In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, guests Garth Risk Hallberg and Jason Tanz chronicle their history of living in Montclair and the creation of a book club enlivening their shared reading experiences.
Guest bios:
Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of City on Fire, the novella Field Guide to the North American Family, and The Second Coming(out May 28). In 2017, Granta named him one of the Best of Young American Novelists. His work has been translated into seventeen languages.
Jason Tanz is currently the editor-in-chief of at Lyft and before that worked at Wired for many years. His writing has appeared in many publication such as the New York Times, Esquire, and Fortune. He is also the author of the 2007 book Other People's Property: A Shadow History of Hip Hop in White America. Jason also serves on the board of directors for the Montclair Public Library Foundation.
Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available on our website.
Local Interest:
Register for Upcoming Events.
The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup.
Recording and editing by Timmy Kellenyi, Bree Testa, and Derek Mattheiss at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.
Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.
Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton.
Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.
Thank you to the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room for their hard work and love of books!
If you liked our episode please like, follow, and share!
Stay in touch!
Email: wbpodcast@watchungbooksellers.com
Social: @watchungbooksellers
Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest on our shows, events, and book recommendations!
In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, guests Garth Risk Hallberg and Jason Tanz chronicle their history of living in Montclair and the creation of a book club enlivening their shared reading experiences.
Guest bios:
Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of City on Fire, the novella Field Guide to the North American Family, and The Second Coming(out May 28). In 2017, Granta named him one of the Best of Young American Novelists. His work has been translated into seventeen languages.
Jason Tanz is currently the editor-in-chief of at Lyft and before that worked at Wired for many years. His writing has appeared in many publication such as the New York Times, Esquire, and Fortune. He is also the author of the 2007 book Other People's Property: A Shadow History of Hip Hop in White America. Jason also serves on the board of directors for the Montclair Public Library Foundation.
Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available on our website.
Local Interest:
Register for Upcoming Events.
The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup.
Recording and editing by Timmy Kellenyi, Bree Testa, and Derek Mattheiss at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.
Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.
Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton.
Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.
Thank you to the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room for their hard work and love of books!
If you liked our episode please like, follow, and share!
Stay in touch!
Email: wbpodcast@watchungbooksellers.com
Social: @watchungbooksellers
Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest on our shows, events, and book recommendations!
Hello everybody and welcome back to the Watchung Booksellers podcast. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Kathryn and I'm here with Marni, and we're so glad to share another conversation about books with you. Today. We have two more authors in our neighborhood Garth Hallberg and Jason Tanz. Today they're going to discuss how you build community through books and why bookstores are an essential part of that process.
Marni :That's right. So, as we mentioned in our first episode, writing can be isolating and a bookstore is a great way to break up the monotony of working alone and just chat with booksellers or someone else who happens to be browsing in the same section as you.
Kathryn :Garth was hard at work on his latest novel, the Second Coming, which will be hitting stores on May 28th, when he took a break and decided to head to the bookstore, he ran into Jason Tanz and struck up a conversation about a challenging classic novel. That led to a book club and more challenging novels. We'll let them tell you all about it after we introduce them.
Marni :Garth Risk Hallberg's first novel, City on Fire, was a New York Times and international bestseller and was selected as one of the best books of 2015 by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR and many others. It was adapted into the Apple TV Plus series of the same name. He's also the author of the novella A Field Guide to the North American Family and soon-to-be-released novel, the Second Coming.
Kathryn :Jason Tanz has lived in Montclair since 2010. He is currently editor-in-chief at Lyft and before that worked at Wired for many years. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, esquire, fortune and many other publications. He is also the author of the 2007 book Other People's Property A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America. He serves on the board of directors at the Montclair Public Library Foundation and is a two-time consecutive winner of the Gordonh urst Avenue.
Marni :Chili Cook-Off.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Enjoy the conversation and we'll be back afterwards to fill you in on what's coming up in store. So, Jason, I don't really know much about how you came to live in Montclair and you predate me here. That's right, the old guard, you were an earlier adopter. Yeah, I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your history as a writer and how you ended up here and whether those two things interacted at all along the way.
Jason Tanz:Yeah, Okay, they sort of did in an abstract way. So I, you know, I started my career in print magazines which makes me sound like I'm, you know, 3,000 years old and I was working at Wired. I was at Wired for many years, which inspired me to do a couple of stints in San Francisco, and our first stint in San Francisco we were living in Brooklyn. As one does as one does, moved out to San Francisco, had our first child, our son, and it came time to move back and I could not face the idea of trying to find an apartment in Brooklyn with a son. How old was your son at this point? He was just born.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Okay, zero to six months. And had you published your book yet, or not?
Jason Tanz:Yes, my book came pre-son. Okay, yeah, that was like 2007. So this would have been 2009. And Denise, my wife, had a friend in New Jersey and she reached out to her and said, hey, should we move to New Jersey? And her friend was like she, a lovely person, grew up in Rumson sort of a different vibe than us, you know. And she said, oh, you guys are just Montclair people. And we looked it up on Wikipedia. We saw that Stephen Colbert lived here and we were like, well, that's good.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You look up.
Jason Tanz:Montclair people.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Like what is?
Jason Tanz:yeah, exactly you know media folks and sort of culturally engaged whatever, whatever. But she did. She had us pegged and we came out. I mean, it was a bit of a whirlwind. We had like a weekend. You know, it was one of these things where we gave ourselves no time to find a house. We had an infant with us and we were house hunting. We hadn't seen any houses that we liked and Denise's mother is a real estate agent and she was sending us all these listings and there was one house. Denise is from Long Island. Denise is from Long Island yeah.
Jason Tanz:And there was one listing that was no longer available. And Denise was like that's our house. And so she was like we'd seen all these houses. We didn't see anything we wanted. She was like I'm going to knock on the door of that house and I was like you're insane, so I'm going to stay in the car. So she, so she went up, knocked on the door and just said hey, I saw your listing isn't up anymore. We really loved your house. Are you still interested? And they were like well, come on in and take a look. And one thing led to another we ended up buying the house Before you knew made.
Jason Tanz:Denise more or less likely to want the house.
