The satisfaction of sinking into a good book

[00:00:00] JULIE BERRY: I am forcing these books on everybody who walks in the store because they're just so brilliant. And it's so much fun to have customers come back in and they're like squawking. They're like, "I had my doubts, but oh my gosh." And I'm like, "I know." So like-

ANNE BOGEL: Oh, that's the best.

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.

Readers, I was so excited to see today's guest submission in my inbox. Not only is Julie Berry a reader with a specific readerly conundrum, she is also a beloved author who's joined us over in the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club and whose work I've recommended several times on the show to readers here.

[00:01:55] You may recognize Julie Berry from her books like The Passion of Dolssa and Lovely War. But whether you're new to her work or you're already a fan, I think you'll love our conversation today as we dive into a discussion about writing and discovering smart books with big heart.

On that note, we explore the inspiration and perhaps unlikely-sounding path to publication for Julie's new book, If Looks Could Kill, due out September 16th. I loved it and couldn't wait to hear more about the story behind the story for this one.

Julie also owns an indie bookstore in her town, and today you'll hear about how this came to be and the unexpected path of Julie's becoming a bookstore owner. As an author and bookstore owner, Julie finds she's often on the hunt for books that, as she put it, shine through the clamor of blurbs and endorsements. With so many books and so much acclaim, how is a reader to find the books that they will actually love?

[00:02:49] Today, we get into it. And I'll share a handful of recommendations with Julie while also inviting her to tell us more about some of her favorites, plus what she's been writing lately. Let's get to it.

Julie, welcome to the show.

JULIE: Thank you, Anne. I'm thrilled to be here.

ANNE: Oh my gosh, it's a pleasure. We got to speak about Lovely War in Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club, I believe pre-pandemic, and that was such a delightful conversation. It's wonderful to reconnect.

JULIE: I remember. It was.

ANNE: Julie, could you start by telling us a little about yourself? We want to give our listeners a glimpse of who you are.

JULIE: Well, I am probably best known as an author of books for young readers. I have books for, you know, little children picture books, middle grade novels, and my teen novels tend to be both crossover read by teens and adults. So I'm probably best known for Lovely War, The Passion of Dolssa, All the Truth That's In Me, and my newest book to come out in September is If Looks Could Kill.

[00:03:51] I'm also fairly recently, as in about four, four and a half years ago, I am an independent bookstore owner. So this has been a new journey for me, my COVID project.

And then just the rest of my life, I'm a mom to four boys who are now in their 20s and more or less grown and gone. I can't believe that. In my mind, they're still my four little boys at home, but time does move. You know, I'm a kind of a country gal. I live in the small town where I was born and raised, which I never saw that coming. But again, COVID project, we moved to my hometown and bought the bookstore. I love to garden, sew, quilt, cook, sing, go to shows. I'm just kind of an ordinary gal.

ANNE: Thanks for painting that picture. I did not realize that we were members together in the four-parent club. I'm delighted to find that out.

[00:04:45] You mentioned the bookstore, and something that we've learned is our readers always have all the questions about this. I'm so curious to hear how that happened.

JULIE: Sure. Well, I think like a lot of people who love books, I had a sort of romantic notion of what it would be like to own a bookstore. And I'll just put it out there and say it's not like that. But it's better in many ways. It's harder. It's more work. It's better.

But as an author, I was very aware of how much I owed my career to independent booksellers, how much their support for my early works, their championing of me, they're inviting me in to do events, they're getting me into schools had really put me on the map.

And so I'd always understood the importance that they were to me. And I'd always really tried to cultivate relationships with them kind of. I mean, for years, I've had a Google alert, you know, just any new stories about independent bookstores show up in my inbox each morning.

[00:05:43] So I'd always just sort of watched this world and thought, "I wonder if I could run one myself successfully. I wonder if I could do that." But that was really, you know, on the shelf of misty, maybe ideas, not anything like a life plan.

And then we were living in Los Angeles prior to and during the start of the COVID pandemic. In fact, we were living there when I spoke to you about Lovely War, and the bookstore in my little hometown of Medina, New York, came on the market.

We just sort of looked at each other and said, "What the heck?" You know, all the things that we'd gone to Los Angeles for had kind of been put on pause due to the pandemic and our kids were sort of languishing in online at-home school, virtual everything. And so you know, some people redid their patio or their bathroom, we redid a bookstore.

So we put in an offer, it took several months. We kind of thought, "Well, it's not going to happen," and then out of nowhere, they accepted the offer. And then Phil and I looked at... my husband is Phil. Phil and I looked at each other and said, "Oh boy, this just got real. Are we going to do this?"

[00:06:49] And we took some long walks and had some long talks. And within about 36 hours, we were packed and loaded in our minivan and driving across the country in the first Thanksgiving COVID spike of 2020.

And so we moved across the country, found a little place to rent, eventually bought a place here, but we bought the bookstore and renovated it and reopened and recreated it as Author's Note. So what was kind of a lifelong dream, but really more just like a lifelong, I don't know, pet idea has now become my reality. And it's wild. And I could talk for an hour about that. So I'll really try not to do that, but-

ANNE: That would be fun. Something I learned on book... I mean, I'm a reader. I love books. We bend miles and miles out of our way when we're road tripping to visit new stores and a planned, you know, new or new-to-us and a planned whole trips around going to see bookstores I've heard great things about.

[00:07:45] But especially going on book tour, when you go to a different bookstore every single day and the contrast I think is a little starker, it was made so clear to me how every bookstore has its own personality. And what I'd really like to know is, what's the personality of Author's Note?

