Why Summer Reading Programs Were The Best ... and Our Picks For YOUR 2026 Summer Reading List

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with

Kristin Nilsen 0:27

more lemony taste. Welcome to another light and refreshing episode from the Pop Culture Preservation Society. These are the unplanned, unresearched, and unedited conversations we give you while we're planning and recording our next season. And today's episode is for all those people who read obsessively and voraciously all summer long, logging every book in your little mimeographed reading log, so that at the end of the summer you could win a prize like a super ball, a bookmark, a bookmark, maybe one of those paddles with the ball on the end. I did kind of, I did love those, actually. And the summer reading program at my public library, you would have thought it was like going to Disneyland, like getting a free Super Bowl for reading 25 books. That seemed that seemed legit to me. That seemed like a fair trade. Yeah.

Michelle Newman 1:24

Oh, I just thought of another really good one we got. Did you, did you guys used to get like the fun pencils that might have Garfield on or something like that? Yeah, maybe that was a bigger.. maybe

Carolyn Cochrane 1:33

did you guys have one that like we had something that was like a race? I all of a sudden I'm getting this picture of a horse that had my name on it, and like it moved along, and then like you were trying to get to the finish line before someone else.

Kristin Nilsen 1:48

Were you competing? Like, were you competing against other readers? Because that's those 70s right now, you're gonna get a ribbon, but who was gonna read the most books? Horse was gonna get out. That's right. Michelle found the most hilarious TikTok of this guy. He had all of the materials from his summer reading programs, and if you recall, every summer had a theme, like a bookish theme. Yes, and they were always super contrived. And my favorite one that he had was in 1977 the summer reading theme was Star Wars, and they had then the mascot for the Star Wars reading program was Artu Reader Two,

Michelle Newman 2:30

Art Two, Read Two, and some of them were like superheroes, and what you got at the end was essentially a paper, like for every like milestone, so maybe for five books, then 10 books, then 15. You were getting another paper cutout superhero, and at the end it made a paper mobile. Oh,

Kristin Nilsen 2:52

yes, to hang in your room. Yes. Oh,

Michelle Newman 2:54

that's a prize. I remember you. I remember also just the certificate was super cool. You got a certificate, and my God, did we not love certificates? Like, it was a participant thing, right? Like, you purchased, but just getting a certificate, and they were.. they had that kind of purpley mimeographed.. it was all mimeographed, a little blurry with just the line where then your teacher wrote your name in, or your librarian, if yes, in the summer, right, and I have a bunch of those still, and I'm, and probably some of them are from summer reading programs, some of them are from school, they're up in a tub, and I would have gone and gotten some to show you guys, but I think they're up in the attic, and I don't, and

Kristin Nilsen 3:34

it was always lovely, cursive, like your name, lovely actual cursive,

Michelle Newman 3:39

but the actual certificate was just a piece of crap. It was just a piece of mimeograph that purple ink on it. It wasn't like it was a certificate with a gold seal or a stamp or anything, but getting one of those was the coolest, and it

Kristin Nilsen 3:53

might have said something like you were a super reader,

Michelle Newman 3:56

yeah, or hot dog

Kristin Nilsen 3:58

you

Michelle Newman 3:58

read, and then a blank for how many books you know, and that little hot dog would be like a little hot dog with legs and arms or something,

Kristin Nilsen 4:06

and they, and the drawings were always hand drawn, like there's no graphics program or anything, so somebody was writing that with a ballpoint pen, they

Kristin Nilsen 4:14

did look,

Kristin Nilsen 4:15

they did the r2 read to logo with their ballpoint pen, and then

Carolyn Cochrane 4:21

actual mimeographed like the ditto form that my I remember my mom doing, where she'd write on it, or she'd do a quiz as a teacher, and that's the thing they put through the machine, turn the barrel,

Michelle Newman 4:33

I think it was, you know what, though, just even talking about this, I get a warm feeling, and I truly, I'm not, I'm not kidding, I get a warm feeling of that feeling of first of all, just that school being out feeling was incredible, just the possibilities ahead. But then when you pair it, and all three of us, you know, huge voracious readers, and I know a lot of you listening were too, and if you weren't, that's fine, keep listening, but she. Best of the thought of I have a whole summer to read, like going to the library and getting a stack of books was just the best, and my mom used to get us some books, you know, like, oh, it's the last day of school, let's go get some books for the summer, for the most part, we checked him out from the library, but I sort of took that, this kind of goes back to the conversation we recently had, the light episode about how we're parenting differently than our parents did, because what I then did, of course, my girls went to the library, but from the time they were in early elementary school all the way through high school, they always knew that their last day of school, like present, was we were going to go to Barnes and Noble or somewhere, and they were gonna get to pen like five books or something like that, and that was a huge.. that was every single year. This is your summer. This is what are the books you want to read this summer, you know? I remember when it got into like Sarah Dessen, and that was like, oh wow, you're so elevated. You know, it started with like Magic Tree House books and Journey Jones books, and then all of a sudden we got, we graduated to John Green and Sarah Dessen, but summer, just to think you have three months and you just have all the reading time in the world, isn't that just a delicious memory? And I

Kristin Nilsen 6:12

really, that was my job, like when you got that reading log, I viewed that as my job for the summer, I was gonna slay that reading log.

Michelle Newman 6:22

Yes, but it wasn't for all of us who are who enjoy reading so much. It wasn't even like, you know, kind of almost like challenge accepted, right? We were like, oh, like, this is hard, but it was just so fun to have. I don't know, we were gonna read whether or not we had a log, and we got to get a pencil, or a Garfield sticker, or a Garfield pencil, pencil at the end, anyway. But just the fact that we were going to document it, I don't know, there was just something. There's

Carolyn Cochrane 6:51

a reward. I mean, I'm sorry, that's cool, regardless. I mean, I'm loving that, and I have a distinct memory of this particular line of books, it was biographies, and I can feel and smell them as I'm talking to you guys right now, because it was that hard kind of pebbled cover.

Michelle Newman 7:11

Oh,

Michelle Newman 7:11

you know what I'm

Carolyn Cochrane 7:12

talking, I think they were all like maybe in the Orange Family or whatever, but I loved this series of biographies. I learned about some bizarre, not bizarre, but like I could tell you who Elizabeth Blackwell is. I could tell you that right now. Do you guys know?

Michelle Newman 7:26

Yeah, I tell me. Tell me, she was a nurse, wasn't she?

Carolyn Cochrane 7:29

No, she.. well, she was the first doc woman doctor. Oh, Clara Barton, Claire Nurse, and then Red Cross, and then Florence Nightingale, and that's where I read all of those, and then yeah, some of the more obscure, like not obscure, but you know, Dolly Madison, and those kind of people. I just picture those books into it, and so I would be so excited when there'd be a new one, because I went through them kind of quickly, and be like, let there be somebody I haven't read about yet. Oh my gosh, to this day I just, yeah, I'm speechless,

Kristin Nilsen 8:01

that's all. Think about this, you know about all these people, and you could probably tell me all sorts of details. This is very prescient, right? Like, this is telling us what future Carolyn's going to be like with her rabbit holes, but you know all about those people because of the summer reading program.

Carolyn Cochrane 8:15

The Wright brothers, yeah, I know all about them in Kitty Hawk, and they started in Ohio, and yes,

Kristin Nilsen 8:21

I had a thing for four biographies of former child stars, and they were generally not, they were not children's books. I had to go into the adult section to get that.

