What Should I Read Next?

Today’s guest is Shaney Swift, a massage therapist and social justice advocate from Chicago, Illinois. If you’ve been around What Should I Read Next for a while, you know Anne can be a bit of a personality-type geek, and Shaney shares that enthusiasm -- so prepare for a lot of nerding out! Today Anne and Shaney discuss scanning and deep-diving reading styles, books that help us understand our diff...

This is a WSIRN first— a repeat guest! Today Anne chats with friend of the show and bookstore owner Holland Saltsman about everything you didn't know you wanted to know about opening an independent bookstore, how to support indies this holiday season, the best three books we each read this year, and their favorite bookish gifts for this holiday season (and all year 'round.) We hope you enjoy this...

Around here, we don’t think you need an excuse to love Jane Austen, but boy does today's guest Rebecca Smith have a great one -- she is Jane Austen's great great great great great niece! Rebecca is a longtime reader, a former writer in residence at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, and she currently teaches creative writing in the U.K. She’s the author of Jane Austen's Guide to Modern Life's...

Today we're back to literary matchmaking, with listener Melodee Skiles here to representing all the avid audiobook lovers who want to know what to LISTEN to next!  Melodee is a stay-at-home mom who owns an online literature tutorial business. Books are (clearly) her bag, and while she's taking a short break from tutoring, she wants to revitalize her love of literature by reading outside the bounds...

Here to help close out the Reading For A Lifetime week is Jenny Williams, who illustrates beloved literary heroines for a living as the charming artist and entrepreneur behind Carrot Top Paper Shop. In this episode, Anne and Jenny talk all about why we love our literary heroines of literature so much (think Anne, Elizabeth, Jane, Hermione), wrestle with what makes for a modern heroine. Click over...

It's Day 4 of our special Reading For A Lifetime series on WSIRN, and if our comment section has made one thing known, it's this: Adults LOVE Kid Lit. Not just for kids, not just in a theoretical sense, but in honest-to-goodness, just-for-the-joy-of-it, everyday-reading-life practice. The guest here to chat with Anne about reading KidLit for fun? The beloved and oft-requested Gretchen Rubin! You a...

Day 3 of our special Reading For A Lifetime series is all about "guilty pleasure" kid lit - the series we read and re-read not because they were Great Literature, but because they were gosh-darn fun! Here to talk about not-so-serious gateway children's literature are Jack Shepherd and Tanner Greenring, hosts of The Babysitters Club Club podcast. They each have their own story of how they found the...

Day 2 of our Reading For A Lifetime series is about encouraging middle school and young adult kids to indulge in great books, and our guest Leigh Collazo has a LOT of wisdom to share on that topic. Leigh is a school librarian who serves children from over 30 different countries at an international school in China. Today she shares all about why the middle school years are her favorite when it come...

Today kicks off our special WSIRN 5-day miniseries: What Should I Read Next for Kids, and Kids at Heart. We’re focusing on a variety of young and young at heart topics this week: children’s literature, coming of age stories, literary heroines, kid lit for grown-ups, and more. Who better to jump-start the series than Sarah Mackenzie? Sarah is a friend, devoted reader, and Kid Lit Expert Extraordina...

This week guest Maxwell Dunn (WellDoneBooks on YouTube) introduces Anne to a whole new wonderful world of book lovers online—the Booktube community! Booktube is known best for its voracious YA fans, but there's a book vlogger out there for every literary palate. Max is a great example of this; his videos cover serious award winners, challenging experimental works, and deep dives into substantial m...

It's bibliotherapy time! Today's guest is Erin Swann, is an attorney who lives in Greenville, South Carolina with her family. Erin's always been a reader, but when she went through a major transition a few years back she rediscovered the therapeutic value of a welcoming book. Join Erin and Anne as they discuss armchair travel, fictional characters as friends, and more.  Click over to the podcast w...

Today we have a special episode: we're revisiting seven guests from previous episodes of the show to find out what they actually did read next. What are they reading now? What did they love? And what did they, uh, not love as much? Click over to the podcast website for the full list of titles discussed in this episode. What book recommendations YOU have picked up after listening to the show! Did y...

