like those themes in both fiction and nonfiction.
ANNE: Duly noted. Laura, now tell me about a book that wasn't right for you, and I'd love to hear why it wasn't a fit.
[00:24:40] LAURA: I kind of feel bad about this one, Anne. I think this is a timing issue, was Carl Hiaasen's Sick Puppy. It was the first book I've actually read of Carl Hiaasen's. My husband is a big fan of his work. And I know a lot of people who are.
In fact, I picked up this book because it was a book club pick by one of our book club members who is from Florida. And we have gone a few times to the Word of the South Literary Festival in Tallahassee. In fact, I met you there, Anne, when you were in conversation with Lauren Groff.
ANNE: I remember.
LAURA: And yes, our book club got to hang out with you for a little bit, which was so much fun. Really neat. But one of our members chose this book. This is not the time for me to read this book. It's satirical, but there's so much corruption and cruelty in this book. These are fictional characters, and Carl Hiaasen is mocking other aspects of human nature through these characters. But it just felt, for me, just very, very difficult.
[00:25:41] It also went on for a long time. So many characters, I don't know. It was just not a fit at the time I read it, but I suspect that I might have liked it at another time or might like some of his other work at a different time.
ANNE: Okay. But not for right now. Laura, what have you been reading lately?
LAURA: My audiobook is Sally Thorne's The Hating Game, which has been really fun to read or to listen to because it's really different from what I go for often. It's just kind of fun. I really like that in an audiobook. I don't like to get too, too heavy sometimes in my audiobooks, which the Tayari Jones book is heavy, but also just performed so well. It's great. But in general, I kind of keep my lighter reads for audio. I'm enjoying that one.
I'm also reading Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books. That was a book club selection by one of our members. I really, really loved, we all, our whole book club loves Kirsten Miller's The Change, which I recommend to everyone.
[00:26:53] This book doesn't feel right to me. I think there's a few things about it that are a little too on the nose. The characters aren't really resonating with me. I love the idea of this book, but my experience so far reading it, I'm not sure it's for me.
Then also I read The Bombshell by Darrow Farr. I recommend this to everybody. I couldn't stop talking about it this summer. I loved this book. It was so different than anything I had been reading. It was really original. It just felt like just this great, great story. I loved the ending of this book, and it was a surprise to me. And so if you need something unexpected, this book is it.
ANNE: I've had that on my shelf for ages, actually.
LAURA: Have you read it?
ANNE: Uh-uh. Mm-mm. I'm making notes.
[00:27:50] LAURA: I cannot wait. I hope you'll shoot me an email or something. I'd love to hear what you think of it, because it is so good.
ANNE: Duly noted.
LAURA: You're in for a treat. And then I'm reading also right now Kim Scott's book Radical Candor. The subtitle is Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. That theme of being fully human in all the spheres of our life is something that resonates with me in my professional and personal life, and even comes up in some of my other books that I liked.
This is good. I just started it, so I'm not too far into it. But there's some really interesting stuff so far. It's got me thinking a lot about the difference between empathy and compassion. It's got me thinking a lot about being more direct without feeling like that's a bad thing, which can be hard for Southern women, I think, to be direct. But it's a very good read. I think I'm going to really, really enjoy this book the more I get into it.
[00:28:57] ANNE: All right. I'm glad to hear that. I hope you recognize that as the laugh of recognition.
LAURA: Yes. Yes. As a Southern person yourself, you're probably familiar with that.
ANNE: All right. Now, I think we know what we're looking for today. We're looking for, well, you said a historical nonfiction, nonfiction accounts of history. You're especially interested in hinge points. I'm tempted to make stuff up. Little-known moments, or did you actually say that?
LAURA: Yeah. No, I did say that.
ANNE: Okay. And also stuff that's not going to show up on a list of the best history books, and that aren't being discussed, just like that aren't in the ether right now.
LAURA: Yes. Exactly.
ANNE: That you're not going to stumble upon and end up with your nose in this book would be great. I appreciated you just taking the time to think about what you really enjoy. In your submission you said you're especially interested in national parks, large cities, the formation of institutions, you cited Killers of the Flower Moon there, histories related to American education university, medical histories, histories of disease or how medical technologies were developed, the history of trade and trade routes, and histories of human writing and communication. That's such a fun assortment. I love that you know that about yourself.
[00:30:15] LAURA: Yeah, they all really appeal to me.
ANNE: I want to say, I have so many good books in my brain that are so long and we're not going there.
LAURA: Okay.
ANNE: But I wonder if we can start with The Ghost Map. Have you read this one?
LAURA: No. I like it already and I just heard the title.