Michelle Newman 8:35

She would also, she would, she would read those after she was finished with the current issue of Reader's Digest,

Kristin Nilsen 8:42

right? Farmers Almanac,

Carolyn Cochrane 8:43

so you're reading form child stars, so like, who aren't Shirley Temple, or who Shirley,

Kristin Nilsen 8:52

Mickey Rooney, oh yeah, Shirley Temple, yeah, I think there were some little rascals people, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 8:59

that's one,

Michelle Newman 9:00

and

Kristin Nilsen 9:00

all the stories are tragic, they're all tragic stories, and I think that was part of what attracted me to them, is I was, you know, I was a tween, and I was getting a little melodramatic, and so I thought that was really cool.

Michelle Newman 9:11

Speaking of Reader's Digest, though, How excited were you guys? And I can't even remember what age I would have been when I discovered it. It was probably at my dad, like visiting my dad's mom, like my grandma or something, and she had it in the bathroom. I don't even know. I just remember feeling so grown up reading Reader's Digest, and I had, like, you had so many short stories, but then you had jokes, and then you had, like, different submissions, and you had.. I loved Reader's Digest. I was probably, maybe, like, 12.. I don't know, I would read it cover to cover these 10, yeah, yeah. I thought that was the coolest little publication.

Kristin Nilsen 9:47

Wouldn't you love to read that today, just to see what you were consuming?

Michelle Newman 9:51

Yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 9:52

we should. We should do an episode or something where we each take an old reader's

Michelle Newman 9:56

outdone. Oh my god,

Kristin Nilsen 9:59

that is a brilliant. Idea,

Michelle Newman 10:00

I'm gonna go to the start looking for those in thrift, okay? Now, okay, or like that, like the, you know, goodwill and stuff, okay?

Kristin Nilsen 10:06

Okay, and there's there's some breaking news I have to share with everybody. So, just the other day, one of our local news anchors posted about the return of something very, very exciting, and she was ecstatic. This was breaking news. Jana Shortl from Carolyn News in Minneapolis just reported that the Pizza Hut Book It program is back. It is back. This is the program where you could go to Pizza Hut and get your reading log, and then after reading a certain number of books, you would bring it back to Pizza Hut, and you would get a personal pan pizza.

Michelle Newman 10:39

Personal Pan Pizza, that was an 80s thing that happened. I think it was

Kristin Nilsen 10:42

like started 1984 Also, a lot of our people who were born in the early to early to mid 70s would have been prime booking people. I don't think I was a while it did, didn't

Michelle Newman 10:54

it? Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 10:54

because I, I, as a teacher, I remember, do my kids

Michelle Newman 10:59

doing

Carolyn Cochrane 11:00

book it, and boy, did you, you better not forget to give them their pizza thing, and, and those who know me well know that if anyone's gonna forget, it's gonna be mrs. Cochrane. I can just see some of those girls that were, who knows, if they even read the whole book, but mrs. Cochrane, did you get my book, it certificate, or whatever, so I can go to Pizza Hut, and I'm sure their parents were like, just ask mrs. Cochrane again, she'll, she'll find it. She just doesn't remember where she put it, you

Michelle Newman 11:24

know. I, when I heard about this, I had to go and see what it was all about. And it's an app now, of course. Yes, now it's an app. You, you, I was about to say the parents can have on their phone, but I probably, a lot of the kids that are at the age of doing summer reading can have it on their phone. But you just log your books and it keeps track of everything for you, right? In the app, they don't know what they're missing, though, with those mimeograph,

Kristin Nilsen 11:43

I know,

Michelle Newman 11:43

certificates, you can pin that on your bulletin board,

Carolyn Cochrane 11:46

you keep

Michelle Newman 11:46

that

Michelle Newman 11:47

forever, you keep it forever, like they don't even get a certificate for your pizza, it's probably on your app.

Kristin Nilsen 11:53

Yeah, you just show

Michelle Newman 11:54

them

Michelle Newman 11:55

that we get a pizza.

Carolyn Cochrane 11:57

Well, can we talk a little bit about, I want to graduate a little bit to summer reading, as like junior high and high school, because I had a really sad moment as I was researching this episode, and I think we've talked about a little

Michelle Newman 12:10

bit. Wait, you researched this episode?

Carolyn Cochrane 12:12

Well, I was researched just thinking

Michelle Newman 12:15

about books that I had read. Yeah, right. Right, we

Carolyn Cochrane 12:17

had talked about like kind of the demise of the mass market paperback, yeah, and I was realizing those were all that I read those summers of like high school at the beach or at the pool, and they, you know, get all warped because of the humidity, and you might be wet, or your suntan oil went through the pages, but some of the things that I was reading, people were talking about how sad it is that we don't have these anymore, because one people were saying the portability of it, they were such a perfect size to throw in your beach bag, yeah, you know, because now those paperbacks, they're almost the size of a hardback, it's

Kristin Nilsen 12:57

like a five by seven, it's generally like five, five by seven, five by eight, and the bricks were, what, like four by four by

Michelle Newman 13:05

six. I mean, yeah, basically they're very

Michelle Newman 13:08

small,

Carolyn Cochrane 13:08

and they were so accessible, so price wise they were accessible, and they were, they'd be at the grocery store, they'd be at the drugstore, like you didn't have to go to a bookstore to go get, you know, a James Michener novel, like I remember reading some James Michener stuff, and you know, I was so highbrow, oh, you know, in high school, but yeah, being those really thick mass market paperbacks,

Michelle Newman 13:31

I like, though, Carolyn, how you said in, like, late junior high and high school you were feeling like I'm reading the books my mom just read, or whatever, same, and those were my prime Danielle Steel summers. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 13:44

totally

Michelle Newman 13:44

Daniel Steele, Sandra Brown, Belle the Plain,

Carolyn Cochrane 13:47

Sheldon, for

Michelle Newman 13:47

Rosa Moon Pilcher. For me, I loved all of Rosamond Pilcher, the shell seeker, the shell seekers, and yes, but every Danielle Steel book I could get my hand on, I would read, and I would read over and over. And you guys, she's still writing books.

Kristin Nilsen 14:00

Oh God, it's crazy.

Michelle Newman 14:02

It's crazy. I sometimes I see that Daniel still book has Daniel Steele has a new book out, and I kind of am like, I want to read one just to see if it's good. Yeah, then

Carolyn Cochrane 14:10

I wonder if it's not like a little bit of a ghost, right?

Michelle Newman 14:12

But

Kristin Nilsen 14:12

it could be sure she's like a brand now.

Carolyn Cochrane 14:15

Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 14:16

well, I always wonder, so when we're talking about the summer reading program, and we're getting our personal pan pizza, and we're getting our Super Bowl, and clearly this motivates us, and I'm just looking at everybody, and I'm like, why does this have to end just because we're adults. So, here's what I'm proposing: every time you finish a book this summer, go buy yourself a present, or go to Pizza Hut, one or the other, but why not? Why not keep track of the books you read this summer, and then when you get to a certain point, you get a prize. You get to get yourself a prize. And I have a surprise for you guys. We are going to do a PCPS summer reading program, and I made a reading log. Do you want to see it? Yes.

Kristin Nilsen 14:58

Okay.

Kristin Nilsen 14:59

All right, here it. Is I'm going to show it to you. The theme of the summer reading program is Come Sail Away with good books, and at the top there's a little fishing boat, and there's a little word bubble that says you're going to need a bigger boy

Michelle Newman 15:14

with a with a shark fen, and actually the boat was very much like the name of it,

Kristin Nilsen 15:22

and you are there, are instructions at the top, and you are instructed every time you finish a book, there's there's a graphic on the top of a shelf, a bookshelf, and every time you finish a book, you have to color in one of the books,

Michelle Newman 15:34

and

Kristin Nilsen 15:34

then you put the title on the author, and then you have to rate it, there's a star rating, one, two, or three ratings, I love the rating part, so we have to decide how we're going to get this.