JULIE: Ah, yes. Oh, I love that. The thing that was so important to me about Author's Note was that it would be a welcoming space and that it would be everyone's bookstore. Part of that included, you know, ripping down the drop ceilings and the walls and all the little rooms that were in this long, narrow space that it is our store and opening it up, filling it with light, drawing the eye inward, returning to the natural wood colors of the original floor and the molded tin of the original, antique historic ceiling of the building. But filling it with color, building more shelves, putting in more displays, bringing in more merchandise so that it really just feels I think like a candy store for the mind.

[00:08:46] ANNE: Oh my gosh. I love that description.

JULIE: It's so cute. I got to say it is so cute. Our Instagram is Author's Note bookstore, and Olivia, our bookseller, takes fabulous pictures and, you know, the store is just always decorated really charmingly. It's a dream come true. It is so adorable. So the personality is welcoming and inclusive and always something going on.

What has really surprised me has been the way that people have responded, the way that people come to our events and our book clubs, or even just come in the door and whether that's, you know, elderly people, or recently there was a four-year-old who walked in with her mom and the door shut and she said, "Oh, it's so good to be back." I love that so much.

ANNE: From right out of my mouth...

JULIE: But that's how people feel. We've really tried to create community with the bookstore. And these book clubs and groups and events that we host I think really do create that sense of belonging and community.

[00:09:46] And that just means the world to me. I just wanted a bookstore, and I'm so honored to feel like it can be more than that. It can actually be a kind of home for people. So that's a thrill.

ANNE: All right. Not asking for a laundry list because that really would be an all-day conversation. But what are some of the things that you do around the store?

JULIE: My main functions at the store surround events and outreach to schools, to the press, and to the media. So I would say marketing, publicity, events, and then just sort of general management. Like I do have to make sure payroll happens.

ANNE: That is what an owner does.

JULIE: Right. Those little mundane financial matters. But I really kind of... I'm the spokesperson and figurehead and I manage a wonderful team that includes a buyer and an associate buyer and some part-time staff as well.

[00:10:42] Part of the fantasy of owning a bookstore was that I would be pouring over catalogs, picking out books, and picking out cute teddy bears. And I realized immediately that that is a whole skill set unto itself in a very time-consuming position.

My cousin, who I'd brought in early on, our first hire, who had previously owned a bookstore, had experience as a buyer. And so I immediately found that I just needed to turn it over to her because to know how to fill a store with an abundant variety of new content, plus the classics across all the genres that people want to read about it's an enormous skill. And I didn't have it.

I quickly realized that I could probably learn it, but why when I had somebody so brilliant at it and probably the best thing I could do for the store is outreach, marketing, publicity, and then writing more Julie Berry books? Because we do sell a bunch of those.

[00:11:41] ANNE: I should hope so. Julie, you mentioned that independent bookstores have been such champions of your work and the reason that your work have gotten so many readers' hands. And I'm one of those readers. And I'm realizing now, when I recall how I found Lovely War or how Lovely War found me, how it was pressed into my hands in the best way. It was at an independent bookstore. I was at Roxanne Cody's store, R.J. Julia in Madison, Connecticut. Oh, gosh. The timing was tragic. It was like March 5th, 2020 because I had a book come out on March 3rd. Also, tragic timing.

JULIE: I'm sorry.

ANNE: It is what it is, what it was. I was in the store I think the morning before the event, just saying hi, talking to people, checking things out. I was so excited to check out a new bookstore I had heard wonderful things about and I talked to Roxanne for the podcast. And was just chit-chatting with one of the children's focused booksellers and said like, "What's good? What have you enjoyed lately?" And she said, "Oh my gosh, everyone is loving this book. It's a YA publisher, but it's like flying out the door to readers 14 to like 84. This is what it's about."

[00:12:53] And I was like, "That's not what I usually read, but I'm intrigued." And took it home with me and I'm so glad. I'm so glad I did. So we definitely had a pandemic conversation because I went to New York the next day, flew home, and didn't go anywhere for many, many moons.

JULIE: So you're right. I think it was pandemic, but I hadn't yet moved because I think it was November of that year that I moved back east. And I'm pretty sure we spoke when I was still in LA. Not that that matters.

ANNE: This is verifiable information. What I'm really remembering is just getting to talk to you about making such an unusual work on my Zoom screen with our readers. Can we talk about that? Can we talk about the kind of books that you write?

JULIE: Sure. Absolutely.

[00:13:42] ANNE: How do you... okay, so if we... I'm creating some theoretical cocktail party in my mind. We don't need to do that because we are on a literary podcast. Julie, how do you think about the kind of books you write? Or is that even the right question?

JULIE: That's a great question. Early on in my career, and I got my start... my first book came out in 2009, and it was a middle-grade fairy tale fantasy. I published one of those and then I published another. And I quickly realized I get bored easily. I get restless. I get antsy. And I never wanted to be an author who just kind of popped out the same formula or the same recipe of book every 18 months.

I've often had the experience of encountering an author for the first time that I love. And so I kind of binge on them. I read one, two, three, four of their books. And by book four, I'm like, "Okay, I've got your number. I see your patterns. I see your character types. I see your plot twists."

[00:14:43] And you know, the luster dims just a smidge when you recognize that, okay, you know, this is what you do. So I never wanted to be that.

I always wanted to surprise myself and to challenge myself in new ways, and to surprise my readers. I have a sort of horror of becoming stale and tired in one type of book. That said, I've been doing this long enough that, of course, I have at least a set of types of books. There are things I don't do and there are things that I do do.

So if we're talking about my YA novels, which again, usually are crossover 14 to 84, I love that, they tend to have a historical component of at least some degree and they usually involve a love story of some kind. They involve what I hope is a strong female protagonist who kind of has to navigate a world that involves complicated peer friendships, complicated romance, and a very complicated confrontation with the world around her and her rising into her powers as an agent, as an autonomous being, as a creative and courageous person in a world that typically doesn't really reward girls for that.

