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.

Okay, Hannah's back, but that doesn't mean we're done with guest hosts! This week we're joined by author Nina MacLaughlin, editor of the brand-new New England Literary News newsletter, and we've got the Newburyport Literary Festival on the brain (oh, and sorry, Nina, about putting you on the spot various times, but we did enjoy, "there's just so much garbage being published"). And Indie Bookstore Day, too! But we talked about lots of books, as well, including:

- "Jailbreak of Sparrows," by Martin Espada - a poet who will be a Newburyport, where we are selling books, BTW.
- "Little Great Island," by Kate Woodworth - which has "Road to Dalton" vibes and a great cover (another Maine book, yes).
- "Lobster," by Guillaume Lacasble - easily the weirdest book Sam has read in a while, with, yes, lobster sex.
- "On the Calculation of Volume (Book II)," by Solvej Balle - a continuation of Book I, still awesome, but could have moved forward more.
- "Sad Tiger," by Neige Sinno - a very heavy memoir that manages to still be quite beautiful.

And make sure to stay to the very end for some great New England poet recommendations!

Hannah's been busy grinding out elementary school book fairs (drug-dealer mentality for the win), so the John Updike's Ghost podcast has put in a call to the bullpen, and out walks ... Cyndle Plaisted Rials! Cyndle is a writer and creative writing teacher who teamed with Sam on a book earlier this year, as well as the Beer & Weed project, so you know she's ready to go. She has not, however, read "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Of Mice and Men," so weird stuff is on the way.

Here's what she and Sam had to chat about this week:

- "All the Pretty Horses," by Cormac McCarthy — Sam has never read this, but it's awesome. If you've never read it, you should do it now. Just be prepared for very few commas.
- "Lady Macbeth," by Ava Reid — Cyndle finds this a little better than Shakespeare's historical works, anyway. It's a little bit of a "Wicked" situation and it might help to read the original; what is Lysander doing in this book? Decent audiobook.
- "Pickleballers," by Ilana Long — A racy book about people who play pickleball and like to bang. Sam laughed a few times, but didn't manage to finish this. Still, if you like romantic comedies, this is fine.
- "Rejection," by Tony Tulathimutte — You might have seen the story "The Feminist"? That's the lead story in this collection, which is a serious collection of bad dudes. And hyper-online.