Michelle Newman 15:42

I know how, I know how Michelle gonna put that. So, I think what we're gonna do is we're not doing weekly, weekly readers currently, and anyway, that's really hard to save, like a PDF from. Yeah, so we're gonna put it on our Patreon page, but for all levels, even our free patrons. So, oh,

Kristin Nilsen 15:57

you can go

Kristin Nilsen 15:57

on Patreon, even if you don't pay.

Michelle Newman 15:59

Yeah, you can be a follow us on Patreon, put out, so follow us on Patreon, and that way you can see what kind of content we do post for the paid for the subscribers, and you can be like, I think I kind of want that, or I, or just I want to support the Pop Culture Preservation Society, because I know that every single pretty much penny they have to spend comes out of their own pocket, yeah, and I want to support them for this joy they bring me, so, and especially for that. Maybe, hey, you know what? Maybe that printable of the reading list is worth a $5 a month subscription to you. That's right.

Carolyn Cochrane 16:31

Yes,

Michelle Newman 16:31

but we're gonna put it on there. It's very easy to just download, and then you can print it off yourself and keep trying. Put it on, put on the fridge with a magnet. Yes, one of those went from those letter magnets, you know, all the different colored

Carolyn Cochrane 16:42

refrigerator is magnetic anymore. What

Michelle Newman 16:46

a loss.

Carolyn Cochrane 16:47

And then I would love at the end of the summer people would take some photos of their reading logs, and then we'll get to see what people are reading. I love this idea. Maybe I don't know, maybe we could have a little award, reward

Kristin Nilsen 17:01

charge of their own reward easier, although I don't know. Maybe we can go, maybe people can go in a drawing, maybe submit. Oh, for sure, to a drawing, and we'll have a PCPS prize. But otherwise, you get your own price.

Carolyn Cochrane 17:15

Yeah, you get your own price. You know what you want. Go shopping, you want, you know what you want.

Kristin Nilsen 17:19

Go shopping. Yeah, and if you're not a reader, right? I hope you haven't ditched us, because you're like, you know what, I'm not really a reader. I have talked to so many people recently for whom reading has become very difficult. I get it, I totally get it. My, I don't know what glasses to use, I'm constantly finding, trying to find the right ones. It's very hard to find the right prescription. People are falling asleep. I fall asleep regularly. Yes, my people talk about their not being able to focus, their minds are wandering. We all know what that is. That's, we're addicted to our screens, and it's fracturing our brains. So, I'm just letting you know, this summer I am once again gonna do a phone, breaking up with your phone, breaking up with my phone again. It takes a lot of times, you guys. It's never permanent. It takes a lot of times, and I'm doing that in order to preserve my reading, because the more I'm on my phone, the more difficult and unenjoyable it is to read, and that's just sad. That used to be one of the most important things in my life was reading a good book, and I've been robbed of that by Mark Zuckerberg,

Carolyn Cochrane 18:21

yeah, and it's one of those things. Once you read a good book again, you're.. it's almost a little addiction, like you almost forgot what that dopamine hit was, and then you can't wait to read the next one. And in a few minutes, we'll be talking about what we've been reading and finishing. And that's.. I just finished a book, and that's exactly how it was. I couldn't wait to read it. Yeah, and same, now it's over, and I'm ready to go get to my next book. I'm just in on,

Michelle Newman 18:44

so your

Kristin Nilsen 18:45

motivation is back.

Kristin Nilsen 18:46

Yes,

Kristin Nilsen 18:47

you know what I've been experimenting with, with this idea that you know your mind is constantly seeking the dopamine hit, and and books don't go as fast as scrolling does. So I think that's part of why we're falling asleep, and why our minds wander. And so, first I thought, you know, what, I'm gonna try and meditate first before I read, but then I bought this tea, it's called Relax the Mind, and it's got ashwagandha and a bunch of other stuff in it, I don't like lavender and chamomile, whatever, I have a cup of tea before I read, you guys, it's working really, it's working, my mind feels like it's slowing down a little bit, yeah. And that helps me connect with the book. I've got some gummies that I should.. I same,

Carolyn Cochrane 19:30

yeah. I just started. I somehow will put my headphones on, or my ear pods in, and go on to Spotify or Insight Timer, which is an app that I know Kristen and Michelle and I use, and just put in reading music, and there is music that is specifically like for focusing and stuff, and there's like those binaural beats, whatever, all that those terms are, and that really works too. There are no words, obviously, I couldn't do it if there were words, but whatever is going in my head. Is helping me focus.

Kristin Nilsen 20:01

I'm doing that. I'm totally doing that. I didn't realize that was in there.

Michelle Newman 20:04

Yeah, I'm gonna start doing that, and

Kristin Nilsen 20:06

I have to give everybody permission to. If you are having difficulty reading right now, here are some of my tips. Read a shorter book. It's okay, it's okay. I'm very intimidated by the big fat book. I think part of it is I feel time scarcity, and I have my TBR is so tall I'm never going to get through that pile, and I can't devote all that time to the Barbra Streisand memoir. It's okay to judge a book by its length, and what I found recently, I read a book that was only 170 pages, and my motivation to read that book was so much higher, and I didn't fall asleep, and I think we just need to give ourselves permission to not worry about,

Michelle Newman 20:45

we do, and I would also recommend books of short stories, like Curtis Sittenfeld released one last year, that's so good, and then before we had a nice, yeah, yeah, and then yes, I think so, okay, and I can think who wrote Heart the Lover, Lily King

Carolyn Cochrane 21:05

sizes. I love her, even her books are not overwhelmingly

Michelle Newman 21:10

that's true. Hers are her action, but she has a great book of short stories too. Yeah, anyway, those are great to sit down and read, or to read at night. I, one of my tips is that is that I always read before I go to bed. I'm a big bath person, so I read in the bathtub, or I read I put when I get in bed at night, I am done with my screens, so I will start reading now. If I'm so tired I can't read, I, the worst thing to do is what I'll do. I'll be like, I'm just gonna play one game of, you know, yeah, matching tiles, whatever, but the other day I was gonna tell you about this book in just a minute, but I'm reading such a good book that when I was so close to being done, and when I got up in the morning, I was like, you know what, I don't really have anything pressing that I need to do right now. I got my coffee, I sat on the couch, and I read, and I didn't fall asleep, and it was a lovely, lovely idea to maybe in the morning, instead of doing the things I normally do in the morning, instead of

Kristin Nilsen 22:06

getting up your phone, checking the headlines 30, pick up a book, yeah, for 30 minutes, because we all know you do it, you're all checking the headlines while you drink your coffee, read or instead.

Carolyn Cochrane 22:16

I've got to shake the feeling that I get that I'm guilty if I'm sometimes sinning and

Michelle Newman 22:22

really wasting

Kristin Nilsen 22:23

time.

Carolyn Cochrane 22:24

Yes, like there's something else that I need to be doing. I've got to get rid of that feeling, because that, I think, keeps me, especially during the day. That's like, I'll do it, I'll read at night, but sometimes, and with this last book that I finished just yesterday, or two days ago, I just said, you know, what I'm gonna read.