[00:16:06] I tend to find myself hearkening to the past, all different kinds of pasts, because I think it makes it a little clearer to look backward to confront different types of prejudice or sexism or bigotry in the world. I think it's a little bit easier for us to look backward and say, okay, that's what was going on.

So that is something that... I guess those would be, you know, broad strokes, some parameters, some bounding boxes for the types of books I write, at least for, you know, readers who are teenaging up. But I really try to mix it up each time.

My first YA was All the Truth That's In Me. And it's set in a deliberately ambiguous setting that feels like early colonial America, but I never pin it down to, you know, this place in Virginia or this year 1687 or whatever. I really wanted the background to be more impressionistic so that the focus could be on the character and less on, you know, Britain and its blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:12] A lot of people loved that. But there were some critics who were like, "I never knew when it happened and that bothered me." And like, "The setting was unclear." My husband teases me that my next book is always a reaction to the critics. Because he says that, you know, "Julie Berry heard that and said, 'You want setting? I'll give you setting.'"

And so I wrote The Passion of Dolssa, which is like deeply researched 13th century Southern Provence, you know, like setting coming out your ears and, you know, footnotes and bibliographies and all kinds of language resources. So, that was delightful too.

That was a story that dealt in mysticism, religious mysticism with a medieval Catholic mystic young woman who believed that she saw Jesus. And that put a mark on her head in an age of inquisitorial investigations into heresy, and when girls certainly were not supposed to claim religious authority.

So, that was that book. That won a Prince Honor from the American Library Association. So, that was a real delight and a real thrill.

[00:18:14] But my editor said, "You know, I just wish that he'd write a book that was a little more romantic." Now, there was a love story in it, but she's like, "I just would really like something a little more romantic." And so I was like, "Fine." So, here comes Lovely War, which is two kind of like luscious love stories set during World War I as told by Aphrodite, the goddess of love. So, like, what more do you want from me? So, I wrote that one.

Obviously, the response to that was really positive. I wanted to stay for my newest book, If Looks Could Kill, which is Medusa versus Jack the Ripper, of all things. You know, I wanted a foot in Greek mythology still, but I wanted to move away from the gods. And so, I thought I would focus on the monsters. And so, that's how Medusa entered the picture. And then, you know, we can talk more whenever you want about how Jack the Ripper entered the picture. That's a whole separate thing.

[00:19:09] But I want to keep it interesting. I want to challenge myself with regard to point of view. And I know we're going to be talking later about like books that I like and what I respond to as a reader. And as I've been thinking about this conversation, I've realized how much of that has to do with point of view and how much of my reading and writing life has to do with embracing and grappling with and exploring and pushing the boundaries of what narrative fiction can accomplish with novel, interesting, unusual, fresh takes on point of view. So, I just spoiled my... you know, that's my thesis, is that point of view is what fascinates me as a reader and as a writer.

ANNE: Well, that's the headline.

JULIE: Oh, gosh. Ooh.

ANNE: I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Well, I want to go back to Lovely War just for a second.

JULIE: Sure.

[00:20:00] ANNE: You mentioned that the goddess of love is, you know, looking down telling this story. And when the bookseller told me, "Look, this book begins with Aphrodite and Ares walking into this swanky Manhattan hotel during World War I and there's a challenge between the gods. and then, you know, we zip over to 1917 Britain during the war," I was like, "I'm sorry, what?" But it worked. And it really worked for me. And I loved it so much.

I really enjoy the experience of reading something wholly unexpected that I never would have known to even hope for, definitely not to seek out, that I wouldn't have known that like somebody could come up with out of their brain and sink into the story and really enjoy this thing that I didn't even know I wanted to read. Love that experience.

That was the lens I was bringing to your new book when I found out, this is... what? This is Medusa and Jack the Ripper together in 1888, the Bowery. I mean, okay, Julie, let's go. Let's see when it's up.

[00:21:03] So, this book is not out yet when we're speaking, but I just got to finish my early copy. And yes, I want to hear everything. So, you clearly liked writing about the Greek gods if you were happy to do it again. And yet you hinted at wanting perhaps to know how Jack the Ripper entered the story. Yes, please. I'd love to hear about that too.

JULIE: Sure thing. Well, it was hard to know how to follow Lovely War. The experience of writing from the gods' perspectives, and it's chiefly Aphrodite, but Ares is the god of war, Apollo is the god of art and music, and Hades is lord of the underworld, all have their turn as well, telling the story.

There was something, I mean, not to be goofy, but I mean, there was really just something so sublime and so divine about inhabiting those perspectives and narrating human experience through a lens of something that both understands humanity and is removed from it, but removed in an invested and fundamentally caring way.

[00:22:06] Even Ares surprised me in how I felt that, you know, if there was a god of war, he would care about soldiers. He would care about the concerns and the pains and the longings of soldiers, and that Hades is lord of the underworld would care about the concerns of dying souls.

There was just something so filling, so replenishing for me to write that story and to write in that way. And I loved it so much. And I was so gratified by the result. It was the kind of experience where you don't even quite know how to say 'I wrote this'. To be clear, I wrote it. Nothing but me, no AI, no anything, you know? I did write it.

ANNE: It was not the big machine.

JULIE: Right, right.

ANNE: But there was a sort of gift to it. There was this sort of feeling of flow in which it felt more received than created in some ways. And I'm always in awe of that miracle and that magic that happens. I just feel so lucky to get to be a practitioner in that field where such gifts are possible. But it left me wondering, where do I go next?