Garth Risk Hallberg:She's going to lose you to the bookstore. In terms of the budgeting yeah it might have been a problem.
Kathryn :No, no of course.
Jason Tanz:So that's how we got here, yeah, and it's been awesome. I mean, it's always felt like a very special place. You know, we connect with people in a variety of ways, but you know, we know our neighbors right Like we, we, we people look out for each other, like we feel like we live in this kind of very Norman Rockwell like kind of idyllic place. But one of the ways that we found to connect with people as well, and certainly how you and I connect is over books and reading, which is like a really I don't know. It feels like this sort of there's this whole network of writers and readers here that, in addition to professionally, just sort of advocationally, it creates a lot of bonds.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Well, I should say. I mean you connect with people in a lot of different ways, particularly you, because I remember you popping up after we moved here, at like like every, I would go to parties, you know, and each party would have a non-overlapping group of people, cause I think it was actually like, as in the city, there's several non-overlapping networks, of course, somehow, jason dances in all of them.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Oh, that's very flattering this is a person's party and I can't remember which one I met you at, but you were on the kind of news and journalism side which was interesting and obviously the town is, you know, full of journalists. So you were kind of on my radar in that way. I thought, oh, this is interesting that Jason knows you know so many of these people. Of course, those people are often either they were your colleagues as journalists or they were people you knew through you know they were avid readers or something like that. So I kind of I knew you were someone who read a lot before I actually think I talked to you about books Interesting.
Jason Tanz:Yeah Well, tell me about how you, I mean what drew you to Montclair. I mean, you know, obviously it has this reputation as a place for writers and readers.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Was that in your mind when you started looking out here? Well, it's funny, I was. I had, I had written, you know, this novel. That's about the city and my undimmed love for the city. But like you, you know, I was in love with the city and I was in love with being young and in love with being totally free to do whatever I want. And then at a certain point, I had two kids all of a sudden and we had actually left the city for a little while and gone to live in Europe to do book tour stuff, and I had a friend who's Catalan and she had expatriated to Barcelona. So we, you know, we moved around the corner from her.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Oh, my gosh, because I just didn't want to leave the kids behind.
Garth Risk Hallberg:My kids were little you know, and I couldn't keep flying transatlantic and just being away from them, so we kind of posted up over there and something about it how long were you there? Like long were you there? Like I think a little over three months, uh-huh, um, like a season. That sounds heavenly it. What it was really was like a lot of perspective because, yeah, I was hanging out in these kind of three euro, you know bars, two euro maybe, and you know my people that I was, you know, eating patatas bravas with were like bus drivers and teachers and doctors and actors and there wasn't kind of the intense social sorting that was happening in the city.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, and I realized how much I missed that. That was what I remembered about new york. You know, when I was in my 20s was like my neighbors were like bakers and photographers and, you know, construction workers. And by my mid-30s my neighbors were like, you know, no knock on anyone, no judgment, but like finance guys. And we're people, finance people.
Marni :Yes, right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And advertising folks and money launderers. I think Paul Manafort, Trump's erstwhile campaign manager, had, you know, that property of his that was caught up in. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah of course the feds, I think, ended up owning it.
Jason Tanz:It was on my block it was on your block, really, yeah, and you were like, who can afford to just let this get empty?
Garth Risk Hallberg:And there's your answer, right right. So when we came back we were like maybe, you know, maybe we could live outside the city and I had remembered it as different than my image of suburbia, yes, like it had street life, it had, you know, a good mix of people, and I also remember it being sort of fairly wholesome and having, like this incredible integrated public school system, which was really important.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yes, and and so we just kind of came out here. One day I had one friend who was a writer, novelist, Matt Thomas, who was living out here, and I knew another friend's editor, Reagan Arthur, who had gone on to become my publisher, lived out here and that was kind of all I had to go on. But my wife was like I'll never live in Jersey. And I was like I think I thought the same thing, I think it's prettier than you remember and we drove out here and there just happened to be a house for sale and I had never looked at one before and as a novelist, you know, we weren't even necessarily looking for one, but I was like, oh, an open house, that's material.
Kathryn :It starts in an hour. Like let's go.
Garth Risk Hallberg:This could turn into a weird play right? And we were kind of like, oh that.
Jason Tanz:Like a Richard Ford scene.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, but we were kind of like that's like so much nicer than what we're seeing in the city. And then on the way out of town we drove by the bookstore and that was the clincher Totally. It was right by the train station. I was like this is about a seven minute walk from what would be our house and it was like this little oasis. It reminded me of one of my favorite bookstores in the world, which is the London Review Bookshop. I'm part Scandinavian, so it had that hygge thing lots of wood. They keep it nice and warm in there in the winter and it just felt very welcoming and I was like, all right, I can live here, like I know nothing else about this town, but I know, you know, I can take my daily walk, you know, get a coffee and go to the bookstore.
Jason Tanz:Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I have always there is something about like little independent bookstores that you just it is there's. I just you always want to just spend time there.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah.
Jason Tanz:Like want to just spend time there. Yeah, like it's, it's welcoming, it's, even if you don't spend money, like and having it. This sort of goes to how we ended up forming this little book group that we're in. You know, I had a bad day at work at the technology company that I used to work at and, yeah, I know it's hard to imagine, and this was during, must've been during the pandemic, you know cause. So I was working from home all the time. Oh, I think.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I totally it was.
Jason Tanz:It was during the pandemic. I totally forgotten about that, but not during the we can't leave the house. It was. But still like we had to mask up and all that stuff.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, I think, and I can do the math on this this would have been the summer of 21.