Michelle Newman 22:42

I'm just gonna give a plug for audiobooks too, because we also have a lot of listeners who, you know, either they have some difficulty reading for one reason or another, if it's a vision issue, if it's, you know, just reading anymore, whatever. Yeah, but it's also could just be reading, like I'm maybe you're like, I'm such a slow reader, and that just, that's just exhausting

Kristin Nilsen 23:02

learning styles, auditory ears. Put the

Michelle Newman 23:05

book in your ears, and you know what, I, I do it because I then will do it when I'm listening to a book, when I'm on a walk, or when I'm always when I have to empty the dishwasher. Yeah, and fill the dishwasher, fold laundry clean, make the bed. Yes, I absolutely going to be listening to a book, so that is considered that's a break too. Just because you're listening, don't you know the three of us are big proponents of yes, is that reading a book? If you're listening to it, we say yes. It's about the narrative that you're following, it's not about the decoding of the print, it's about being able to follow a thought for a prolonged period of time and keep track of the characters and their storylines and things like that. Back to our tips for people who are having difficulty reading, and this, and this applies to everybody. It's not just people who are like, "I don't read. I'm, oh, before I tell you my other tip, I have another essay book to share, because you talked about short stories or essays, and that really is a good tip, because you have no obligation to finish the book. You can

Kristin Nilsen 24:00

dip in and out as you see fit. You don't have to get to the end. There's no pressure, and there is. We have a listener named Danny Alpert who wrote a book with the most hilarious title. It's called Hello. Who is this? Margaret. I love that. I love it. And it's got the most hilarious picture on the front of an old lady with holding onto a telephone, a corded telephone. Hello, who is this? Danny is so funny. She's and all of these are about her life, so it is a combination of tips for the tip being read essays and short stories, combined with my next tip, which is read memoir. For some reason, dipping into somebody's life story is an, it's easier to attend than fiction for some people, and so Danny's life is hysterical. She is a full-on Gen Xer. There's lots of Gen X parenting in here, and she just has a really funny life.

Kristin Nilsen 24:56

Hello, who

Michelle Newman 24:56

is this?

Kristin Nilsen 24:57

I mean, buy it for the title alone.

Carolyn Cochrane 25:00

Right, exactly. I want to know the whole, what that's all about.

Kristin Nilsen 25:03

So, memoir is good, and if and go one step further, celebrity memoir,

Michelle Newman 25:08

I love it. And that's

Kristin Nilsen 25:09

actually an audiobook

Carolyn Cochrane 25:10

too.

Kristin Nilsen 25:10

Yes, yeah. Lena Dunham has a new one out called Famesick that I haven't started yet, but I do. I have difficulty with audio books, but I can listen to a celebrity memoir, and so I can't wait to do Lena Dunham,

Michelle Newman 25:22

Christina Applegate's recent You with the Sad Eyes was phenomenal.

Kristin Nilsen 25:26

Yes, everybody's loving that book. Yeah, so before we go, we'd like to share some of the books that we've been reading that we'd like to recommend for you to put on your TBR. Oh, yeah,

Michelle Newman 25:35

gonna

Michelle Newman 25:35

add one last tip that I thought I didn't say, because I thought for sure, because you say this to me a lot, and or to us, a lot that I thought you were gonna say is also listeners. If you get x amount of pages in and you're not feeling it, let it go. It's okay. It's not a requirement that you read the book. You're not in school anymore, right? So, even if you're like, 'but I bought it, well, guess what? Go put it in a little free library, someone else, and consider that a gift to someone else, because someone's gonna love it. So, Kristen, you had like a formula of how

Michelle Newman 26:06

many

Kristin Nilsen 26:06

pages. This is how long you give a book. I regularly quit books. Yes, it's not that the book is bad. This book is not for me. Somebody else will enjoy this. Exactly, let them enjoy it. It wasn't written for me. We're all different readers, anyway. Here's how you decide how many pages you give it, and I'm going to give you - there'll be one exception, but we'll talk about that later. And it is 100 minus your age is how many pages you give it. So, if I'm 58 I get 42 pages.

Michelle Newman 26:34

Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 26:35

I only have to do 42 pages, and if I'm not loving it, put it in the little free library, somebody else will enjoy,

Michelle Newman 26:40

yeah, that's what I think too. And I, I'm like, now that I have my beloved little free library, I am very.. I'm way more.. what's the word I'm looking for, like discerning, maybe, of what time, when I just.. when I'm for that, if I quit it, or if I finish a book, and I go, was it five stars? I keep a little book journal, and I'll be like, if it wasn't five stars, I don't even keep it in my house anymore. Like, I love my books, and I love all my bookshelves full of books, but now when I look at my books, I'm like, these are all my five-star books, and I have shelves of them, but I get, because I have a little free library, and surely, even if you don't have a little free library in your neighborhood that you can donate a book to, um, donate it to your local library if it's in good shape, because then then other people can check it out. This is a good time to remind people too

Kristin Nilsen 27:30

that one of the ways that the Pop Culture Preservation Society covers its costs is by having an affiliate link with bookshop.org This is an online retailer that is an alternative to Amazon, and instead of all of the money going to Jeff Bezos, the proceeds are shared with small independent bookstores across the nation. They've given millions of dollars away to two independent bookstores, so it's and what you do is you go to bookshop.org and in the space up above you can put in a bookshop's name, you can put in Big Hill Books, which is where I work, and then your purchase will go to those people that day. Or does it work differently with our affiliate links? I'm not sure.

Michelle Newman 28:10

Yeah, they still get money, and then, because we've our bookstore that we've claimed is Big Hill Books, so some of the proceeds goes to Big Hill Books. We get a tiny bit of it. I think in the past I've seen that, oh, for the last two months you get $2.45 from bookshop.org or something. We don't, but, but still, every bit helps,

Kristin Nilsen 28:29

every penny helps everybody. Yeah, every

Michelle Newman 28:31

penny. More importantly, it's helping small bookstores stay alive.

Kristin Nilsen 28:34

Yes,

Michelle Newman 28:35

and we have a really fun shop. You should go look at the books we put in. I

Kristin Nilsen 28:38

literally have book lists that we've curated, like these are our favorites. These are.. I can't remember what categories we have, and the books that we talk about today. We will be in our bookshop thing, so you can go and literally window shop@bookshop.org You don't have to sit there with your pen today and write down all the titles, because it will be in our bookshop.org And if you know, we always talk about becoming a Patreon member in order to help us cover costs, but maybe if that's not for you, maybe making all of your book purchases through our affiliate links on bookshop.org is a better way for you to support us, and we appreciate you. Okay, the first one I want to talk about is, is this is not news to anybody, but I just want to make sure that if you're on the fence, that you're going to read the correspondent. This is a runaway hit by a debut author, who, and nobody saw it coming. It is growing organically, not because the publisher, you know, put her on the Today Show or anything like that. This is where this is spreading word of mouth, and here's, and it's an epistolary novel about an older woman who's kind of curmudgeonly, and she worked for a judge, and she's just writing letters to all of the people in her life. She lives alone, she's got children, there are issues with people, but she has lots of different relationships, and there is an arc that you need to follow. So, what I need to tell you, if you have not yet read the correspondent, you need. To get to the halfway point, so that formula that I told you about before, where you only need to read 42 pages for the correspondent, you might need to read half before you are suddenly so invested in this curmudgeonly woman, and what, and what her life is going to be,

Carolyn Cochrane 30:16

right, and also because a page might only be because it's an epistolary novel, each page is kind of devoted to a letter, so when a new thing starts, doesn't it start like a new yes page, so you might have a page that only has, like, you know, is half full,

Kristin Nilsen 30:34

half a

Michelle Newman 30:35

page, so

Carolyn Cochrane 30:35

yeah, yeah, so I think it's very important that you get to the point you said, Kristen, before you throw in any kind of towel, and, and it's a different way to read, but I am all about those epistolary novels, and there

Michelle Newman 30:49

are two, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 30:50

a lot out there, and it'll make you want to write a letter, and

Michelle Newman 30:53

it really

Kristin Nilsen 30:54

does, I tell

Carolyn Cochrane 30:54

you, it is the easiest dopamine hit you can get, writing it, you feel great when the person gets it, they feel great, and then they write you back, or they text you about how great they feel. Then you feel great again. It's just.. it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Kristin Nilsen 31:09

I want to tell you about one other novel that is written by a friend of mine. She is.. we have the same publisher, and it's coming out at the beginning of June, which I think is right now. We recorded this earlier, of course, and this book is a young adult title. It's called Channeling Maryland. A lot of people like to read young adult, and some adults, it's become so accepted that adults read young adult books now. It's actually a genre that people like, what would you like to read? I like to read young adults, and blah blah blah, and romance, right? So this is a young adult title, and it's short, you can put it in the short category, and look at this cover, you guys, isn't that cute?