[00:23:14] I actually wrote a whole novel in between that I have not yet published, and it needs some issues. But I think that that's a little symptomatic of how bereft I was to kind of leave those gods behind. Some people said, "You know, write another one. Write a World War II book, like, you know, Battle in the Pacific and Poseidon."

And I thought about it, but again, I don't want to be derivative of myself. I don't want to get in a groove. I don't want to get still. I don't want to... I don't want writing to ever be easy, because in that challenge is where I make new discoveries and where I find new energy. And so I did not do that.

So I spent a long time, and of course, part of the reason why it took me so long is I did buy a bookstore in the middle of all this and renovate it. And so that did kind of slow me down. So I'm a little late in bringing this book into the world. But like I said, I wrote another, set it aside. I love it, but it needs something. Got to figure out what.

[00:24:14] I just started thinking again about mythology, about the Greek tradition. I did get to go to Greece last year, which was really, really cool, and kind of seek out, you know, my Medusas. But part of how I got there was I felt like if I'm not going to follow the gods, I've got to look at the monsters. And of course, they are fascinating in their own right. And I read a book, it was a collection of sort of explorations of the female Greek monster types. I was kind of shopping for one that stood out to me, and you know, no surprise, Medusa was the winner.

Medusa had the most to say to me, as I think, you know, she has the most to say to many women. I mean, you're probably not going to... like the Hydra's female too, but like, what was there to say? I wasn't feeling the Hydra calling to me. Or the Sphinx. You know, maybe I should do the Sphinx in the future. But anyway, Medusa-

ANNE: Right. But you could only put one in your cart, so.

[00:25:09] JULIE: Exactly. So, Medusa really won that audition. So then I started writing all these Medusa bits, and going back to her origin story, and you know, discovered in the temple and Athena, you know, and it affects this change in her.

So, I wrote a whole bunch of stuff, and I thought, "Hey, this is good stuff." And I met with my editor when it was finally safe to meet with humans again, and we took this long walk together around Seattle where she lives. And I'd given it all to her to read, and I was kind of waiting for her to say like, "This is great. Keep going." And what she said was, "I love how you're exploring the story, but I don't think you've found it yet." I was like, "Shoot." So, okay, back to the drawing board.

And as it happens, a writer friend, a dear friend of mine is Nancy Werlin, who is herself a best-selling, award-winning author of teen fiction, and she said, "What if you set your Medusa story in a different time period." And I said, "Okay, talk to me."

[00:26:08] And she said, "What about like the Victorian era? You've written other Victorian projects. You kind of like that." And I thought, "Huh." And immediately that sort of smoky, gaslight, misty streets of London vibe, and I could just picture a Medusa in a Victorian dress with those puffy sleeves, you know? And I thought, "Okay, okay, I'm liking this."

And then I decided, and it's funny, you know, it's still kind of pandemic, hard to travel, I've started a bookstore, I thought, "Maybe instead of London, I'm going to do New York City. It can still have the Victorian vibe, but we'll call it the Gilded Age." So then I'm like, "All right, Medusa, Gilded Age, Manhattan, that's what I've got." So I started sort of exploring that idea.

[00:26:53] And as I worked further on it, and I just kind of wrote in experimental ways, and tried to research New York, and the particular area of New York that I'd settled on was the Bowery, the Lower East Side, and I realized that if I... I mean, part of why I wanted Medusa in the story, I really wasn't as interested in notions of beauty or ugliness. I was interested in Medusa as a sort of avatar of violence against women. She was sort of conceived in violence. She was executed in violence.

And I wanted some feminist revenge. I kind of wanted an angry Medusa who flexed her power and dealt some justice back to the bad guys, back to the men who are violent towards women. But that confronted me with a real moral problem, because I actually don't believe in a world where we just exterminate the bad guys. I don't believe in a world where everyone who's done something wrong, even something very seriously wrong, should be exterminated. That doesn't jive with how I think we ought to be as people.

[00:28:01] But I still wanted my feminist revenge Medusa. And so I thought, "All right, I need to figure out, I need a villain worthy of Medusa's wrath. I need someone for whom this makes sense."

So I'm reading this book about the Bowery, and I came upon this section of like famous and notable personalities that had lived there. It was like, you know, Leon Trotsky spent time in the Bowery, and Irving Berlin and Harry Houdini got their start there, Lady Gaga, the Ramones. Like lots of entertainers got their start in the sort of bars in the Bowery. And oh, by the way, passing mention, Jack the Ripper may have spent time there.

I was driving home from the grocery store listening to this audiobook, and I like pulled over like, "What? What?" I like to say I came by it honestly because it must sound like Medusa versus Jack the Ripper was like some spin the random story idea generator wheel, right, and just try to be weird. And it's not. I came by it honestly.

[00:29:01] I had chosen the Lower East Side, Manhattan, late 1800s, and boom, there was Jack the Ripper when I needed him. Or at any rate, there was a credible suspect in the Jack the Ripper investigations.

And as it turned out... now my little bookstore is in western New York State, kind of halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, a town where I was born and raised, and this particular suspect is from Rochester, New York, so he's our hometown Jack the Ripper of all things. And I just thought, "Oh my gosh, this is incredible. I've got to use this guy."

But I found that at that point in time, the resources on the internet about him were very sparse, very conflicting, very confusing, and I wasn't going to have much to go on. So pause that thought for a minute.

My husband Phil, among his many talents, is a swing dancer and swing dance instructor. So one night we were at a party of swing dance folks, I think it was like around the holidays or something. And one thing to know about me is that if you ask me what I'm writing next, what my next book is, I will never describe it in detail until it's like two-thirds of the way there.