Jason Tanz:I know it was summer, so post-vaccine yeah, post-vaccine vaccine, right. So maybe I wasn't masked at that point, but in any case I was like I gotta get out of this felt mask I felt right spiritually and metaphysically, you're still wearing a mask I did, it never came off and I was just like I gotta, I gotta go to the bookstore, like, just like, go blow off some steam and go to the bookstore.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And so can we pause there for just a second, because the one thing that it's like it's, I've memory, hold it for one. And then, not everyone listening may right even know, but like there had been, you know, the long period of the bookstore being closed. Yes, so our libraries were closed, right and sorry. The bookstore was not closed. The bookstore was in the back. Yeah, that's right, the bookstore was closed for a bit, like you couldn't go in, it was locked, but they ran. The bookstore was in the back. Yeah, that's right, the bookstore was closed for a bit, like you couldn't go in. It was locked, but they ran the bookstore out of the loading dock and they would order, you know, anything you wanted and then put it in a bag with your name out back. That's right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And I thought like, oh my god, is the bookstore going to go under? Yeah, absolutely I. As I thought about many other things I love, of course, not Not just here, but also in the city. Sure, all these little small businesses that make up this kind of Jane Jacobs fabric, right. And in fact, like week over week, the number of bags out on the loading dock went from like it was surprisingly big. The first week it was like 80, 100 bags of books waiting for you to put it up and then by the end of that phase, the pandemic. It was like 10,000 bags of books per week.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, because that was the only thing people could do to connect and you'd run into your masked neighbors on the loading dock. Yeah, yeah. So when the bookstore reopened and you could actually say I had a bad day at work, I'm going to go to the bookstore. That was a big deal. It was a big deal.
Jason Tanz:Yeah, that's right. That's absolutely right. You can just shut thinking about this again.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, sorry, I'm putting the mask back on. Yes, put the mask back on.
Jason Tanz:So I walked in and I, you know, I always have sort of what I want to read next in my mind, or maybe even written down, and I was like I'm not going to, I'm going to go in blind. I just I want to be surprised and sort of let the spirit move me. And I saw this book there, this giant book Anniversaries by this guy, uwe Johnson, which I'd never heard of before at all. And I, you know, read the description and it was very intriguing. This, you know, it was in the late 60s, a German expat and her daughter living in Manhattan, seeing these sort of these familiar trends of the US in the 60s versus her childhood growing up under Nazi rule. And I went up to Margot and just and who I didn't know and who didn't know me. I mean, I knew her by reputation but I didn't have a relationship with her.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Who is the owner of the?
Jason Tanz:bookstore, right, and I just said am I ever like? This looks interesting, am I ever actually going to read this book? And she said, well, I don't know't know, but Garth, I don't know if you know Garth, but he recommended that we carry it and of course I did know you a little bit from these parties that we met each other at and I thought, oh well, that's kind of good enough for me. You know, sure I appreciate that's an interesting guy.
Jason Tanz:I trust his taste so I picked it up, assuming correctly that it would live untouched you on the bedside table for many months.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And then we happened to run into each other, but perhaps assuming incorrectly that I had actually read it.
Jason Tanz:Well, that is true, that is true, yes, so it's, you know, one of the marvels of.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You know the hand-selling phenomenon of, like you know, one of the things Amazon can't. One of the questions Amazon can't answer is am I really going to read?
Jason Tanz:this book? Yes, right, right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:But there's also the kind of marvelous synchronicity of her slightly, you know, getting wrong or implying that I had recommended, I'd recommended they carry it, but I hadn't recommended it because I hadn't read it, because nobody has read it.
Jason Tanz:Yeah, I'm trying to remember, it's so long. She might have said even like Garth says, it's great, or something like that.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Well, what had happened was I had, and I just I brought a copy of this book because I thought it might be a great sound effect.
Jason Tanz:I don't know how these books work.
Garth Risk Hallberg:But if I drop it on the table, it's, and that's the first volume and it's a paperback. It's like 1,600 pages long. And I had had a friend, a German friend, German novelist friend who was living in Manhattan for a year I think he might have been on a fellowship or something. It was a World Cup year, I think it was probably 2008 that we were hanging out and he had decided that he was going to read this book. And the is set up as one chapter per day of the year 1967 to 1968. There's a chapter for August 1st, a chapter for August 2nd and so on.
Jason Tanz:Some of these chapters are half a paragraph and some of them are 50 pages Exactly.
Garth Risk Hallberg:He was just going to read one per day for the year that he was in New York because he couldn't figure out how am I going to get myself to read this great German novel? Yeah, and I was like I've never heard of this thing. That's so interesting. Has it been translated? And it like sort of had, like parts of it had, yeah, and like chunks, right, yeah, but like parts left out, which is totally weird given the setup of the book. Like they are going to leave out October, right, and I got him to write an essay about it that I thought was really good.
Garth Risk Hallberg:We published that on the Millions and then I kind of forgot about it. I put it on my list like hey, if that's ever translated, you know you should get that. And then this edition came out in 2017, I think maybe a year earlier, came out in 2017, I think maybe a year earlier. And I happen to know the translator, who's a really phenomenal translator Damien Searles. He just Jan Fosse book that won the Nobel, I gather he got to go to Stockholm. So I was kind of in touch with Damien and we were in the second or third year of the Montclair Literary Festival, which was this like miracle of moving here. I think I moved here at the end of 2016. And in April of 2017, it was like we're starting a literary festival. You don't even have to get in the car.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You can just walk to the literary festival. So I'd done a few events and I'd been approached about putting something together and I thought this is like my killer commercial instinct, right?
Kathryn :I was like, well, I'm really interested in translation, sure would be a huge draw to do a panel on translation Right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And, to their credit, the organizers were like okay, you know, like go for it, which is that's kind of what I was looking for. It's kind of like punk rock, like you know, as long as it's interesting and smart and creative, like why not? Whereas I felt living in the city, everything was trending toward kind of whatever's hot new, glamorous etc.
Garth Risk Hallberg:So I reached out to Damien and I reached out to Elena Ferrante's translator, Anne Goldstein, whose work I really, really admired, and I knew the Ferrante TV show was coming out on HBO and I knew there were some Ferrante readers in the community. From the bookstore I knew those were flying off the shelves and I love those books.
Jason Tanz:Yeah, of course.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And I got a very talented translator named Emma Ramadan, who translates from the French, who I knew, you know, through a friend of a friend. And then Ferrante's publisher, michael Reynolds, agreed to do this panel. Like, everyone said yes, which is kind of weird. Yeah, everyone was coming from Brooklyn or whatever. People were just great about it. And then we drew for a translation panel like an incredible crowd it was like 80 people. I think that's impressive Because people in Jersey were just hungry for, like, let's go to Montclair and make a day of it.