Carolyn Cochrane 31:45

Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 31:46

this

Kristin Nilsen 31:46

is the story. If I know there are a lot of people from our generation who had a real fascination with Marilyn Monroe, and the same can be true for the author, her name is Mima Tipper, and she is one of those people who still to this day has a real fascination with Marilyn Monroe. This book is for the theater kids. This is a story about kids who are putting on a production of Bus Stop, the Marilyn Monroe movie Bus Stop. They are putting on a theatrical production in their high school, and the person who is cast in the Marilyn Monroe role is so un-Marilyn Monroe-like, and she's like, 'How am I ever gonna do this? I can't do it. Oh, until she's visited by the spirit of Marilyn, and that's where things get a little dicey. It's really very, very sweet, and very cute. And I, it made me want to go back and watch all of Marilyn Monroe's movies. Oh,

Michelle Newman 32:34

makes Carolyn want to go check out one of those pebbly orange

Kristin Nilsen 32:39

Monroe, right? Channeling Marilyn is what that one is.

Michelle Newman 32:41

Cool. I want to.. the first book I want to talk about is the one that Carolyn, like you said, over the past, you know, however many days, is one that I have devoured and read every night until my eyes close. And I know you all loved this book too, but this is a book called Everything has happened, and it is by T Greenwood, who is a friend of the Pop Culture Preservation Society. Because we want to say, thank you so much to Tammy for sending us the advanced reader copy, advanced readers copies of this of her book, which is available now. It was released in April, and you guys, it is so delicious. It is. It's a mystery, but here's the thing. I love a book like this so much because I don't like grisly murder mysteries. I don't like people being trapped or scared. I don't like them being scared or then murdered. Now, yes, this is about a young boy who, in 1986 went missing. We don't know what happened to him. Was he kidnapped? Was he, you know, is he lost? Is he still out there, you know, 50 something year or 437 years later. But the thing I love about this book is that it goes back and forth, back and forth. But the main characters, Charlie, definitely is as a main character, but the main character, Edie, is his sister. She was 18, but it goes back and forth

Kristin Nilsen 34:10

between the years. I mean, it goes back and forth between 1986 and now. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 34:14

it's going between 1986 and 2023 and but it's so, it's so great, because yes, at the heart of it is this mystery, right, of this, this boy, because now we're in 2023 he's been missing for how many years, but every time we go back to 1986 it's all, it's like the year leading up

Kristin Nilsen 34:36

to it

Michelle Newman 34:36

to when he went missing, so every time we go back to 1986 we get these delightful just slices of life from 1986 that all of us

Kristin Nilsen 34:48

full of 1980

Michelle Newman 34:49

shock full, that all of us can relate to. For instance, I just, I'm going to read straight from straight from the book here. I say, oh, so another one of the main characters, as named Trill, and. That is Edie's new girl in town, who becomes Edie's best friend. And then the relationship that grows between the two of them is just, just fills your heart. It's so wonderful. So, Trill says the Oscars are on Monday night, maybe I could come over to watch. The idea of Trill coming to my house made me feel queasy. I thought about Andy the way she hadn't wanted Blaine to pick her up at home, ashamed of how different their lives were. Though Trill certainly wasn't a rich snob, her home was magical, beautiful, artful, while mine was not. She thought John Hughes was Middle America. I tried to imagine Trill sitting on our ugly plaid couch, eating popcorn from the stainless steel barf bowl, wondered what she would make of our matted shag carpeting and popcorn ceilings. It's so just all the way around Tammy, but she goes, she writes under T. Greenwood, but the way she drops all these references in.. didn't you guys love that? Well, it really.. it's important because you have to believe that you're in 1986 Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 36:03

sorry. And that, and it really, it really does a good job of placing you right there. You can, you start to remember things, you get whose curd, dude, about things like, you even know there, you just mentioned the Oscars. They talk about all the contenders for the Oscars, and who they hope will win. Do you guys want to know who the contenders for the Oscars were. I love that right now includes it. This is a whole conversation they have. Okay, so I'm just going to tell you, so who hosted that year? Robin Williams and Jane Fonda did. So there has to be a little Mark and Mindy talk, right? And then the Best Picture nominees were Witness and Kiss of the Spider Woman and Brazil, and the big chill, is that right, but things like that just make the book so much more authentic. She's not just saying we had really big hair and we used Aquanet, right? She's really grounding you in the time period. It's

Carolyn Cochrane 36:56

very organic, the way that she weaves in those little moments that all of a sudden you're there, you're not there necessarily, it's written so well, but you're there because you've been there, literally, like you have. There's a scene where her mom has marked in the prom issue of 17 magazine some prom dress dresses that could be an option, not just any prom dresses, gunny sacks dresses,

Kristin Nilsen 37:23

and the

Carolyn Cochrane 37:24

roughly, and yes, and the pastel, I think she's, she calls them like Easter egg pastel colors, and you're there, you have been there, you know, you know that issue, probably you're in your head thinking, oh, I can think of those ads, I, I know that, and so it's, it's a way of almost being seen. I can remember the very first time I had one of these moments was when I read Judy Bloom's Summer Sisters, and I actually went back to think to look at some parts there, to look at some of the parts in the book, as well as she has not the chapters, don't have titles, but the parts of the book of Summer Sisters have titles, and they are all song titles, and I remember thinking how creative and how marketing marketable this all was, because this book came out in the early 90s when we all summer sisters. Sorry, I'm digressing a little bit, and that's when we're all kind of coming into our adulthood, having kids, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, yes. So, the two characters, if you haven't read Summer Sisters, they have the same experience as we had in the summers of, you know, 70s and 80s, and she just hear me out here. I remember looking at the parts that she titled, and I thought she is so smart. We know Judy Blume,

Michelle Newman 38:43

Judy.

Kristin Nilsen 38:44

Yes, of course,

Carolyn Cochrane 38:46

I just loved these titles. So one of the parts is called Rapture. Part three, We Are the World. Part four, didn't we almost have

Kristin Nilsen 38:55

it all?

Carolyn Cochrane 38:55

Part five, Steal the Night, and then they have dates next to it, but I just. I loved that I felt seen, so yeah, to the point I gotta put

Kristin Nilsen 39:04

that on my list for this summer. I read that book. Oh,

Michelle Newman 39:07

you did. I did a reread about two summers ago, and it's definitely a great summer reread almost every year. I will also say that Summer Sisters is a good, good example, but also Everything Has Happened by T Greenwood,

Kristin Nilsen 39:22

which is the one we were just talking about.