ANNE: Okay, now I feel like this was more discussed closer to when it came out in 2006, but these days I don't think you're going to trip and fall upon this book, but I think it's up your alley. So the subtitle is The Story of London's Deadliest Epidemic and How It Changed the Way We Think About Disease, Cities, Science, and the Modern World.
Now Johnson's a journalist, he keeps writing books. He still keeps often focusing on science and also how technology operates and is applied in contemporary culture, whatever contemporary period he's writing about, because here he's looking at the 1854 cholera epidemic that swept through London.
[00:31:13] So at the time of the epidemic, London was booming, but they didn't have the infrastructure or the knowledge to address issues like clean drinking water, and also very connected to that, waste removal. So when the cholera outbreak happened in 1854, everyone was baffled by the disease, how fast it spread. There was a strong belief that it came from like bad smells.
So there was this doctor who now is like legendary in the field of epidemiology, as you can imagine. He took this really unorthodox back then approach to figuring out what was going on and what they could do about it. But in hindsight, we know that Snow was a genius and everything he posited was true and really transformed the way we think about disease, science more broadly, and what that means for our cities.
I got to say the way Johnson describes some of... I mean, we're talking about waste removal and what happens when... some descriptions can make you a little squeamish, understandably. So just be ready. If you're listening to audio, just be ready. How does that sound to you?
[00:32:27] LAURA: That sounds great. I think I would really, really enjoy that. And I love that it's exploring so many of the things that I mentioned that I'm interested in through this very specific event or moment in time, kind of in London's history. So I think I would really enjoy that one.
ANNE: All right. I'm glad to hear it. Laura, I want to respect what you know about yourself as a reader. I'm going to link something in Substack. So What Should I Read Next? Alum, my friend Ariel Lawhon, writes historical fiction. And she wrote something on her Substack recently that said like, "Hot take, historical fiction isn't a genre. It's a setting. Like what kind of story is unfolding in the historical setting." And I think it's definitely possibly true that a lot of historical fiction isn't for you.
And also, I just got to say to you and other readers, this would make an excellent companion to Elif Shafak's book, There Are Rivers in the Sky. Actually, she came on the podcast and talked about this. But one of her narrative threads is set in the time of cholera in London. And you see the characters wrestling with the impacts and talking about the noxious odors. And there would just be a really interesting pairing.
[00:33:40] Also, one of the threads in that book is contemporary, not historical. Maybe that could be a nice, gentle on-ramp. But it's also kind of long. I don't know what the page count is, but it's not like a tidy 300.
LAURA: Gotcha.
ANNE: But readers, The Ghost Map and There Are Rivers in the Sky, that would be a cool pairing.
Oh, what do we want to do next? I don't know, but I know I want to talk about this book that's a more unconventional history. This is called The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. How's that grabbing you?
LAURA: I love it.
ANNE: Okay. It's by Roland Allen. It just came out maybe 2024. It's a wide-ranging history organized around the idea of the notebook, like the office supply, the tool. But Allen takes his story way… Actually, I think he starts with a description of the booming success of, I want to say it's Moleskine, but it might be the Field Notes people.
[00:34:40] But he talks about how, okay, this company wanted to market a notebook. So how did they decide they were going to put it in front of people so they'd say, yes, that is the classic, always in style, indispensable tool I need to shell out my money for so your company can be a huge success, which it was.
But after that, he takes his story back to 13th-century Florence and starts talking about how the idea of a notebook kind of came together there, or at least that was documented because bookkeepers basically, first on parchment and then later on bound paper, started using this notebook to keep their business accounts. And pretty soon artists were using it and scientists and detectives and cooks and scientists. Did I already say scientists? You love science. We'll say it twice. Medical people, people of the church. And so those entries became… Well, that use also turned into the prevalence of commonplace books, ship's logs, cookbooks, botanical findings, travel logs. We know you like a travel memoir.
[00:35:52] So here he tells the stories about the notebooks used by Leonardo da Vinci and Frida Kahlo and Newton and Curie and Chaucer and James and Auden and Erasmus, just all these people and how they used this new tool or how they used this existing tool to shape their work. And what he really argues is notebooks weren't just something handy we use, they changed the way we think. And in doing so, that shaped what the modern world became. How does that sound?
LAURA: I love it. That sounds right up my alley.
ANNE: I mean, this is really like niche and nerdy for the right reader.
LAURA: Well, that is me. I am a niche and nerdy reader. And I think that just, you know, thinking about the way that the different technologies that we use to record our thoughts also shape our thoughts is very, very fascinating to me. I think I'll really enjoy that.
[00:36:47] ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. You mentioned, I think in your submission, that a narrative that reads like a novel would be welcome.
LAURA: Yes, for sure.
ANNE: Okay, I was leaping in, but we could go 20th century or we could go earlier, like presidential history. What do you think? In the U.S. Both involve the U.S.