[00:30:10] Because when it's new, when I'm figuring it out, I think of it as such a fragile little seedling that I just don't want to air it for public opinion until I'm much more locked in on what I'm doing. So Phil knows this about me: I never answer that question.

And so we're at this party and someone's like, "Oh, hey, Julie, you're a writer. What are you writing now?" And my brain said, "We do not answer that question." And my mouth said, "I'm writing a book about Medusa versus Jack the Ripper." And Phil looked at me like, "What the heck just happened?" And I kind of thought, "What the heck just happened?" And Phil's dance partner said, "Oh, my high school teacher has devoted his life to researching that Rochester Ripper suspect guy. What's his name? Anyway, he's written several books about him. I should introduce you to him."

So I consider that like a miracle, right? Like a little divine like "answer the question, Julie." Because I ordinarily never would have. And then I never would have found Michael Hawley, this scholar who has researched Francis Tumbledy, that's the suspect's name, Francis Tumbledy's every move, written books and articles about him. He's kind of the world expert in the Ripperology community — and I'm not making that word up — about this particular suspect.

[00:31:28] So, of course, I don't know if he's the Ripper, but for my book, he is. And I just loved this. And I always find there these resonances, right, that I couldn't have foreseen.

Again, Medusa versus Jack the Ripper sounds at first like a wacky mashup, but you put them together and you've got lots of opportunities to explore a culture and a climate that looks the other way, where violence toward women is concerned.

And so I think that the feminist revenge I was looking for came out both in the fact that I do have a pretty tough Medusa slinking through the streets of Manhattan, but also in that I got to tell this story that sort of shines a strobe light on a widespread industry of human trafficking that we all sort of look the other way about when we think about, you know, the roaring 90s and 1880s and all the colorful vice in the saloons and the jazz pianos of the era, it was fueled by teenage prostitution.

[00:32:37] And not to be a total buzzkill or anything, but bringing these two together allowed me to really kind of channel some anger that I feel toward how we look the other way. And of course, Medusa has everything to do with what we look at and what we don't. So, to me, it fit perfectly. And like I said, I came by it honestly.

ANNE: That's not the origin story I was expecting. Actually, you know what? I had no expectations. I had no idea how. But that's fascinating to hear. Julie, when you are putting the pieces together here, how do you know that it works?

JULIE: That's always the question. You know, I've written enough books now that... how shall I say? I'm a pretty competent practitioner of writing fictional prose, meaning I can write a beginning that's not the right one, but it looks maybe it could be, like it's pretty okay, it's kind of good. There's a character, she has a personality, she has a motivation, she has a problem, blah, blah, blah. So it's easy to be misled into thinking that maybe I've found the one when I haven't.

[00:33:52] And what I've learned, and I kind of got this from my dear friend Chris Tebbetts, who's a wonderful writer and teacher of writing, especially for young people. And he says that you know it's right when it becomes generative, when it starts to beget its own next paragraph, when there's something propulsive about it.

I remember when I was writing Lovely War, before I came upon the idea of writing from the gods' perspectives, I wanted to tell a love story set during World War I. I tried all these beginnings. There was one where like a hospital and a nurse and a ghost of a dead soldier was involved, and even for that one, my husband was like, "Um, maybe not." He's my biggest fan.

But when I hit upon the idea of the Gods, I couldn't wait to get back to my writing each day. Whereas prior to that, it had felt a little bit like work. And as soon as I'd found Aphrodite and Ares and Hephaestus in that Manhattan hotel room, it was like... this was when my kids were younger then, and every day I'd be like, "I can't wait to get David to bed so that I can get back to writing." I just couldn't. That generative quality, that eagerness, that excitement, that feeling of fascination.

[00:35:14] And I think it really is so similar. To me... I've become more and more convinced that reading is writing and writing is reading. Meaning readers love to read because they love how immersed they feel in a world. They love that undertow that just pulls them into a different feeling, a different mood, different colors, different aura, different vibe, different flow, different energy.

That experience of being sucked into a book is what you look for as a reader, and it's what I look for as a writer. And when I start to feel it, then I know I'm getting somewhere.

And so that kind of hooks me in with enough belief and commitment to press forward, much as I think it does for a reader. I'm sure you've had the experience of... you might start a book and you might be like, "Huh, what?" But there's still something propulsive that hooks you in. Or there isn't.

[00:36:11] But if there is, you're probably more likely to bear with it longer and give it more of a chance to tell you what it is going to be. Am I making that up? Does that resonate for you?

ANNE: Oh, yes. I definitely know the feeling of wanting to get back to my book because I want to see what happens next. And not just in that plotty, like, I have to know what happens and then I'll be satisfied, but I want to reenter that world and be with those characters again.

JULIE: Absolutely.

ANNE: I'd love to talk about that more. My brain is testing out theories about how, yes, I know that feeling. And also, I think some of the best books I've ever read, I never wanted to pick up, but I was always happy I did, I think those were more challenging, perhaps, working out a theory on the fly. I'm thinking specifically of The Brothers K. Love the book. Wonderful book. Never wanted to be reading it until I was.

[00:37:08] But I'm hearing you talk about how you know a book works. And in that context, I'm really curious about what you said earlier about trying to stretch the maybe expectations of what narrative fiction can accomplish. Can you say more about that?

JULIE: Yes. Well, and I will give you a recommendation. Some years ago, I came upon the book

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley.

ANNE: I've seen this. I think I checked this out from the library. I have not read it yet. Okay.

JULIE: It's so good. I checked it out from the library and then immediately bought a copy. And then I think I've probably bought like a dozen since and gifted them to people and given them away at workshops. I had this whole lecture that I gave on it at my graduate program some years ago. Jane is brilliant.