Michelle Newman 39:23

Yeah, what we, what we love about it is it's not just a book that takes place in 1986 We love those books too. We have def, we have a lot of those in our bookshop.org stores, but this, because it's going between 2023 and 1986 the 2023 version are is us. She's dealing with taking care of her mother. She's dealing with her older daughter, who was at college during Covid, but who now moved home and has stayed at home, right? Remember, and then she's dealing, she's still trying to solve this mystery of the missing brother. So I loved, did. Sort of, it was almost towards the end when we're back in 1986 or I don't know, the reference of Cyndi Lauper coming on the TV at 1030 going, "Do you know where your children are? and how that's hitting differently because her brother was missing, and so feeling like she was feeling like, "Oh, that made her really upset. But what I loved about the book was because we kept going back and forth, and very short chapters, like each little 1986 you know, memory was only maybe two pages. I love that when you can just keep it, just keeps that story moving, like I said, you all earlier, we all devoured it, we loved it, because it was so fast-paced. Yeah, you're, yes, you're, you're still solving the, you're still trying to figure out what happened to Charlie in 2023 but we're going back to 1986 and there's some new things that are coming to light, some new from 2023

Kristin Nilsen 40:50

2023

Michelle Newman 40:51

Now we're seeing them in a new light in 1986 and does the, does the mystery of Charlie's disappearance ever get solved? Yes, it does. I'm not going to say anything else about that. Everything comes full circle, so yeah. So everyone, we love T Greenwood. We love many of the books she's read. She's read everything has happened,

Kristin Nilsen 41:09

is the title of that.

Michelle Newman 41:10

Everything has happened. Yeah, what is the other one that we all really liked?

Kristin Nilsen 41:14

Such a pretty girl was a book from a couple of years ago, I think that we all read also. And this was also a little bit, it had some retro vibes to it, in that it sort of was inspired by the story of a certain teenage model, you might read, we were all obsessed with

Michelle Newman 41:33

Calvin Klein, obsession with her,

Kristin Nilsen 41:35

that's right, and she had a very interesting relationship with her mother. So, is it about that. No, it's not. It's just sort of reminiscent of that story. That one's called Such a Pretty Girl.

Michelle Newman 41:45

So, yay, T. Greenwood. Thank

Michelle Newman 41:46

you for

Michelle Newman 41:46

being a supporter of the Pop Culture Preservation Society, and we highly encourage you all to become a fan of her books.

Kristin Nilsen 41:52

I want to piggyback on Carolyn's Summer Sisters reference, because there's another book that uses song titles as chapter titles as well, and it's actually written by one of another one of our listeners. I have two books from our listeners today. It's called Yesterday's Song. It's by Kay Meldrum Denholm. Yesterday's Song, and I'm just going to read you the time. I actually wrote a blurb for it. She so kindly asked me to write a blurb for her book, and I'm just going to read the last part of it here, so you can get a little gist of it, because I read it so long ago. Told amid a backdrop of history with a 70s pop rock playlist and questions for a book club, the psychological saga Yesterday Song explores recovery from loss and trauma, the definition of family, the necessity of love, and the nature of forgiveness and redemption. The sentimental novel, a coming of age story for baby boomers and Gen Xers in the 1970s and 1980s centers on the power of music in healing, identity, inspiration, and connection. Well, that's kind of like what our podcast is, right? Yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 42:49

I just finished in the last couple of days yesteryear. I almost think we need to have a PCPS book club at some point too.

Kristin Nilsen 43:00

Yesteryear book club on Sunday night. Oh, you did. I already

Kristin Nilsen 43:04

did yesteryear book club. Keep going next one to read.

Carolyn Cochrane 43:07

Well, I top of my TBR. I, I really loved it, and loved is a weird word. I wish there was a different word to use, because it, it really challenged me, and and it made me think in different ways and understand things differently, and I can't say that it's tied up with a pretty bow at the end or anything like that, but it pays an error. Yes, definitely a page turner. I thought it was a fast read.

Michelle Newman 43:34

It was

Carolyn Cochrane 43:34

very that I talked about earlier in the episode that I was like, "Heck, I'm gonna sit down and read this. It's enjoyable, but again, that's a weird word to use for it too, but you need to read it. Let's just say everybody need to read it. And Hathaway has bought the rights to it, so it will be hopefully a movie at some point.

Kristin Nilsen 43:53

It's gonna go fast, because the, because the fervor is so great right now. This is the number one book that is being talked about. We had the correspondent for a while, and now yesteryear is all just, just Google yesteryear, and you will get so many hits, and

Michelle Newman 44:08

just so excited to read it.

Kristin Nilsen 44:09

It's so, so good. I mean, it's so good. I just like you said, Carolyn, like, good is good word, compelling. It's compelling, definitely. Well, and you'll want to talk to somebody about it, and creative in

Michelle Newman 44:20

all, like the ways I'd like to recommend, also for your summer reading list, a book called Where the Girls Were by Kate Schatz. I picked it for the cover, and I stayed for the story. The cover is so groovy, and so the cover is a piece of art. It's just.. it's fantastic, but it's basically the story of a young girl who is finishing her senior year of high school in the late 60s in San Francisco, or just right across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, and she, yeah, just lives up in kind of, she was, you know, going to be the valedictorian, she's going to Stanford, and she's done everything right her whole life, she has dotted every. I and crossed every t, and her mother throws the best parties, and you know everything. She is the quintessential good girl, and she goes to a party one night with her kind of wild cousin, but it's like her best friend over in San Francisco, and she falls in love with a sippy with a hippie, and she gets pregnant, and what's going to happen now to all of the dreams, she is pregnant. This is going to be, I mean, what is her mother going to tell all the women at the club? You know, she still has, you know, she still has to, you know, finish high school. She has to, well, what is going.. and this, I'm not spoiling anything, this is all I think on the flap, but she's she's close enough to finishing high school that she's able to graduate high school, and nobody knows, but her mother decides to solve the problem by sending her away to a house for unwed mothers in San Francisco, and but her mother's gonna tell everyone that she's taking a year to go to France and study art history, and so when she leaves, her mother gives her stack of postcards that have the Eiffel Tower on it, and everything, you're gonna need to write these to me, so I can put them on the fridge, and everything, but the entire story is basically about all of the other characters, who are all these other pregnant teenagers, and what are some of their backstories, and how are they treated? I'm happy to say it's not a story about abuse, or like anything like that, but it is very much about this. This was happening in the 60s, all over,

Kristin Nilsen 46:23

more often than not. Yes,

Michelle Newman 46:25

and,

Michelle Newman 46:25

and you know, abortion was obviously an issue there, but it was still very, you know, a very back, you'd have to go to a dirty alley, and you know, risk your life. But it's about all of the choices that were taken away from these girls, you know. This is when they, you know, they basically once they start going into labor, they drug them, so that when they wake up, the baby's already gone, and they can't have any, you know, they can't change their mind, they can't, whatever it is, so good, and so readable, and so quick, and you will fall in love with the main character, and a lot of the other girls that she, you know, you get to know their backstories, and they become this little family, these other pregnant girls, and then I loved it. You guys, I highly recommend it. It's called Where the Girls Were by Kate Schatz,

Kristin Nilsen 47:07

with the good cover,

Michelle Newman 47:08

such a good cover.

Kristin Nilsen 47:10

Carolyn, what else have you got?

Carolyn Cochrane 47:11

I also recently finished two books, both were recommended to me by Michelle. So one was called My Husband's Wife. wife, right?

Michelle Newman 47:24

I listened to that one. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 47:25

that was really good. And then Finding Grace, which I know both of you, I think, read. Oh, did you

Michelle Newman 47:31

finally read it?

Carolyn Cochrane 47:32

Yes, I'm not. So I finally finished that. Both of those are excellent. Just I listened, actually, to both of them while walking Duncan, because I have to walk Duncan now, because I can't just let him outside, so there's a lot of walking going on, so there's also a lot of listening, and those were two that I finished within the last like three weeks, both. Oh, good, yes, and I loved both of those, so good, happy, so to speak, stories,

Kristin Nilsen 47:58

feel-good stories,

Carolyn Cochrane 48:00

yeah. Well, my husband's wife, maybe not so much, but still good.