Kathryn :Yeah, let's have got this festival.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Right and Margo and the bookstore were serving as the bookseller, so I had said you need to order this.
Jason Tanz:Ah, got it For the panel.
Garth Risk Hallberg:For that panel, I was like people are going to run out of this panel and you're going to sell like 50 of these the 1,600 page.
Kathryn :So when I I always felt.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I saw it sitting on the shelf months later at Watchung Booksellers and I felt kind of sheepish, like I forced you to order this. Right right you to order this Right right Like. Is anybody ever going to buy?
Jason Tanz:this book. Oh, that's amazing. I'm not sure I knew all that. That's that you felt guilty. That's incredible.
Garth Risk Hallberg:So then I saw you.
Jason Tanz:I think outside of the coffee shop Paper Plane. Yeah, do you remember that? I do, because I was actually meeting with the. I was becoming a member of the board of the Public Library Foundation and so I was interviewing there and then you walked by.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Hence your support the damn library emails.
Jason Tanz:Yes, exactly my increasingly hysterical fundraising emails.
Garth Risk Hallberg:This Jason guy knows everybody. Everybody is anybody. He's at their party, that's right. Anybody who's into books he's talked to.
Jason Tanz:Right, that's it, and I've shaken them down. So, anyway, yeah, you walked by and I said, oh hey.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I understand. I just purchased your favorite book of all time. I think that's in fact what you said, and I was, like you know, sheepishly like oh cool man, I give you. I hope you like it as much as I am sure I will when I get around to reading it.
Jason Tanz:I give you a lot of credit because you went, for you didn't say anything at first. You went and you got your coffee and then you came out and you were like listen, I have to tell you something, I've only ever read the first 50 pages and if you want to read it, maybe we should read it together. And you know what Honestly, thank God you did, because I cannot imagine reading a book like this and not having somebody to talk to about parse things through. You know, it's almost like the tree falling in the forest, like. I remember when I was right out of college and I read Gravity's Rainbow for the first time, and I'm one of those guys who was like, whose world got rocked by Gravity's Rainbow and like, and it was like the internet was still quite young back then, but one of the first sort of internet experiences I had also was like joining this listserv of like Pynchon dorks and that must have been such an intense.
Garth Risk Hallberg:that's the list serve-iest list serve yes it was.
Jason Tanz:I think having at least an arm's length distance from those people was probably good, but it did. Let me sort of feel like I was still experiencing this book in some way. Like if I had read it and had nobody to talk to about it and also nothing to like read online, to like think about it more, I wouldn't have gotten nearly as much out of it, obviously. And so the idea that you would read this 1800 page book or whatever and then just like that's it yeah, you know what I mean Like there were a couple of things written, but it's not like this is a book that has a huge following.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I think for you and the book, I mean, I think the. I think the book also needs that in order to have a life Like it's not really a book that's designed Like you know, dennis Johnson, train Dreams is 90 pages long, maybe 110. It's as perfect a piece of writing as exists and you read it and you're like I had a transcendent experience of beauty. And the discussion you have about train dreams is have you read Train Dreams and people are like yeah, it's amazing, but a book like this and that's that's that's it, that's the connection.
Garth Risk Hallberg:It's like you're giving someone the gift of train dreams, this book, and some you know that are like it, and I don't, I don't even just think it's like big big books for big big boys, or you know, I have this kind of caricature in my mind, right? And it's probably unfair, but of like the person whose world was rocked by Pynchon. But who's yeah?
Garth Risk Hallberg:there are a lot of them out there, and I'm probably one of them, but you know, it's not just those books that need a deeper community of discussion, but, like you know, like the Warmth of Other Suns is one of those books, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Garth Risk Hallberg:It's a big commitment and you walk out of it and you're just like to finish, to really finish this book. I need to discuss it with someone. Yes, yes. So yeah, that was interesting. I can say, like there wasn't a huge amount of calculation in my mind, I think there was a line for coffee and I was thinking, and I was, and I probably there was the guilt there too and I was like, oh man, I suckered this guy into buying this. You know, it could have been a beautiful friendship, we know all the same people, but I just suck at identifying what's no doubt a wonderful book but that he's never going to read and it's.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I'm looking at the. It doesn't. They didn't print the price on here, but I think it's like you know $35, $40 for two paperbacks.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And then I thought like we have just been in this pandemic where the opportunities to connect with people over shared experiences, not least books, have been so attenuated. I've never been in a book club. Jason's been on my radar as like someone to hang out with more and I was like, yeah, this feels this book club. Let's do a book club. That's great, let's have a book club. So I think I was like, if you want to have a book club on this, like that's probably a good way to read this.
Jason Tanz:It was perfect. I'm so glad you did. And then we have to mention that we also brought in my neighbor, Laura Le Grand, who is an old friend, you know she lives seven doors down from here.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You guys are on the literary mafia strip there, the Gordonh urst- Wildwood syndicate of writers and readers.
Jason Tanz:We're very intimidating, I'm sure.
Garth Risk Hallberg:All the best writers and readers in New Jersey ended up on two streets in.
Jason Tanz:Montclair. Well, be that as it may, I knew Laura. I ended up on two streets in Montclair. Well, be that as it may, I knew Laura. Our kids hang out, we know each other really well, but one of the things that we would talk about a lot is that she had read all the Knausgaard books and I'd also read all the Knausgaard books, and that's another thing that's like very fun to sort of talk about. Yeah, you know, it's another one of those phenomenon. It's an experience, yeah, yeah, that to share it with somebody is Years of your life. Yeah, absolutely. And so when you know the thought of like okay, we've got who's up for reading 1,800 pages of, you know, like Laura immediately.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Do you remember what my condition was?
Garth Risk Hallberg:We had to find a woman to join the group I was like this can't just be two guys and like a very long book. I happen to. I mean, I'm like such a promiscuous reader, polyamorous reader maybe I just I have so many different channels that my taste runs in Sure and I recognize that there's a value, particularly now in our kind of brand-focused culture, to differentiating among them and being like I'm the kind of person who reads X but not Y. Right, but something that I really loved about Watching Booksellers when I first moved out here was unlike my local bookstore in Brooklyn, which I also adored the late lamented book court.