Fun fact. Jane is the first author I ever laid eyes on, ever met in person. Grew up in a small town. You know, author visits didn't happen back then.

[00:38:08] The first author I ever met was at my undergraduate college. I'd won a little essay contest and they brought an author in to hand out the prizes. And so Jane Smiley shook my hand, and I was like, "Wow, that's an author, huh?"

Anyway, she wrote this book, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. And what had happened was, it's been a while, so I'm probably going to get the details a little off, but she'd written a novel and it was good, but somehow not good enough. And she closed her laptop and said, "I'm not going to write again until I have read 100 novels." And so she did.

And she went back to pre-Don Quixote. She went back to the earliest narrative manuscripts that still survive, that our world cultures have produced, that could even remotely be considered a novel. And she kind of read through a sort of historical survey of novels.

[00:39:06] And then she wrote these 13 essays about what she'd learned about what a novel is by traversing this historical journey through the form, through its inception and evolution. And they just blew my mind. I mean, just the insights upon insights were food for my soul. I love literary critical theory. I love literary criticism. I love to learn what our smartest minds are producing with regard to a unified theory or something approaching it about what the novel actually is.

I spent some time at Simmons University as part of my grad school journey and the rigorous critical foundation that I gained there has left me a lover of critical theory. So, one of the things that she really emphasized in one of her essays is that narrative fiction is an exercise in point of view and that point of view is the chief pleasure of fiction.

[00:40:08] And that point of view is actually what makes fiction so wholesome. And I know that's a weird word, sounds like, you know, whole grain bread. But the experience of occupying someone else's point of view as the world kind of first discovered when, you know, Don Quixote and works like it appeared on the scene was that there's this tremendous cathartic release and delight and enjoyment and laughter and even healing and stress reduction that came from occupying the eyes, ears, soul perspective of someone else.

And that as a further bonus, occupying that point of view brought an immediate and dramatic increase in your empathy, your capacity to view others as people. So she does a much better job than I'm doing. I wish I'd read that essay before our call. But I strongly recommend anyone interested in exploring this more checking out Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley and reading her essay on point of view.

[00:41:13] It has shaped, I think, my subsequent career: Passion of Dolssa, Lovely War. Even my middle grades are all cases of me trying to explore what's possible. And the nuances of point of view go so far beyond what we typically think of as first person, second person, third person, you know, limited, close, whatever. There's so much more to it, right?

We can explore points of view with regard to mental health. We can explore points of view with regard to circumstance, like for example, Room by Emma Donoghue, right? Like from the perspective of a child trapped in a room, you know, whose mother is a prisoner.

We can explore points of view from, shall we say, a moral perspective. Like as I did with If Looks Could Kill, can I write from the point of view of someone who feels justified in serially butchering poor women on the streets of London? That was fun. You know?

[00:42:13] So we can explore points of view with mental ability, cognitive ability, you know, to tell a story from the point of view of someone with, let's say, a developmental or cognitive impairment, and on and on and on. Can we tell stories from multiple points of view, collective points of view, alien points of view?

The book I'm reading right now, which I'm loving, is Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and the point of view character is a robot. Now, that's not something that we've never seen before, but I've never seen it done this well. So, you know, can we tell something from the point of view of God, which I tried in Lovely War? Can we tell something from point of view of the planet, a rock, a rabbit, you know, on and on.

So, to me, the frontiers that fiction offers in exploring heretofore untapped richness and combination in the specificities of point of view is why I hope that I can write till I die, because there's just so much to do.

[00:43:14] ANNE: Julie, that's fascinating to hear about what makes a novel work. And I'm so curious about, does this mean there's 12 other ways? I'm definitely going to have to read Jane Smiley.

What I'm thinking of is the satisfaction of sinking into a good book, which, you know, my idea of that might not be the same as wherever you are, listening readers, but that's such a great feeling.

And something that you mentioned in your submission is that you're finding the book hype, I think was your phrase, a little challenging these days. Just sifting through the clamor of marketing and publicity and not being quite sure where wrecks are coming from to find books that you're really going to love.

Now, I'm putting words in your mouth, but what I will know is the experience of reading enthusiastic recommendations, whether they are designed to be sales, not a bad thing, but serving a certain purpose, or readers whose taste I don't know that much about. I don't know if we read the same and trying to decide, is this book for me?

[00:44:21] And I know that something complicating this for me is I love the feeling of finding like a hidden gem that not everyone is talking about, and that I might not be able to get like reliable, advanced information on. And there's a real tension there.

And we hear that a lot of our listeners struggle with this. I think it can be really reassuring to hear that this is a human problem, not just a 'I don't know enough' problem. But you're a bookstore owner, you're an author, this is a problem you have. Would you speak to this?

JULIE: Sure thing. Well, I'm going to begin by saying that I've had, for years, a sense of imposter syndrome with regard to my sort of chops as a reader. I came to writing from a background of almost exclusively reading books for kids and for teens, and hardly ever reading any adult fiction at all. And that was okay, because I was writing for kids, and I got a master's degree in writing for kids. So you know, it was kind of okay.

But then as I continue to publish books as an author, I have many, many friends, author friends on social media, and I swear they read a book a minute, and I was just updating their, you know, their feed, their Goodreads, their whatever. And I think, how do you do that?

[00:45:38] I think I'm a fairly quick reader, or at least I used to think of myself as one. I don't know, I think I might be a slower reader now. I think I kind of want to read more deeply. And so then I bought a bookstore and still, I mostly only read books for young people. So, you know, people are coming to me looking for recommendations, I'm like, "Um, um, Erica, tell me what to tell them." So I've had to kind of climb out of that.

