Back to normal! No guests this week, just a bunch of books to talk about, including some big names. Is Sam's mic kind of wonky early? Yes. Just get by that. It doesn't last long. And you really want to hear about:

- "Great Big Beautiful Life," by Emily Henry, which is just enough different from her previous beach reads to make a great beach read. It's a ridiculous biography contest set in Georgia.
- "The Name of this Band is R.E.M.," by Peter Ames Carlin, which Sam found a little boring, but it's hard to tell if that's just because R.E.M. is a boring band.
- "Raising Hare," by Chloe Dalton, which really is about raising a bunny, but not a bunny, a hare, which is a different mysterious kind of animal. Better than that sounds, though.
- "Everything is Tuberculosis," by John Green, which has a terrible name, but is very readable because John Green can write like crazy. This leads to talk about Reddit forums detailing woo-woo mom forum posting, for reasons, and discussion of the term "vlogger."
- "Whyte Python World Tour," by Travis Kennedy, an absolutely absurd and often funny tale of a hair-metal band secretly working for the CIA to bring down the Wall in the late 1980s. Sam doesn't know what to make of it.
- "Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries," by Heather Fawcett, which is delightful, about an academic cataloging faeries in Norway. It's cozy and quite charming.

Also, no, we didn't get this posted in time for Bookstore Day or the Literary Festival, but just try to look past that. It's already happened and you missed it. But there will be other stuff that's awesome in the future, we promise.