Kristin Nilsen 48:04

Okay, we haven't had any nonfiction, so I'm going to throw a nonfiction title out there. This one is called I Like to Watch. I like to watch.

Michelle Newman 48:12

Oh, I've seen that cover.

Kristin Nilsen 48:13

I love that cover. It's about TV, so everybody get your mind out of the gutter. It's about TV, and it's again another collection of essays, so if you don't want to commit to a whole book, you can pick and choose what essays you read. This is by a woman who's a TV critic, and she - her whole argument, and this is what I love - her whole argument is that, yeah, I know we called it the idiot box, and there is a lot of schlock on there, but the truth is, TV is an art form, and it is deserving of criticism, and so she grew up, and she became a TV critic, and she writes reviews and columns about TV shows. So this book is just a collection of her columns and reviews, and so you can read about The Sopranos, All in the Family, Girls, Sex in the City. It just.. it is feeding me, because these are.. this is our art in this day and age, this is it's not a throwaway medium. We spend a significant amount of our time watching TV, and she's giving it the, she's giving it the oomph that the, in terms of the, this sounds ridiculous, she's giving it the, the consideration. There we go, I got it. She's giving it the consideration that it deserves. If you want to talk, and if you want to revisit the last, the finale of The Sopranos, she's got a column for you in here. She's got a review. That's a hot, that's a hot topic. It is a hot topic. Yeah, it's really good.

Michelle Newman 49:33

Well, moving on to just the last two audio books that I have listened to that I like, just like I would just be sitting and listening, and I do a lot of like needle pointing and stuff, and sometimes I don't want to watch a show, so I'll listen. One of them is called Man Mabel, and that's kind of a hot book right now that people are talking about. It is by Sally Hepworth, who has a whole bunch of books. I've liked, I've liked almost every Sally Hepworth book I've read. This one I've listened to, and just because I was like, if I put this on my TBR, if I go buy it and put it in my TBR pile, I'll never, it'll never get to it, it'll, I just know it's gonna get getting pushed down. You guys, it's such a delightful listen. The narrators, the two narrators are perfect, because the whole story is Mabel when she's young, like a teenager, and Mabel when she's now in her 80s, so the old Mabel, the narrator is perfect, and they're Australian, which I love a good accent, and the Australian accent is my favorite accent, and the old woman.. I don't know, I need to look her up to see if she's actually an old woman. I think she has to be. She is brilliant. Mabel has the strongest voice in this book, and both narrators, young Mabel and old Mabel, nail it, and she is funny as hell. I have laughed out loud so many times listening to this book. It's also kind of a mystery type book, but not the gruesome, bloody, and scary, you know? I don't like gruesome, bloody, or scary, and I have enjoyed it so much, so I highly recommend Mad Mabel, either reading it, but I really recommend the audiobook on that one, and then a nonfiction book called that everybody's talking about right now, called Strangers by

Michelle Newman 51:11

Belle. Oh,

Kristin Nilsen 51:12

yes, I listened to that one too,

Michelle Newman 51:13

I listened to it too, and Belle reads it, and so I just loved hearing in her voice, she's just very kind of just kind of level, like her narration is just very level, but it's her

Kristin Nilsen 51:23

story.

Michelle Newman 51:25

And you guys, this is bonkers. It's called Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, and it's.. you don't.. I know that it's been so helpful to millions of people going through divorces, or that have had been in a divorce. I've been in a very, very happy, supportive, positive marriage for coming up on 33 years this month, and I still loved it, because it's a story, and you can't believe this happened to her. This is one that I did, a total Carolyn, after I read it. I went down every rabbit hole, she was.. it was an Oprah's book, so she was.. she has a great interview with Oprah Winfrey. I've seen her on Drew Barrymore. Now I've seen her anytime she's.. I follow her on Instagram, because I am so Team Bell, and I love hearing, and I just love that this was so healing for her. This writing was so healing for her, because she was done dirty,

Carolyn Cochrane 52:15

you guys. She was,

Kristin Nilsen 52:16

and it's one of those stories that makes you.. and everybody, whether it's you or somebody you know, everybody has a connection to somebody who's had a very happy marriage, and then one day the wife or the husband came and said, "No, we don't, and I'm leaving, and you're like, "But what? What? No, everything's fine. And her husband just got up and left in the middle of Covid,

Michelle Newman 52:39

and not just got up and left, but told her I don't want to be in this marriage anymore, and they had children at the time who were in their teens, all three were in their teens. He also said, I want out of this marriage, and I want out of this life. I don't want anything, I don't need anything to do with the kids anymore, I don't need anything to do with him. Yeah, didn't want any of it. He wanted to completely do a 180 on his life. I don't want any

Kristin Nilsen 53:00

of the houses

Michelle Newman 53:02

get through it, I couldn't stop listening because I couldn't, I couldn't stop hearing where her journey was going to go next, and we're all so glad that she has gone on this incredible healing journey, and she, she is at Oprah, she, her story became that story earned her sit down, another short Maui Maui, and I sit down with, oh

Kristin Nilsen 53:23

yeah, and it's short, it's short, yeah, so I, and for those of you who, who don't listen to audiobooks, I have difficulty with audiobooks, and this one I can, but I can listen to a memoir written, read by the author, and so this one did a really great job, I love that, I have one last book that I was just started, literally last night, you guys, because let me tell you what happened to me last night. I went to pub choir. Do you know about pub choir? No, no. Okay, this was at First Avenue. If you guys know what First Avenue is, 750 people, we all packed into First Avenue, where a woman named Astrid Jorgenson stood on the stage and taught the 750 people how to sing the song We Belong by Pat Benatar in three card harmony. Amazing, you guys, it was life changing singing Pat Benatar with 750 people in harmony, in harmony, in harmony, and so the woman who was on the stage, her name is Astrid Jorgensen, and she has a memoir called Average at Best. I love Average at Best, because her whole theory is she said only a few people can be best. Why are we all trying to be best when only five of us will be best? The rest of us are average at best, and why should we, the average people, not be allowed to sing? We should all be able to see, yes, even if we're not the best. And so she is, she's so funny on the stage, she's like, okay, if you don't know, I'm going to tell you this part, but if you can't, if you can't figure it out, go find the music to. Nature, there's somebody around you who can sing it. You have to stand by them, and then you just copy them. Hold hands, everybody, hold hands, and just copy that person next to you.

Carolyn Cochrane 55:09

My heart, it sounds so wonderful.

Kristin Nilsen 55:11

Yes, my heart was exploding, and you get to know, like, the people around you. Everybody is so earnestly into it, and everybody is around you is like you're just bonding, you're bonding without even like there's one guy who kept every time we would sing, he would like turn around at a certain part and look at me and like nod, like

Kristin Nilsen 55:29

it

Kristin Nilsen 55:30

was so that's so fun, healing and fun, and as we walked in we were like, what do you think the crowd's gonna be like, because first of all, it's First Avenue. Long ago, I was like, I think this is my last concert at First Avenue. I'm too old for this now. And the song was a retro song. It's Pat Benatar, but Astra Jorgensen is in her 30s, so we're like, Who's it? Sounds very trendy. It's very, very trendy, you guys. It was 100% Gen Xers. Oh, yeah, all. all of

Carolyn Cochrane 56:03

us, and you know what, it's probably not a coincidence that it was all Gen Xers, because I would have loved to have been in a choir when I was growing up, but we had to try out, and I was probably not even average at best, but I never got to do that, and so I wonder, how many other Gen Xers would have loved to have been a part of a collective choir, but you know, either you had to choose an elective and you were in band or something, but

Michelle Newman 56:29

that's

Carolyn Cochrane 56:30

a thought that I could do that is she on, is she on tour,

Michelle Newman 56:33

or she's

Kristin Nilsen 56:34

on tour, so check it, pub choir.com check it out, because it could be coming to a place near you, I highly recommend it. You will feel like a million dollars when you walk out. Her, so her memoir, average at best. She's from Australia, also, by the way. So, I'm in my mind, I'm reading it with an Australian accent, and she is hysterical. So, not only is this short, it's also super funny, and because I'm reading it with an Australian accent, it's also very endearing, but and this actually, this book does this is complicated, but stick with me here. The book is out in Australia right now, in the US it will come out in August, but we were able to buy it because we were at her, we were at her event. That doesn't mean you can't preorder it, you can preorder it right now, and you'll get it in August, so it'll still count for your summer reading log, so you can get your Super Bowl.

