In this episode recorded before a live audience at the Wichita Public Library's beautiful Advanced Learning Library, co-hosts Beth Golay & Suzanne Perez join Sara Dixon and Daniel Pewewardy, co-hosts of the Wichita Public Library's 'Read. Return. Repeat." podcast to celebrate the 2023 kickoff of the #ReadICT challenge.
A departure from the usual podcast format, these book aficionados and fellow podcasters talk about the history of the challenge and explore each category and how it might be approached differently by readers. This episode is full of great recommendations for each category (including some from a few very brave audience members) as well as their own reading plans for #ReadICT 2023!
Enjoy the show!
This podcast was edited for length and clarity. Books & Whatnot is produced by KMUW and is part of the NPR Podcast Network.
-
Books recommended in this episode (by challenge category):
Category 1: A book with a non-human narrator
- Penny, Karl Stevens
- The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
- Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
- Circe, Madeline Miller
- Watership Down, Richard Adams
- Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
- Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson
- The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein
- Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt
- Cinder (book #1 of the Lunar Chronicles), Marissa Meyer
- Hollow Kingdom, Kira Jane Buxton
- Nutshell, Ian McEwan
- The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, Mitch Albom
- The Travelling Cat Chronicles, Hiro Arikawa
Category 2: A book with a long title (7+ words)
- A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, George Saunders
- The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe, Romaine Puértolas
- We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy, Kliph Nesteroff
- The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home: A Welcome to Night Vale Novel, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
- How to be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, Michael Schur
- Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City (Pulitzer Prize Winner), Andrea Elliott
- Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays, Phoebe Robinson
- You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain, Phoebe Robinson
- Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
- The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, Colin Woodard
Category 3: A book about friendship
- My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Grady Hendrix
- Dinosaurs: A Novel, Lydia Millet
- A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
- Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo
- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
- Best of Friends: A Novel, Kamila Shamsie
- An Evening with C.S. Lewis: My Life’s Journey, David Payne
- The Rachel Incident: A Novel, Caroline O’Donoghue
- Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid
- Any Jane Austen Novel
- It, Stephen King
- My Glory Was I Had Such Friends: A Memoir, Amy Silverstein
- Love & Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food and Love, Kim Fay
- Rules for Visiting: A Novel, Jessica Francis Kane
- Fairy Tale, Stephen King
- The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
- The Change: A Novel, Kirsten Miller
Category 4: A guilty pleasure read
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill
- Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow, Jessica Townsend
- The House in the Cerulean Sea, T.J. Klune
- Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
- The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese
- So Far..., Kelsey Grammer
- Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey
- World War Z, Max Brooks
- Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice, Curtis Sittenfeld
- The Thousandth Floor, Katharine McGee
- Rat Queens (Comic Book Series), Kurtis J. Wiebe, Roc Upchurch and John Upchurch
- The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside the Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell
Category 5: A book told from a villain’s point of view
- The Unfolding, A.M. Homes (or anything by A.M. Homes)
- A Ladder to the Sky, John Boyne
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
- And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
- My Sister, The Serial Killer: A Novel, Oyinkan Braithwaite
- Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley
- God Emperor of Dune, Frank Herbert
- Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Gregory Maguire
- Hench: A Novel, Natalie Zina Walschots
Category 6: A book about time
- Watchmen (Graphic Novel Series), Alan Moore
- Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
- This Time Tomorrow: A Novel, Emma Straub
- The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, Andrew Sean Greer
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- 11/22/63, Stephen King
- A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel, Ruth Ozeki
- Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel
- Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
- Oona Out of Order, Margarita Montimore
- Dark Matter: A Novel, Blake Crouch
- Kindred, Octavia E. Butler
- The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin
- The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, Ian Mortimer
Category 7: A book with a color in the title
- Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band, Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni
- Redshirts, John Scalzi
- The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
- The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
- Red Rising, Pierce Brown
- White Teeth, Zadie Smith
- The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
- Brown: Poems, Kevin Young
- Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, Erik Larson
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- The Last White Man: A Novel, Mohsin Hamid
- Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
- Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
- Daughter of Black Lake: A Novel, Cathy Marie Buchanan
Category 8: A book featuring a LGBTQIA+ protagonist
- Matrix: A Novel, Lauren Groff
- Less: A Novel, Andrew Sean Greer (or any book by Andrew Sean Greer)
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers
- Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin
- Alice Isn’t Dead, Joseph Fink
- The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin
- The Broken Earth Trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky), N.K. Jemisin
- The Guncle, Stephen Rowley
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Skye Falling: A Novel, Mia McKenzie
Category 9: A book about death or grief
- Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Big Read Title), Roz Chast
- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande
- This Is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper
- The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir, Thi Bui
- Lark Ascending, Silas House
- Annihilation (The Southern Reach Trilogy), Jeff VanderMeer
- The Furrows, Namwali Serpell
- A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis
- A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
- Under the Whispering Door, TJ Klune
Category 10: A book set in the Great Plains
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
- The Children's Blizzard: A Novel, Melanie Benjamin William Least Heat-Moon (Travel Writer)
- Plainsong, Kent Haruf
- The Four Winds, Kristin Hannah
- The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, Timothy Egan
- Save What’s Left: A Novel, Elizabeth Castellano
- The Last PowWow, That Native Thomas and Steven Paul Judd
- Winter Counts: A Novel, David Heska Wanbli Weiden
- The Chicken Sisters, KJ Dell’Antonia
- Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann
- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Bleeding Kansas, Sara Paretsky
Category 11: A book about a secret or closed society
- The Unfolding, AM Homes
- The Secret History, Donna Tartt
- If We Were Villains: A Novel, M.L. Rio
- Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope, Megan Phelps-Roper
- Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer
- The Department of Truth (Comic Book Series), James Tynion IV
- Rabbits: A Novel, Terry Miles
- The Husbands, Chandler Baker
- Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell
- The Girls, Emma Cline
- We Ride Upon Sticks: A Novel, Quan Barry
Category 12: A book by an author visiting Wichita (in-person or remotely)
- Hang the Moon, Jeannette Walls
- The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
- Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, Jeannette Walls
- Storm Watch (A Joe Pickett Novel), C.J. Box
- The Lost Apothecary, Sarah Penner
- The London Séance Society, Sarah Penner
- The Grammarians: A Novel, Cathleen Schine
- Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks to My Mom: 101 Stories of Gratitude, Love, and Lessons, Amy Newmark and Jo Dee Messina
Other Books Mentioned in this Episode:
- Tenth of December: Stories, George Saunders
- Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
- How to Sell a Haunted House, Grady Hendrix
- Home Fire: A Novel, Kamila Shamsie
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
- Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Monique Gray Smith
- Now Is Not the Time to Panic: A Novel, Kevin Wilson
Special Thanks to our audience members for sharing their recommendations!
Upcoming Author Events in Wichita
- C.J. Box @ The Advanced Learning Library, March 2nd
- Sarah Penner @ The Advanced Learning Library, March 28th
- Cathleen Schine @ Watermark Books, March 30th
- Jeannette Walls @ The Advanced Learning Library, April 12th
New to #ReadICT? Join the challenge! For more information visit wichitalibrary.org/readict.
HOW TO REACH US:
- Email: podcasts@kmuw.org
- Books & Whatnot on Twitter
- (@SuzPerezICT and @BethGolay)
- Books & Whatnot on Instagram