Kathryn :May it rest in peace which really felt like it was like a bookstore. For me it was literally everything.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Every book facing the door is like we have chosen this because this is the kind of thing you like. The bookstore here was much more like it had the stuff that was addressed to me, but had a lot of stuff that was addressed to many different kinds of readers and I tend to think that these long books can sometimes get pigeonholed as, like you know, they're like for dudes who want to like flex their brain muscles or something Right, and the discussion can be very grad, student-y, like.
Jason Tanz:They're like puzzles that there's like a solution to and we're going to crack the code, and I think that sometimes there's certain books I can think of that I feel like that approach has done a disservice to, or at least the way that I read them was very emotional rather than very cerebral, like which. I mean, I have a guess, but which? Which books are you talking?
Garth Risk Hallberg:about. Well, I mean the Bolaño books, the Knausgaard books, and it's funny, it's like to me the Ferrante books are in the same universe but nobody talks about them that way. Right, and I think there's a gendered thing there. Like nobody approaches them like this. You know secret text that only initiates are into. You know Infinite Justice on that list Right.
Jason Tanz:That's what I was thinking.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And I guess I can say like I had written a really long novel that I basically wrote with my heart. I can say like I had written a really long novel that I basically wrote with my heart. But I think the length of it, which in my mind was like Dickens, George Eliot, kind of 19th century yes, I was concerned that it might read as David Foster I love Pynchon but like I'm not, that's just not how I write, and I read Pynchon with my heart instead of my brain.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, yeah yeah, my Pynchon like top five is really idiosyncratic like which ones.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I like the best. But anyway, like I just thought I kind of had sussed out that this book has something primary about it. That's not that, it's this, you know, big Postmodernist edifice, Right, right. And I was like, if this book club is good, like we should have some longevity, was like, if this book club is good, like we should have some longevity, and like can we do a co-ed book club? Yep, you know, it was crazy. I was like who are we going to find that we're not married to? That we can prevail upon. I could not prevail upon.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And Jason immediately is like, oh, I know, you know my neighbor Laura. I was like, does your neighbor, has she seen the book? It's going to take a long time and she was so gung-ho. I think she actually like carried us through Absolutely, Absolutely Portions of it late in the game and I was really impressed, Anyway, yeah. So what else do you remember about the early stages? Because I have something else I want to say.
Jason Tanz:Oh no, that's it. I mean, that's it. I mean it was a great excuse once a month or so to sort of get together. You know, obviously it was about forming a relationship. In some ways, through analysis of this text, we got to know each other a little bit better. I got to know Laura a little bit better, even, or in a different context, which was cool, like engaging with someone in that, like we're experiencing this like multi-year project together. You know is I don't know it was there was an intimacy to that that I thought was really I hope this isn't too corny, but really special.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I feel like I got to know her and you, interestingly like, I feel like we ended up talking a lot about parenthood, because the primary relationship in the book is a mother and a daughter, and I just remember Laura having these wonderful reactions that were like I can't believe, like we all love the heroine Gesina.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing her name right, but like she's one of the great characters, I think, in literature and you like love Gesina and Laura would be like, but reality check, like is she really letting Marie do that?
Kathryn :Yes, marie is 11 years old.
Garth Risk Hallberg:She should not be running around 1968, New York City that way, that's right, and that would turn into conversations about parenthood and that's kind of the thing I meant about leavening some of the kind of actual analysis work with like the kind of getting into the emotional stuff. Yeah yeah, that's right. So it was like I got to know you guys really fast that way yes yes, yeah, that's right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:So it was like I got to know you guys really fast. Yes, yes, I think that's true. What I remember is I remember we had to, like, basically divide it up. We were going to take a year to read it, that's right. So it was like, whatever the total page count is divided by 12, which I think is about 160 pages a month. That's about right, which felt very doable, but became less so for me.
Jason Tanz:Yes, and the hard part for me was that you know, I know you've always got a million different books you're reading at the same time, and I used to be like that, but I'm not anymore, for whatever reason, and so it was almost like not enough to be the only thing I was reading, but it kind of slowed down the rest of my reading, which was a bit of a drag, not a huge drag, but a bit of a drag. So anyway, but yes, so we took a year and we read these enormous books together and then we all I think we all slowed down towards the end, I think it ended up taking more than a year.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, what happened for me is I ended up, you know, with the new novel. I ended up on a kind of deadline treadmill which happens toward the end of a project. You get the last sprint to get the revision done, and then the last sprint to get the line edit done, and then the copy edit and then the first pass and second, and it was sort of coming in at very inopportune times and I was also teaching, which is a lot of reading, and so I feel like toward the end of it, like I kind of let you guys down, but I did finally finish last week. We'll discuss, which I will have much to say about oh good, I, honestly, I, honestly, I.
Jason Tanz:My attention did wane towards the end, so I'm not sure I was invested in the ending, as I was in the beginning or middle and it's been a while, so I'm not sure I'll have much productive to add to the conversation, but I look forward to hearing. Maybe it'll re-spark my—.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And I have one key question that we all walked out with that I can now answer. I've done a little research which?
Kathryn :is cool, I'm just teasing our next book club.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I'll make sure to show up. I think it's at your house, I guess I'm better right, but just to rewind and go back to the beginning of that, what I remember about. So we divided it up and I had never done a book. This is my first book club.
Kathryn :Yeah, me too, I guess.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And what were you expecting? What were your associations for book clubs like when?
Jason Tanz:I don't know. I I'm not sure I had much of an expectation. I guess what I had done previously this is this will also get you to roll your eyes, probably as much as the Pynchon thing.
Garth Risk Hallberg:But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not rolling.
Jason Tanz:It's all, it's all earned it's fine, I I'm comfortable with it, but um uh, it's not what you read, it's how.
Garth Risk Hallberg:How you read Jason.
Jason Tanz:My dad and I read Infinite Jest together actually, which I had read before and thought he would really like, but also thought, like I didn't expect, that he would get as obsessed in unlocking it if you will, oh wow as I would. So I thought maybe if I, if we read it together, we could sort of your dad sounds really interesting.
