I'd Rather Be Reading

It’s 2025, and it’s season 15! I could not be more excited for this season and all that it will bring, starting with today’s guest, Rachel Hollis. Since Rachel’s last book in 2020, so much has happened in her life, and she’s here today to talk about it and her brand new book, What If YOU Are the Answer?: And 26 Other Questions That Just Might Change Your Life , which is out January 7. On the 1 per...

I know many of you — myself included — are thinking about what we want out of 2025, and with that reflection drumming up some New Year’s resolutions. As we do so, I thought it would be helpful to bring in the habit expert herself, the one and only Wendy Wood, to close season 14 and to close 2024. Whatever type of year you had — a great one, or a not so great one — a fresh start is on the horizon,...

My annual “Best Books of the Year” episode with Carla Jean Whitley is always such a highlight for me (and I know for all of you)! Below are her picks for 2024. Enjoy!   The Best Books She’s Read This Year: Nonfiction — Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman (also adding in Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals for...

We are continuing our series of life optimization episodes today with the dynamic Laura Vanderkam, time management expert and author of multiple books on the topic, including three books we’re discussing in today’s episode: her book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think , which came out in 2010; Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done , which came out in 2014; and I Know How S...

We have so much good for you even before 2024 closes, and especially as 2025 kicks off. We’ll be bringing you lots of new books, especially in the new year, but as we close 2024 and look ahead to what next year will bring, I’m also going to bring in some conversations about books from years past that will make you think about the type of person you want to be going forward into this next chapter....

I have a great story to tell you about our guest today. Back in 2020, my co-host Jessica and I were looking to start what would become our podcast about the royal family, Podcast Royal. By 2020, Cathy Heller was already a prolific podcaster, as her show Don’t Keep Your Day Job — which has since been renamed — debuted in 2017. Cathy gave me such helpful advice, and Jessica and I went on to launch P...

I went to the library recently and checked out so many books on self-help and self-improvement. It’s really dawning on me that, in just a few days’ time, I’ll have a new name and, while I’ll always be the same person, I am looking at it as a fresh start of sorts. One of the books I checked out was Caroline Adams Miller’s 2009 book Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide , and I enjoy...

Sometimes in life we get the chance to experience a mountaintop moment, and that’s exactly what happened when I chatted with the brilliant Geneen Roth this week. Geneen wrote the landmark book Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything , which came out in 2010, nearly 15 years ago. A huge fan of this groundbreaking work? None other than Oprah Winfrey, so if it’s good enough for...

What if I told you that, when it comes to managing your time and your life, you were never going to get it together — and that was okay? Continuing the thread from our last conversation with Kendra Adachi, today on the show we have the incomparable Oliver Burkeman, who wrote the book Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts , which came out Octo...

I said I was going to take this month off from the show, but then, Kendra Adachi’s brilliant book The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius found me, and I couldn’t be selfish to you lovely listeners and keep it to myself. I really do believe books meet you where you are, and The PLAN certainly met me where I was (and still am). I am obsessed with time management, productivity, life hacks, lif...

Election Day is on Tuesday, November 5, and I could think of no better book to tee that up than Bill Haldeman’s new book Meeting the Moment: Inspiring Presidential Leadership That Transformed America , which is out November 1. This book about presidential leadership takes a specific leadership quality of a certain president and shows readers how the combination of that quality and that president t...

Today on the show we have Wright Thompson here to talk about his latest book, one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read — The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi , which came out September 24. Though it’s not mentioned in the title or the subtitle, the book is about the brutal, absolutely depraved murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till on August 28, 1955 in Mississippi. I have a dee...

Today on the show we’re talking about a woman you all have long known I admire — Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. I have read every book I can get my hands on about this former First Lady, American (and, really, global) icon, and one of the most famous women to ever live. We have even had many episodes of the show about her in the past. But today we’re talking about the new book Our Jackie: Pub...

What an episode we have for you today, listeners. Today on the show we have the phenomenal Terri Cole, whose work about boundaries I have so resonated with in the past. She has a new book out on October 15 called Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency , and it examines what we thought we knew about codependency. We have had the godmother of codependency, Melody Be...

Today on the show we are talking about Victoria’s Secret, the retail giant that, as my guests Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez write in their new book Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon , “defined a generation’s idea of sexy.” Selling Sexy is out October 8 and tells the story of a company that, at its peak, pulled in $8 billion in annual sales. We talk in to...

We have a legend on I’d Rather Be Reading today, friends. None other than Malcolm Gladwell is here to talk about his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering , which is out October 1. Revenge of the Tipping Point comes nearly 25 years after Malcolm’s 2000 book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , a bestse...

We are back today with another fantastic episode, and for my 38th birthday today, I’d like to give you a gift — a conversation about a book that really touched me. We’re chatting today about Dr. Mary E. Anderson’s book The Happy High Achiever: 8 Essentials to Overcome Anxiety, Manage Stress, and Energize Yourself for Success—Without Losing Your Edge , which came out September 24. She writes that w...

I’m so pleased to have on the show today Megan Gorman, who wrote a very compelling book called All the Presidents’ Money: How the Men Who Governed America Governed Their Money , which is out September 24. Before we get into the book — which isn’t that such a great idea and such a great title? — let me tell you a little more about Megan: she is the founder and managing partner of Chequers Financial...

Celebrating the giants of American history — the George Washingtons, the Abraham Lincolns, the Martin Luther King Jrs — is important, but behind every larger-than-life American icon is, as Sharon McMahon calls her new book, The Small and the Mighty . The full title of Sharon’s book, which is out September 24, is The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, f...

I am a huge sports fan, and both the college football season and the NFL season are in full swing. Sports-wise, this is one of my favorite times of the year, and our guest today Joe Posnanski has written a book for all lovers of the game called Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments that you definitely won’t want to miss. Joe chose 100 moments because of the 100 yards in a football field,...

My guest today truly needs no introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, we are fortunate enough today to have the one, the only Connie Chung here with us to chat about her memoir, Connie , out September 17. Definitely stick around for the surprise Maury Povich pop in midway through the conversation—Maury, of course, is Connie’s husband of 40 years. Where to even start with Connie Chung and what an inspi...

If you are as big of a Selling Sunset fan as I am, then you are going to love today’s episode. Season eight of Netflix’s massive hit reality series just dropped September 6, and here today to chat about her new book Selling Sunshine: Surviving Teenage Motherhood, Thriving in Luxury Real Estate, and Embracing My Voice is one of the show’s stars, Mary Bonnet. Mary has written an incredibly vulnerabl...

Today on the show to kick off season 14 is a second-time guest: Kathy Iandoli, who we spoke to back in 2021 about her book on the legendary Aaliyah. And Kathy is back with a book she co-wrote with another legendary musician—Eve, who in a word, is just fabulous. In the book, we learn so much about this rapper, actress, talk show host, and multihyphenate, including that she felt cursed by being born...

Unbelievably, we’ve reached the season finale of season 13! What a season, huh? Don’t you worry, because we’ve got more conversations to come in season 14. But today we’ve got a great one for you—Julia Boorstin of CNBC is here to chat about her buzzy, powerful book When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them , which came out in 2022 but is still making wave...

Today on the show, we’re talking about the history and power of hairdressing and how, as our guest Dr. Elizabeth Block puts it in her new book, how hair “contributed to the lived experiences of women.” Her new book Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing is out September 10 and looks at hair through an academic lens—and it’s totally compelling. We get into the cultural impact of hair;...