LAURA: Can I do both, Anne?
ANNE: Okay, sure. So you have chosen or not chosen. I was wondering about Tunnel 29 by Helena Merriman. This is a truth-is-more-thrilling-than-fiction account of how 29 people escaped from East Berlin into the West by tunneling under the Berlin Wall in 1961–62.
So this is interesting and tense. They describe what it's like to live in both places, but especially East Germany. They talk about how the wall went up overnight, what that was like, why people did and didn't move between the places before the wall went up, namely because they didn't know that was going to happen.
[00:37:50] But some of the details in here, particularly surrounding the U.S. involvement and the diplomatic potential crisis were totally unknown to me and completely fascinating. Like much of this was not only filmed, but funded by NBC, like NBC News. I had no idea. This does capture a moment in time to unfold it in a specific place, but also what it meant for global diplomatic relations was equally fascinating to me. It's a quick read. The audio was quite short, maybe six-something hours. So I was surprised it was a full 300 pages because I thought it went quicker than that.
And then I was wondering about Candice Millard. You said, I believe, that you enjoyed Erik Larson, but his books are so stinking long.
LAURA: They really are.
ANNE: Okay. Have you read Candice Millard?
LAURA: No.
ANNE: Well, she writes in that vein at 300 pages.
LAURA: Okay.
[00:38:49] ANNE: So the first one I read by her that I would highly recommend because it's like, what in the world? How did I not know this? This is such a different story than I got in history class, is Destiny of the Republic. The subtitle is A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President.
Here she's talking about politics, medicine, and technology, and how they all impacted the story of James Garfield, who was the 20th president of the United States, but he was shot in office and died after serving only 200 days.
And the way they treated this man's wounds in the late 1800s, oh my, we were just starting to understand germs and antibiotics and keeping clean and the impacts that had. But he was ill for months while everyone's wondering like, "Is our president going to live or die?" And the snapshot of history this provides is so interesting because I had to memorize Garfield as my president, but I couldn't have told you any of this before reading this book.
[00:39:57] But it's fun to see who was contemporary to his presidency. Like Alexander Graham Bell pops by. He's trying to help. He's trying to invent a device to find the bullet that they can't get out of Garfield without injuring him further because they're doing everything they can to save the president. The madness comes from his assassin, and there's a lot here about what was happening day by day, but also what it meant and means for the United States.
But then you have this interest in the national parks. And this isn't direct by any means, but Candice Millard has also written a book focusing on Teddy Roosevelt. It's called The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey. And this is set after he lost his bid for reelection in 1912. He has already served as president and established something like five U.S. national parks.
[00:40:53] But I mean, I do remember from my history days that he was deeply interested in conservation and spent a lot of time in the great outdoors. That was very important to him. So I think reading this book about his journey that was both psychologically and physically challenging. You mentioned you like the psychologically taxing journeys.
LAURA: Yes.
ANNE: This one also sounds intense as he goes to Brazil with his son and a group of explorers. And he was known as a tough guy, but this trip to Brazil nearly killed him. So this is an adventure travel tale of what happened while they were gone, but you get this lens of what kind of man cared so deeply about things like conservation and the U.S. national parks.
I think either of those could be fun, and I wonder if Millard is a good fit for those who think they like the 900-page Doris Kearns Goodwin biographies, the 700-page Erik Larson, but want a more compact history experience.
[00:41:53] LAURA: Both of those sound great. It's going to be hard to choose.
ANNE: But it is time for tough choices. So we talked about The Ghost Map about the 1854 cholera epidemic in London by Steven Johnson. We talked about The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. We popped over to Germany with Tunnel 29 by Helena Merriman. And then Candice Millard, we talked about Destiny of the Republic about the Garfield assassination, and The River of Doubt about Teddy Roosevelt and his psychologically and physically taxing adventure. All right, Laura, what do you think? What might you pick up next?
LAURA: As you talked about each one, I thought, "Well, that's the one I'm going to say I'm going to read." So I plan to read them all, but I think I'm going to go to Germany and read Tunnel 29 first. I loved the way you described it as a thriller, an escape story, and I love suspense. So I think I would really, really enjoy that. And I think it's a book that my husband would also really enjoy. And so I think I'm going to pick it because then I can read it and hand it to him while I read one of the others that you've recommended. And then he could talk to me about it.
[00:43:10] ANNE: And then you get to talk about it.
LAURA: And I get to talk about it. So I think I will go with that one.
ANNE: Smart play. All right. Well, I'm excited to find out what you think. And I'm so grateful you brought your query to the podcast today. Thanks so much for talking books with me.
LAURA: Yeah. Thanks so much for the opportunity. I enjoyed it.
ANNE: Hey, readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Laura, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find the full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.
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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.
English (US) · 