Jason Tanz:Yeah, and he we did, we spent a long time and we read it together and it was great. I mean, it was really great. I loved it and I think he really liked it too and it was just a cool thing to connect over. You know, kind of like anything right Like watching a basketball game with my son. You're really. It's not about the sort of material itself.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Well, you knew, I mean I think it sounds like you knew it was going to be pleasurable and I was kind of looking at it and I was like I knew it was being an accountability thing to get this book read, which is, I think, an important purpose of a book club. Sure, you know just accountability partners, but my wife is in several book clubs, been in several book clubs. Like out here this town is like runs on book clubs.
Jason Tanz:It's crazy.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You know you lift the lid on Montclair and it's like it's not, you know an. American beauty, I think, as you peel back the surface of the suburbs and you find like sex and squalor and you know, infidelity In Montclair it's like you peel back the surface and all you find is book clubs. Yeah, yeah yeah, but I always had the impression of them number one as involving wine.
Jason Tanz:Wine. I knew you were going to say wine, yeah.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Like Chardonnay, and nobody reads the book. And nobody reading the book. There's my two associations. That's right Now my wife. Wife, she's been some, I don't know why I'm extrapolating those two things. She's been in somewhere, it was. She would come back. She'd be like, yeah, we just drank wine. Nobody read the book, right, which you know, there's something you said for that sure. And then others where she was like, oh, we, it's either that or it's like heated debate about the book, like some people half loved it and half hated it, yeah, and so I was like, okay, the second of the outcomes would be interesting. The first, you know, for me it's like I'm trying to keep my drinking in check and like, so, the fact that we were meeting, we decided I don't know whose idea this was or whatever, but that we were going to meet in the middle of the day, yes, that's right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Because it was like the pandemic, it was work from home. That's right. And so we would meet at like 11 yes, or noon, and it was amazing. Yeah, it was like so perfect. You'd be like I'm gonna work, I'm gonna take an 80 minute break, yep, and go have my book club and a coffee, yep, and then be like revived by that and then go back to work. Yeah, it was great. So it felt very collegiate in that way like that's true, I hadn't thought about that.
Jason Tanz:You're in your desk.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You're alert. You're like bright eyed and bushy tail.
Jason Tanz:It's the morning right, and you're there to like, you're not there to just have an evening out yeah, define stopping point and that you know the wine is just like not an option, right?
Garth Risk Hallberg:I mean, I don't know what your job is like, but mine doesn't I got my wine before 11 o'clock yeah so that was kind of cool. And then we started in January, and so this was the 2021. This was the third winter of the pandemic.
Jason Tanz:Yes, so it would have been.
Garth Risk Hallberg:January of 22.
Jason Tanz:Is that right? It was our first meeting.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And we went to Laura's house and I'd never met Laura, that's right, and it was still in that kind of you know, at least here in Montclair, which is, you know, the blue bubble or whatever, yes, which is you know the blue bubble or whatever, it was still this like Laura, can I come in your house? Without my mask Like I'm fully vaxxed.
Garth Risk Hallberg:That's right, like that whole dance. Yes, and it might have been the first time that people who were not my flesh and blood kin or like dear beloved old friends or I had been in a kind of like the intimate space of someone's home. Yeah, with the windows closed in the home. Yeah, with the windows closed. Yeah, in the winter. Yeah, she maybe had a fire going. Yes, I think so Very nice, like warm rug. It's the hygge thing again.
Jason Tanz:Yes, right, so I was already like wow, I'm in.
Garth Risk Hallberg:This is great yeah yeah, and then the other thing that I remember about that first meeting as I walked back or I drove back, I guess, home and I walked in the door and Elise, who was working from home, was like how was it? You know, she just thought it was very funny that I was in a book club and I was like Elise, I need to do a lot more prep and come correct, because these people are serious readers. Like you had your notebook out, Like I had kind of I felt very, you know know, diligent, because I had flagged like one quote in 160 pages, like I was just kind of sucked in and not, you know, and you had that quote marked and john done some thoughts about it, you're like looking. So you guys were like really just, I was like we came in guns blazing.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, it's gonna be that kind of that's funny thing and not not. No like, not in that like super exegetical way, exactly Not. The like list serve.
Marni :Right, right right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:No, no, no, there's really not that much to decode. No, it's fairly straightforward but, like you know, just kind of going deep into questions of I don't know, a lot of thought had gone into it, which I thought was cool. And then the other thing was like I got 160 pages in and I was like this book is beautiful, it's a terrific book, yeah, like it's just the writing is so yeah it's amazing.
Garth Risk Hallberg:It's like hyper real, like you. Just the way that the translator got into it is he grew up in an apartment like two blocks from gazina's apartment, so he knows it's amazing all this terrain upper west side and like riverside drive and it's just like it. Just you are there when you're reading the book. Yeah, it really puts you there. And then this little village in mecklenburg in germany during the rise of fascism, and it's you know there was a cool.
Jason Tanz:Speaking of the translator again, I remember there's a cool. Maybe it was when you're two-thirds of the way through it and you're like, okay, things are flagging. I don't know if it's because, if it's me, or if it's the author.
Garth Risk Hallberg:It's partly him, it's partly the author.
Jason Tanz:Yeah, or you raise the point. It could also be the translator a little bit too. And yeah, there were definitely some dog days there.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, it's like the, and I think we might have had to skip a couple of months because it was summer and people were like on vacation. So there wasn't that accountability there. That's right. But definitely he slowed. The writer slowed down. It's like he took 10 years to write the third volume. That's right.
Jason Tanz:And you could really tell that he was struggling.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And he was like drinking a lot, I gather. Even so, I put it aside. And you know the last two sessions I think it fell behind the penultimate session, the last one I was like I just didn't read any for this, I just couldn't, I had too much work. But I put it aside and when I came back to it you know this past holiday break I was just like oh yeah, I'm into this again, like this is really Felt good to pick it up again.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Yeah, it might just be like 1, like 1600 continuous pages. After a while You're just like well that could be. Yeah, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. So so then we were talking about, I think you and I had like a one-off meeting about the Cormac.