The things that I tend to read are the book I'm writing, which is its own kind of reading journey. But second, like research books for the book I'm writing, which are fascinating, but you know, a very rarefied, you know, are you interested in learning about, oh, shall we say the munitions varieties that existed in World War One? Probably not.

[00:46:25] So we added these book clubs at the bookstore. And I took over the role of leading a book club that is mostly just modern fiction. A lot of it could be called women's fiction, but it's not a women-only book club. And then when we added one that we call Other Worlds that's fantasy and science fiction for adults.

So it became my task to read at least two new novels a month, new to paperback, which is our approach for the bookstore, and lead a discussion on them. So this has really been an eye-opener for me to read more current and contemporary adult works, specifically works that I wouldn't have otherwise read.

Now, we're a small enough bookstore that we don't have, you know, a staff of 20. So we have somebody who can like read all of the books that we're contemplating as book club selections in advance and really make those handpicked recommendations. We have to rely on reviews, awards, stars, things like that to kind of steer us in the direction of what's good.

[00:47:23] And what we keep finding is like, we'll read the book and we'll say, "This was terrible. And it got these glowing reviews from these luminaries in the field, from big-name authors. And it got shortlisted for all these illustrious prizes. What's going on here?" And I don't know. I mean, I can't answer. I can't speak for that. I think there is a little bit of backscratching that goes on in the way that blurbs get traded around. But it's left us sometimes really feeling dismayed.

Now, what we've learned is we can have a great book club experience in discussion, whether people liked the book or not. In fact, sometimes we have more fun if we didn't like the book, but I still want to be giving my customers a great reading experience each month. And I say customers, but really in this book club, they're my friends. Like we've really become... we're bonded.

So I want to be feeding them at least three quarters, great reads. And I'm super excited because this month's Other World's pick is service model that I mentioned before with the robot perspective and oh, it's just brilliant. So I'm really looking forward to that.

[00:48:28] But lacking the bandwidth to read everything that's coming out and make a curated choice 24 times a year really want to be able to know where to look for those winners. And of course, I get it that one person's winner is another person's dud. There's subjectivity. I understand all that.

You mentioned that experience of like opening a book and immediately knowing you found something special. I have lectured in the past on a thesis that is that voice is a writer's confidence manifested on the page.

And I really believe that when you open a book and you know within two pages that this is going to be good, it's because you are in the hands of someone who's confident in their ability to take you on this journey. They're confident in where they're going. They're confident in their use of language. They're confident in their use of story elements.

[00:49:31] I know that might seem a little amorphous, but that's the best way I have to describe that difference. You just know you're in smart hands, you know you're in the hands of somebody who has a plan and who trusts their instincts and whose instincts are trustworthy.

And I feel that like, for example, in this book, Service Model, and I felt it in The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard. And I especially felt it in a book called The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett and in the sequel, A Drop of Corruption.

And I am forcing these books on everybody who walks in the store because they're just so brilliant. And it's so much fun to have customers come back in and they're like squawking. They're like, "I had my doubts, but oh my gosh." And I'm like, "I know."

ANNE: Oh, that's the best.

JULIE: I mean, that's the joy of a bookstore, right? Like, it's really just an excuse to have a club for people who love books to share them with each other and squeal about them, and squawk. So in each of those instances, you knew immediately you're in the hands of somebody who's like, I got you.

[00:50:40] And that's kind of what I'm looking for, right, when I write as well. I'm looking for when all the gears align and my confidence is at full bore, and I got you. Come with me because I know where I'm taking you.

That's still kind of harder to define, but I think that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for confident writing. I'm looking for smart writing that is fully committed to character and fully committed to story and not so much about, I don't know, I've got flashy language or I've got philosophical nuggets to drop or I've done a heck of a lot of world building and by golly, you're going to get my entire notebook. So...

ANNE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you said it was perhaps amorphous, but we're talking about a vibe. I think that's okay. And yes, I'm picturing some of the books I've read in 2025 so far where on page three, I think, oh. Exactly I think what you said, "I am in good hands here." I'm going to be thinking 'a writer's confidence manifested on the page'. I like that.

[00:51:48] JULIE: I don't know how else to describe voice, right? Like people talk about voice and they say you either have it or you don't. And I think that we get a little stuck. When we're talking about literature, voice is a metaphor, right? Like a voice is vocal cords. And we watch American Idol. And sometimes there'll be this, you know, 11-year-old that comes on the stage and knocks our socks off. And, you know, they're just gifted with a voice from heaven. Don't know why. They just got it.

And I think that that's part of the damage of voice as a metaphor for literature, because if we look at American Idol, it just seems like you either have it or you don't. And maybe you can train your voice, but you'll never be as good as those golden few.

I don't think I agree quite when we're talking about literature. That's not to say that, you know, everyone can be Shakespeare if they try, but I do believe that that confidence can be cultivated through extensive reading, extensive writing, extensive study, far more than shall we say, someone who can't sing a note on key can become Mariah Carey, right?

[00:52:58] So we've got to be careful about this metaphor of voice. But what's similar is when you're watching American Idol and that 11-year-old comes on stage and her voice makes you cry, you know it when you hear it. And I think that that's why we use it as a term to describe that literary confidence because it doesn't take long to know it when we see it.

ANNE: Mm. I love that sense in the opening paragraphs of feeling an author is saying, not explicitly, but an author is saying to me, like, "Come in and close, like sit up, pay attention. I've got a story to tell you. It's going to be good."

JULIE: It's like we go back to being kids, right? With grandma reading to us or something, that tingle and stare.

ANNE: No, just one more chapter. No, but what happened next? I love it.