Today's guest is Ana Salazar. Ana is a Columbian who’s now living in Peru, and she’s been, as she says, "absolutely obsessed” with reading for her whole life, so much so that her parents had to physically drag her away from bookstores when she was growing up. Anne and Ana discuss the joys and challenges of reading across borders, unpack Ana's love for the genre she's been loving recently, and expl...

Today we meet a indie bookstore owner and kindred bookish spirit, Annie Jones. In this episode, Anne and Annie talk about her wildly unlikely path to bookstore ownership, her love of dysfunctional family literature, and the way meeting an author in person can change the way you experience a book. And unlike a lot of WSIRN guests -- Annie is not afraid to say she hates a book (or... a lot of books....

Today we're happy to welcome reader and podcaster Sarah Stewart Holland to the show. You may already know Sarah from her blog Bluegrass Redhead or her show, Pantsuit Politics. Sarah is drawn to nonfiction and wants to read more fiction, but tends to grab what's new and hot in fiction for fear of missing out, instead of intentionally selecting it. One of her big strengths is "input," and she loves...

Today we fellow podcaster Erik Fisher to the show! Erik is known as the productivity guru because of his wonderful podcast Beyond the To Do List, the first podcast Anne ever listened to, AND the first podcast she ever appeared on!  Erik is a HUGE reader, and in this episode we talk about how he’s made the switch back to paper books after a flirtation with e-reading, personality types, and how he a...

Today's bonus podcast episode of What Should I Read Next is focused on fall's hot new releases. Bookstore owner Holland Saltsman of The Novel Neighbor (from yesterday's Ep 40—listen here!) and Anne talk about the titles we've read and are psyched about, plus the ones they can't wait to get their hands on. Anne also brings you short interviews she did in Savannah with friends and authors (including...

When Anne first thought of starting a podcast, her bookstore-owning friend Holland Saltsman was one of the very first people she wanted to have on. And she was one of the first people Anne interviewed for the show. And the audio quality on that recording was so poor Anne was terrified to give it another go for almost a full year. Holland is one of Anne's favorite people to talk books with, because...

Today we welcome Melody Warnick to the show! She’s a Blacksburg-based author, who  has been tracking her reading in an excel spreadsheet since 2004. If you find that intimidating, don’t worry—Melody’s not analytical about choosing what to read next (wait until you to hear how she approaches a big stack of library books.) Click over to the podcast website for the full list of titles discussed in th...

Today Anne chats with Anissa Davis, a family physician who lives with her family in California. She likes smart, funny, contemporary fiction with diverse protagonists, and she wants to be blown away by more books. Many of you will relate when Anissa says sometimes finding great fiction feels like kissing a lot of frogs before you find your prince.  Click over to the podcast website for the full li...

Kurt and Kristin are a husband and wife who want to read more together. Their question for Anne is a fun twist on a familiar theme — “What should WE read next?” Kristin has been a lifetime lover of books; Kurt has only recently become a serious reader (thanks in part to 15 years of nudging from his wife). They want to find books that they can read and talk about together! Both enjoy high-quality f...

It's Tuesday, and time for a new episode of What Should I Read Next! Our guest today is Tiffany King, a dear friend you might know from her food blog, Eat At Home. Tiffany is a busy woman -- a homeschool mom for 19 years, and the creator of her own business -- so when she reads, she craves something cozy and comforting. "“I don’t tend to go really deep with my fiction," she says, "and I don’t feel...

Our guest today is Katherine Willis Pershey. Katherine is a friend whose taste Anne trusts: she's recommended several excellent titles to Anne over the years (and we talk about a handful of those in this episode). Today it's Anne's turn to do the recommending. If you love books that dive into human nature, authors that approach serious subjects through the back door, a good redemption story, or ju...

Our guest today is Rose Booth, a technology merchandising director and cinephile who sometimes "feels like she's dating books." Rose loves female protagonists who flout convention and books where reality meets fiction, but she's also eager to fall in love with titles from one popular genre that she hasn't had any luck with—yet. Click over to the podcast website for the full list of titles discusse...

Today we have a very special episode: Anne is chatting again with seven guests from the first twenty-three episodes of the show to find out what they actually did read next. What books did they read? What did they love? What did they hate? (Because yeah, that happened.)  This episode is tons of fun—I hope you enjoy it as much we enjoyed making it.  Previous episodes we're circling back to:  • Ep 1...