Jason Tanz:Yes, we were talking about Cormac McCarthy, that's right.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You had read. Well, I had already read the passenger and Philomarus. I think you were like, had read it and were dying to talk to someone. Or maybe I told you I was giving away my galley. Yeah, what happened?
Jason Tanz:with that, because I remember I ended up buying it. I did end up buying it. I think the galley was gone by the time I came by your house, okay, and it was after I read it, because we were talking about the New York Times book review and and what I I think you know what it was I'd read the first book and not the second. That's what it was.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Okay, so we just like got together for coffee over the summer and we had. We had, to my surprise, like at the end of the if you had told me that you, me and your neighbor Laura, who I'd never met were going to get to the end of the 1,600-page book and anybody was going to wish to continue this book. I would have, like you know, been very surprised.
Garth Risk Hallberg:In fact, like at, the last meeting, I think there was this feeling of like well, we're not keep going, right, yeah, we'd been through so much and the question was but what can we read? And this is another one where I was adamant, where I was like it cannot be another white guy, like you know, like we need. We need something that's like strenuous enough to require an accountability partner in some direction. Strenuous in some direction, but like I don't necessarily, I'm like not ready to do the kind of gravity's rainbow, like the tunnel, you know yeah yeah that's definitely a book club.
Garth Risk Hallberg:It's just and it's a great book club and hats off to you know that. But I I was like can we read a suitable boy? Can we? What's out there? We were gathering titles, I think. Yes, we were, that's right. Laura wanted, had floated annie, or no?
Jason Tanz:yes, yeah, I mean there are a lot of great. We should go back to that list when we're done with this one. There were a lot of good ideas there, but it so happened that I think I had just read, so this is again. This was another friend of mine, jenny Camita, who lives in town. This is an only in.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Montclair. This is like the most only in Montclair story and not Not in a bad way. It's like that Richard Florida, like the thing about you know having people in the office and ideas bounce off people like that happens Totally here in town like a kind of creative space, Absolutely, Absolutely.
Jason Tanz:So. Jenny was. We were over at her house, which had just recently been remodeled. She moved into a new house, remodeled it Beautiful, beautiful and it has this amazing, amazing floor to ceiling bookcase, just gorgeous built-in bookshelves. And you know, I was just it was almost like going to a bookstore, Like there are so many books up there and I was just sort of looking over, like pouring over it all.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And are you one of those people who goes into people's houses and you just stare at their?
Jason Tanz:bookshelf I am. Yeah, I don't know if it's a great quality, but I but I. That is it's really interesting.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I was reading this profile of Sofia Coppola yesterday and that you know kept returning to this thing motif in her movies of like seeing girls rooms and the kind of spill of stuff that's there.
Garth Risk Hallberg:In the way, it's kind of a map of the inside of the head, which is sort of like near and dear to my heart, because I've been, you know, living in this 14 year old girl for five years, writing this novel and being inside her head and inside her room, and I feel like I remember my room when I was a teenager was just like the wall of signifiers.
Jason Tanz:Like here's the bands I'm into. Yeah, totally.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Quotes from like you know, Jack Kerouac. But bookshelves that like linger even in like grown-up societies, this chance to go into someone's house and like see the inside of their head a little yeah, and the outside what they want to.
Jason Tanz:You know what?
Garth Risk Hallberg:they're putting up, you know so you're at jenny's.
Jason Tanz:So I was at jenny's house and she had this old edition of this book wonderland by joyce carl oats, who I had really never really read and which I felt was a huge blind spot.
Garth Risk Hallberg:But but it's everybody's blind spot, because where do you begin?
Jason Tanz:right, there's just literally a hundred things that you just kind of preemptively surrender.
Jason Tanz:You're like I'll never, you know and I think even she would admit, like I don't know how many of them are good, right, like they're not. I'm sure they're not all the same quality and she's sort of addressed that, but anyway. So I said, oh, you know, I've always been like, is this a good place? And and jenny, yeah, it's terrific. So she was like, take it. So I read it and it was one of those things where, like, I just was so immediately sucked into this book I couldn't believe it. And it turned out that it's actually the fourth book in a series, none of them sequentially, like you know, it's not like I'm giving anything away A loose tetralogy.
Jason Tanz:Loose tetralogy Right, and you also had been thinking about Joyce Carol Oates at the time.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Well, so this is the only Montclair part is like. So you're at Jenny Camita's house seeing this book on her shelf. Joyce Carol Oates lives in New Jersey. Right, she's got a new book coming out that Reagan Arthur our neighbor is about to publish. Because she's come over to Knopf. Joyce Carol Oates has a new book out and I'm walking by a little free library somewhere in town and I see a paperback of a story collection called Heat.
Kathryn :And.
Garth Risk Hallberg:I was like huh, I've never read Joyce Carol Oates. I've always felt sort of defeated by Joyce Carol Oates, like the scale of it, like where would I sink my Python in. And I was like, oh, I'll take the story collection. And I read the first story and I was like, eh, and then I read the second story. And I was like, eh, and then I read the second story and I was like whoa. And then my friend, david Marchese, who's at the Times, texted me and was like I'm supposed to interview Joyce Carol Oates next week. Do you have any thoughts on Joyce Carol Oates?
Garth Risk Hallberg:And I was like I suddenly have a lot. And then I just met with Jason and he's reading Joyce Carol Oates and we're looking for what are we going to read next? And then it was like Joyce Carol Oates is coming to Watchung Booksellers next week to promote her new book. So it was like Joyce Carol Oates month in Montclair last summer August of 2023. So that's what we're doing next. I will see you, I think, next Friday at this time.
Jason Tanz:That's right. I'm excited to talk about it.
Garth Risk Hallberg:To discuss A Garden of Earthly Delights. To discuss A Garden of Earthly Delights. Yep, can't wait. Do you want to address the question of book or author who you'd recommend?