[00:53:52] Okay, so listeners, Julie and I actually thought we might talk about all kinds of specific titles today, but we really could talk all day about bookstores, writing, writer's confidence, and more. But I would love to close, Julie, with maybe just three little we're shopping in your bookstore, not pitches exactly, but thoughts about three books you love, whether that's more details about those books you've read recently, recommended to your book or reading with your book club at the bookstore, whose voice is so enjoyable, or books that go way back for you, you know, books that have been formative to you as a reader. I think you understand the assignment. Would you tell us about a few books?

JULIE: Well, when I find somebody who enjoys fantasy and humor, I insist, if they haven't already experienced Sir Terry Pratchett, that they do so, that they enter Discworld by the portal of Wyrd Sisters, W-Y-R-D, Sisters, which is Terry Pratchett's mashup of Macbeth, where we meet Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Og, and Magrat Garlick for the first time. And oh, what a joy awaits you if you have not experienced that. It's just so, so, so much fun. So that's one that I definitely recommend to people.

[00:55:12] One fascinating book that we recommend a lot in our bookstore, because we are in a historic town set on the Erie Canal, we recommend Heaven's Ditch by Jack Kelly, which is-

ANNE: I don't know this one.

JULIE: Oh, it's so good. It's so good. It's narrative nonfiction, but it reads like a novel. So it is the story of the construction of the Erie Canal and of some of the religious and social and political movements, many of which kind of got their spark with a notorious murder that took place in the vicinity of the canal.

And the ramifications of this murder would go on to shape the formation of the abolitionist movement in this country, the formation of the Whig Party, ultimately the Republican Party, as well as our whole bouquet of uniquely American religions. All of it kind of having its origins in this psychic highway called the Erie Canal, which was so influential in the early economic growth and health of America.

[00:56:18] I read this book and I took it to my husband, who is not the biggest nonfiction reader, and I said, "You must read this." And he said, "I really prefer fiction." And I said, "Trust me, trust me, trust me." And of course, he was instantly hooked. So we sell a lot of copies of Heaven's Ditch by Jack Kelly, fabulous writer.

Another book that I really urge on people if they are of a writerly mindset and maybe interested in mythology is actually The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. That was probably one of the most influential upon me as a writer and as a human being. It was just a life-changing read, so I strongly recommend that.

Oh, one book that I'm loving is The Raging Erie by Mark Ferrara. He's coming to our store this weekend, and he's going to talk to us more about the people who are affected by the canal. I've really become more interested in local history since owning a bookstore, which didn't used to interest me like it does now.

[00:57:19] But the couple of titles that I know I mentioned a moment ago, but I want to give them some love are again by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup, and the sequel is A Drop of Corruption. And it is set in an alternate world that is an empire that might call to mind like the Roman Empire, but it's a world where there's a kind of new technology that we might almost describe as genetic manipulation, where people have these augmentations and enhancements that alter their bodies and brains in very colorful ways to give them unusual abilities.

And all of this science, we'll call it, is made possible by the harvesting of the bodies of these gigantic leviathans that live in the sea and that come crashing out of the sea each rainy season and rampaging inland and devouring and destroying. So this empire has built its fortunes off of barricading the leviathans. You know, there's like walls, right? Walls erected at the seacoast. So they barricade the leviathans out. When they come ashore, they kill them and they harvest their bodies for all these magic abilities.

[00:58:30] But what makes this book so compelling is, again, the voice, meaning that the author just drops you with perfect confidence into this world without a lot of heavy explanation. And not only that, but through the voice of a really memorable narrator character, his name is Din, and he is one of these modified people who can remember what he sees. And he's one half of a crime-solving duo. So there's Anna and Din.

So you are dropped into this richly realized world that's very gracefully presented to you through the story of a taut police procedural murder mystery. And so that combination of murder mystery and fantasy empire, as well as the absolutely unforgettable voices of Anna and Din, is just what makes this a triple threat and the reason why I can't stop talking about it. So I've got to give that some love.

[00:59:27] I've mentioned Service Model with the robot point of view that I'm absolutely loving by Adrian Tchaikovsky. And then The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard is a really, really new and fascinating take on time travel.

I love time travel stories, but I think they usually fumble and fail in some way. And this one is a whole different experience where the world is made up of kind of like... kind of you think about how we have time zones. In this world, each zone is exactly 20 years before or after the adjacent one. So you can travel into the other valley to see your future, or travel into the other valley to see your past. Except, of course, this creates all kinds of complications, so there are very strict controls preventing it.

[01:00:22] But it's this really beautiful, thoughtful human exploration of how the desire to modify the past or see the future is itself both deeply problematic, and also it's kind of where our hopes for redemption lie. But a beautifully written, wonderfully realized characters, really fascinating world, and really intelligent exploration of some of the philosophy underneath it all.

ANNE: That sounds fascinating. We have a few team members who loved that book, but that's more detailed than I'd heard before.

JULIE: So good. So, so good.

ANNE: Well, Julie, thank you so much for those recommendations.

JULIE: Oh, my pleasure. And thank you for having me on the program. It's a delight to talk to you.

ANNE: Oh, the pleasure is mine.

Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Julie, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Julie at her website, julieberrybooks.com, and on all of the social platforms. We have all those links, plus the full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next is created each week by executive producer Will Bogle, media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewsk, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, community manager Shannan Malone, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and MMD HQ. Plus the audio whizzes at 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.

[a]@[email protected] we are cutting this pre-roll because of timing of the FBP launch announcement. Just letting you know and I will take care of removing it from the transcript in the episode post. Our timestamps will be a slight bit off but I think that's the simplest way to manage it at this point unless you have other suggestions?