Carolyn Cochrane 57:25

Well, I'm going to share a couple that are on my TBR list, and I've added, actually, a couple more as we have been same as I am going to do several of the books that you guys have mentioned, but one that I'm really excited about is called Work in Progress. Okay, it is a memoir. It is by James Martin, who is a Jesuit priest. Why are you gonna do that, Carolyn? Actually, one of our listeners emailed us and said, you guys have to read this. This is so Gen X. This book, you won't even believe how Gen X it is, because here we are. I know who James Martin is, and I do love his message, and in terms of the Catholic face, he's on the side I would, I would be on, but anyway, he, his title is Work in Progress: Confessions of a Bus Boy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest.

Michelle Newman 58:17

I gotta listen to that, gonna listen to that. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 58:19

and Stephen Colbert has a blurb on the back, Mary Carr, who I love, kind of the queen of memoir, and he has an accompanying playlist, it's the playlist that he listened to while he was writing the book, and I just want to share some of the songs on his playlist, the very first one that comes up, Afternoon Delight, our Jesuit priest has afternoon delight on his thing. Let's see, Bohemian Rhapsody, we're all alone. Rita Coolidge, Summer Nights from Greece. We've got Dust in the Wind, Roxanne, one way or another. Rosalita, another one of my favorites, Bruce Springsteen. We got the beat, he's got the go-gos on here, he's got, let's see, what else. There was another one I wanted, Emotional Rescue by The Rolling Stones, The Logical Song by Supertramp. I mean, this is, this could have been my playlist of my youth.

Kristin Nilsen 59:16

That's a good playlist,

Carolyn Cochrane 59:18

a really good playlist. That this is going to be really interesting to read, because he up until the priest part, I mean, there were so many other things that I could relate to, in terms of jobs, and I'm sure many Gen Xers could. The cover, well, you guys can't see it, but it's, it's like him in a photo booth, literally, like when he was a teenager, and so film from when he was in a photo booth and I just love the fact that it's so Gen X centric that we had a listener email us and say you gotta listen or read or listen, that's a good recommendation, so that's that is one, and then the other one that I thought looked really interesting kind of picked it up for the cover and the. Title, and the subject matter, it's called You Didn't Hear This From Me, and it's kind of an anthropological look at gossip, and why we gossip, and it's, you know, I figure we kind of do it on here, so I felt like maybe I could give it a little bit of some science behind why we like talking about other people.

Michelle Newman 1:00:22

Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:00:23

so there you go. You didn't hear this from me.

Michelle Newman 1:00:25

Two other titles, and again, everybody, all of these titles will be in our bookshop.org shop, but two others that I have read in 2026 that are five star reads from me that I've loved. One is called So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder, or Gender G I N D E R, very take on a on a big chill type thing. You're going to follow the same group of friends through four decades, but every chapter is a different party they were at.

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:52

Oh, cool.

Michelle Newman 1:00:53

So that's how we get their relationship, but very much a friend group that grows, and so they're all about our age now. So that's what's kind of a fun thing, and then American Fantasy by Emma Straub. Oh, American

Kristin Nilsen 1:01:04

fantasy,

Michelle Newman 1:01:05

yeah, so it's very much.. it's a cruise. It is also actually all based on a on a fan girl cruise that Emma Straub went on. Was it New Kids on the Block?

Kristin Nilsen 1:01:12

New Kids on the Block. I loved this book. It's very cute. It's very quick and accessible, and they, of course, it's not actually New Kids on the Block. It's called Boy Talk, and the people on the cruise are called the Talkers. There's one reluctant talker there, and she's sort of like she has a bird's eye view to the entire phenomenon, but you also get to know the individuals in the band, they have personalities, and you'll get, oh, this is the Joey one, and this is the, this is the John character, this is the Jordan character. It's very, very satisfying. It's, yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:01:40

it was a cute, and it's a great, it's a perfect talk about a good summer, like a beach vacation read. I love it. One that is still in my TBR, and you guys, how have I not read it? Because of the title alone, and because of what it's about. But it's called Meet the Newmans, and oh, I love still haven't read it yet. It's very cute, it's very cute, so cute. And then go gentle was actually an Oprah's book club pick, but I love the author, Maria Semple. I've read several of her books that are five that I own for years ago, decades ago, and they're five-star reads. She's probably about our age, and the synopsis sounds amazing. And another one, a previous favorite book of mine, five-star read that I probably picked for the cover, about, I don't know, I want to say, like, maybe two or three years ago now, is called Mama, M A A M E, but you pronounce that Mamae by Jessica George. I loved that book, the cover is incredible. She has a new one out right now called Love by the Book, so those, that's definitely those are like the top yesteryear is my next read, yeah. And then I think

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:41

Meet the

Michelle Newman 1:02:42

Newmans keeps getting bumped, but maybe I just need to

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:44

meet the Newmans is is a fictional take on on Ozzie and Harriet, like fictional behind the scenes of what if what if we knew what what if all was not right in the house of Ozzie

Michelle Newman 1:02:57

seems super cute, the cover

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:59

is just

Michelle Newman 1:02:59

spectacular, and I mean, my last name is Newman. How do I know I own the book? I just haven't heard it yet.

Michelle Newman 1:03:05

This is

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:06

so fun, you guys. Summer reading, it's on. Summer reading program is on. I want you to get your reading logs. Okay, Carolyn, can you remind people how they can find our little store on bookshop.org

Carolyn Cochrane 1:03:20

Sure, they can go to our website, Pop preservationists.com and then click on the Support Us tab, which will take you to our page that has different ways that you can help support PCPs. One of those being by shopping at our shop on bookshop.org Well, shop, shop, shop, shop, shop, and so if you click on that link from our website, it will take you directly there. Or right now, I will tell you what that address is. If you want to just jot this down, stop driving, don't do it while you're driving, but it would be www.bookshop.org/shop/pcps

Michelle Newman 1:04:01

Oh, that's easy.

Michelle Newman 1:04:02

Boom, yeah, so

Carolyn Cochrane 1:04:03

there you go. That'll get you there. Or worst-case scenario, just send

Michelle Newman 1:04:08

us a DM. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:04:09

Link Tree. It's also in our Linktree. Yeah, like if you're on social media on Instagram, you can hit the link in our bio, which takes you to a whole bunch of other links of ways you can find us, support us and read things we've done and all that kind of stuff. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 1:04:24

reading will save us all. Everybody, I truly am not being cheeky. It's gonna save us all. It's gonna save our brains. It's gonna save our country. Learn, learn, learn. Read, read, read. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the Cast of Three's Company. Two good times, two happy days, two Little House on the Prairie. Cheers,

Michelle Newman 1:04:43

cheers, everyone.

Kristin Nilsen 1:04:44

Happy reading. The information, opinions, and comments expressed on the Pop Culture Preservation Society podcast belongs solely to Carolyn, the Crushologist, and Hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time the PCPs. Is written, produced, and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional WJM Studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nanu Nanu, keep on truckin' and may the force be with you, you.