Jason Tanz:Oh sure, yeah, I've been thinking about this. I'm going to go with two or three, if that's okay. So the first is one that I reread that I actually recommend to Laura that she read as well, adrienne Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family Classic Unbelievable. Yeah, I mean not exactly an undiscovered gem, but like just you know, I read it. When it came out I was at a narrative journalism conference that she spoke at and she was very charming and like self-effacing. I was like, all right, I'll check out this person's book and it's just like she spent 10 years living basically in an apartment in the South Bronx and covering every day, every aspect of these people's lives, and it's just such a like you really enter another person's life. It's, it's unbelievable. So that's one. And then did you ever read Harry?
Garth Risk Hallberg:Cruz? No, but I have a friend. He's a journalist in Baltimore. He's a big Harry Cruz fan who wrote a piece for us at the Millions when Harry Cruz died. Oh really, that made me want to read it. A Feast of.
Jason Tanz:Snakes is just bonkers like crazy Southern Gothic lunacy. So entertaining. Great title, yeah, it's a, really and the first. It's one of those ones with like you read the first sentence and you're like, oh my God, I'm in, yeah, so that's a good one. And then just a page turner can't put down Dan Sean. You ever read him? C-h-a-o-n.
Garth Risk Hallberg:No, he is he's.
Jason Tanz:You know, this is just sort of a quasi- literary- pulpy- thriller thing, but, like, literally, I read it in one sitting and then I read it again in one sitting a few years later. It's called Ill Will and it's this sort of unreliable narrator whose sort of whole perception of the world gets messed up, as does yours as you're reading it, it's really good stuff.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And I had that resonance for you as someone who's written about hip-hop too.
Jason Tanz:The iconic ill will joints of the late 80s. Exactly, yeah, exactly. That's what I thought it was going to be about. I was very disappointed.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And I was going to recommend. I just wrapped up work on the introduction to a book of the uncollected stories of a writer named Mavis Gallant, who's Canadian. She's published more stories in the New Yorker than almost anybody else in her 50-year career. She published up until the mid-'90s and then died at 91 in 2014. So this book is going to be out next year and it has all the stories that were in the New Yorker and that she had in other collections, but the little collections have sort of fallen out of print over 50 years.
Garth Risk Hallberg:Sure, but her book, the Collected Stories, which is the ones that she picked in the 90s to represent her, it's 52 stories. That book is about 900 pages long. Wow, that's what I mean by like a big book. That's not the Gravity's Rainbow big book. They are so good, I'm so in love with them. That book was like very important early pandemic reading for me and the other book, and so Every Man's Library just republished it in 2016, 2017, I think, and I know for a fact that it's on the shelf at Watchung Booksellers because that is one for Margot. That is one for Margot that I was like you have to carry this, this book is so good.
Garth Risk Hallberg:And the other one I was going to recommend, which I actually haven't read but picked up on the way over here, is Erasure by Percival Everett. It's been turned into a movie called American Fiction oh yes, of course, with Jeffrey Wright, who's, like you know, kind of my favorite actor, and I went to see the movie the other night, which I thought was I can't wait to see it. Yeah, it was like not, it was different than the preview, like I had many more layers, oh, interesting, and I loved the layers. Actually, like that was what I. I came for the very funny preview, right, and then I was like, oh, I'm getting something completely different and yet richer and kind of more satisfying and thought-provoking, which I guess is how a preview is supposed to work.
Garth Risk Hallberg:But it reminded me that I've never read Erasure, the book on which it's based, which has been on my list forever. My list is like 5,000 books. It's ridiculous, but I remember it won the I think it won the Believer Book Award. When it came out and the description always excited me, I was like that sounds awesome, I'm going to read that. But now, having seen the movie, I'm like, oh, does it have this whole other side, just about the guy's personal life and stuff he's going through. So I was like, do they have this at the bookstore?
Garth Risk Hallberg:naturally they have three and I walked in and I was like now two and I, yeah, I bought it and I was like margo, like you know, like you guys should do a shelf talker. This is a movie. She's like have you seen the movie? And I'm like have you seen the movie?
Kathryn :and she's like of course, I've seen the movie.
Garth Risk Hallberg:So we, you know, had a nice. It was just like a nice five minute, you know, in the middle of the day, like connecting with a neighbor over something, and that's really kind of what the bookstore has been for me over the years. So I am thrilled we're no longer picking up stuff from the loading dock. Yeah, absolutely.
Jason Tanz:And I'm sure they're thrilled to no longer be shoving it out there. Yeah, great, awesome, all right, fun talking to you, garth, as always.
Garth Risk Hallberg:You too, Jason. I'll see you Friday. See you soon. All right, bring your A-game.
Marni :Thank you, Garth and Jason, for your conversation. We loved hearing about the ways you find community at the bookstore and we're always glad to chat with you when you need a break from writing.
Kathryn :Before we go we want to remind you of a few of our author talks you can hear live and in person. On May 14th we'll be co-hosting an event at Loopwell with Dr Sharon Malone, whose new book Grown Woman Talk is truly essential reading about women's health. It's going to be a fantastic evening with a talk, signing and reception. On Wednesday, may 22nd, join us for a talk with Lettie Teague about her new book. Dear Readers and Writers, the Beloved Books, Faithful Fans and Hidden private life of Marguerite Henry. Marguerite Henry was a Newbery Award-winning author who wrote Misty of Chincoteague and so many more books about horses that all those horse kids loved way back then.
Marni :And, of course, don't miss the book release event for the second coming by our guest, Garth Risk Colbert. That's on the pub. Date Tuesday May 28th. You can pre-order now. He's going to be talking about it with author and podcaster Willa Paskett. Be sure to register before it fills up.
Kathryn :You can register and find out more about all of our upcoming events in our newsletter, show notes and at watchungbooksellerscom. Recording and editing at Silverstream Studio in Montclair, New Jersey. Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica, Art and design by Evelyn Moulton and Research and Show Notes by Caroline Shurtleff. And thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and the Kids Room for their hard work and love of books, and thanks for listening.
Marni :If you enjoyed it, please like, subscribe and share it. You can follow us on social media at Watchung Booksellers, and if you have any questions, you can reach out to us at WBPodcast at WatchungBooksellerscom we'll see you next week.
Kathryn :Until then, for the love of books, keep reading.