EP53: Stars Abound with Britney! The Future! Tommy Orange!

Live from the Book Shop: John Updike's Ghost

For the first time recording in the ... afternoon ... Hannah and Sam are perhaps more lucid than normal and have a lot of books to chat about after a brief sidebar on Reddit posting (Sam's getting tooled on). First up is "The Future," from Naomi Alderman, which is an important novel that people really need to read, a commentary on where we are and where we're going that Sam highly recommends. Why are we still using social media, again? Next up is "Starling House," by Alix Harrow, a piece of "horror-light" that took Hannah a bit to warm up to. Then we hear about Sam's new project taking out new books from the library, which he has already violated by going back in time to read the first book in Christopher Paolini's "Fractalverse" series, "To Sleep in a Sea of Stars," which is VERY long and has lots of scenes with people eating in space, but Sam generally liked as impressive new science fiction. Hannah's reading a different kind of book with stars in the title, Tommy Orange's new "Wandering Stars," which is a highly anticipated follow up to "There There" (a novel, not short stories, as Sam believed). It's another must-read, if not an easy read, a multi-generational look at the Native American experience in the United States that makes a nice pair with Jesmyn Ward's new "Let Us Descend." This is how you grapple with the horrors of our history. Then we transition into "Lazy City," which Sam says is like a Gen Z "Bright Lights Big City," a look at the culture of people in Belfast, Ireland, in their 20s, with all the dating and partying you might imagine. It's bleak, but a great read for understanding "what's going on with the kids these days." Watch out, though, there are no quotation marks. But, wait, there's more! Hannah listened to Britney's memoir — read by Michelle Williams! It's amazing. But the people around Britney are despicable. And, finally, Sam sings the praises of "Of Boys and Men," an examination by Richard Reeves of why men are struggling in today's society, and why policymakers aren't doing anything about it.