[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I’m Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that’s dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don’t get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

Readers, today’s guest has a bookish birthday trip in the works, and you know, we love those around here. Barbara Andrade DuBransky sent in her submission, that’s at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest, and told us about her tradition of taking big trips with her best friend to mark big life milestones.

Eight years ago, they took an unforgettable 40 and Fabulous trip, which was made even better by the reading they did to get ready for it. Now they’re starting to plan their upcoming 50 and Fantastic trip with the destination yet to be determined, but they’re contemplating places that have interesting histories and interesting stories, like Italy, Ireland, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands.

[00:01:16] Barbara and her friend are passionate readers and would love a collection of titles to help them choose their location and then plan and prepare for their trip. Today, Barbara and I dive in. We talk about how reading has served their lives and their travel well in the past, and what makes a great travel read in the first place, and then I offer up a handful of recommendations for just a few of the destinations they’re considering.

Whether you are planning a trip yourself, or more likely here for the armchair travel, I hope you come away from today’s episode inspired to dig into a great story that will carry you away via the written word.

Let’s get to it.

Barbara, welcome to the show.

BARBARA ANDRADE DUBRANSKY: Thank you, Anne. I am so excited to be here, as are pretty much all my loved ones, very excited that I’m here.

ANNE: You must have a lot of readers in your life then.

BARBARA: Yeah, readers and people who I make listen to me talk about books, even if they don’t read.

ANNE: I would say that’s one way to get more readers in your life, but you didn’t actually say that’s what was happening.

BARBARA: Right.

[00:02:18] ANNE: All right. Well, maybe we can find some good books to entice them with today. Barbara, I’ve really been looking forward to our conversation, especially some of the places we’re going to go. Would you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself? We just want to give them a glimpse of who you are.

BARBARA: I live in a cute little college town called Claremont in California. It’s in the eastern part of LA County. I live here with my husband and our two kids – actually, my 20-year-old is off in college in New York – and our 11-year-old. I’m a social worker by training, so my careers and systems change. I worked for the LA County residents for most of my career, but now I work for the residents of Riverside County.

What I do is me and my team, we make sure that the county services that are available to our residents are accessible to them the first time they engage with any county service. Whether they’re in an emergency situation or they have food or housing insecurity or need cash aid or their restaurant is being inspected for a health rating or they’re a senior or child who’s experienced maltreatment or they’re trying to coordinate their health care.

[00:03:28] The first door they walk in, we’re going to find out all the ways that we can support their needs so they don’t have to repeat themselves or go on not knowing that there’s something that can support them.

It’s a privilege to do this work. I work with everyone from executives to line workers to make this happen. And me and my team are very privileged to do it. We try to do it in a way that makes sense for all of our residents and all of their diverse ways that they engage with government services.

ANNE: Yeah. Well, you and your neighbors have been on all our minds as we’ve been watching news of the wildfires in California. I imagine that’s impacting your work?

BARBARA: In Riverside County, we have had a few small fires. The Eaton and Palisades fires are closer to where I used to live, and I do have many friends who I love and adore who have lost their homes or been displaced. One of those fires is also near my church. So we’re doing all we can to support the residents. Thank you to all of you across the country who are praying for us. We really appreciate it.

[00:04:31] ANNE: We’re wishing and praying all the good things for you all.

BARBARA: Thank you.

ANNE: Barbara, on your submission, you described reading as being your most developed hobby. Would you say more about that? I enjoyed that way of putting it.

BARBARA: Well, I put the most effort into it. I’m one of those spreadsheet people, many, many, many spreadsheets, and I just am interested in everything about the bookish life. I love being around books. My house is kind of organized like a bookstore with, you know, sections, bookshelves in different rooms, having different categories of books, and I love to talk to others about books, so I’m in multiple book clubs.

To me, I always say that reading… when people say they’re not a reader, I’ll say, well, I just think of reading as one way to have a conversation. You like to talk to people, right? That author is having a conversation with you and with everyone else who’s read the book. And to me, it’s just another way to connect with people. Books are about people to me, so I spend a lot of time on it.

[00:05:32] My spreadsheets range from everything from things like just scheduling out when I’m going to read what to keeping all those great lists like the recent New York Times best of the 21st century and new stitches list.

The first spreadsheet I created was a friend gave me a word cloud back when those were a thing, and it was organized according to the most celebrated. I think there were 114 books on it. And I just decided I’m going to put these in a spreadsheet and made little summaries and put all this information about them, when they were written, what country they were written in, and organize them by how interested I was. They’re all classics. And just started to chip away at it. And then now I have spreadsheets on more things than anyone’s going to want to listen to.

ANNE: I don’t know. I’m pretty sure we have listeners talking back to their phones right now saying, “No, no, no. I want to see your spreadsheets, and I want to show you mine.”

BARBARA: Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:27] ANNE: What you’re saying is reminding me of a saying on the back of one of my son’s cross-country hoodies that says something like, love the work, and it will love you back.

BARBARA: Exactly, exactly. Anyone who listens to your show knows when you read a book, you feel more complete as a person after. You’re just filling yourself up with all of these aspects of humanity and what there is to know in the world, and it just makes you feel full and rich inside.

ANNE: Everything there is to know in the world. Okay, so that is the direction we’re going in. Barbara, you wrote in about a big trip you have planned and also one you’ve taken before. So usually I ask guests to tell me about their reading lives. I’d especially like to hear about your travel reading life.

BARBARA: Many years ago, my best friend Robin said, “Let’s start saving money, and when we turn 40, we’ll go on a trip together.” And we did. We went on that trip in 2016. We went to England and Scotland.

[00:07:27] My best friend Robin is a history and social studies teacher and a teacher trainer, so she has this interest in reading about and going to places where the big moments in history have happened and seeing what’s special about other places. She and I have fun wherever we go. We love traveling together. We’re great travel companions. We’re all flexible and always have each other in mind.

So we went on that trip, and now we’re coming up on our… Well, actually, we just celebrated her 50th birthday this past weekend. I turn 50 in 15 months. And so in the summer of 2026, we will go on our 50 and Fantastic trip, and we are starting to zero in on our locations, on our destinations.

We do want to go back to Europe, we’ve decided, but we don’t want to go back to England. Probably not Scotland. We didn’t spend enough time there. But we want to go to new places just because we still have so much to see in the world.

[00:08:30] And we’re interested in the books that will help us choose. I think there’s really an alignment with what we do for a living. Robin likes those historical fiction. She read Pillars of the Earth before we went, and she said when we went to those churches and cathedrals, it hit differently because she thought about the people who built them and their talents and what it was like.

I tend to read more along the lines of, what is a day like today? Do people here tend to stop at three markets on the way home, or do they stop at the pub or the hookah bar, or what’s a day in the park like?

So we both are interested in a sense of place, past and present. Then obviously, if the book tells us about what it’s like to be there, or we can also learn about places where there is literary tourism.

[00:09:26] I know one of the stories you tell about running a bookstore, we would love that. We think we’re probably a little behind for getting on that waitlist, but just anywhere we can go, this is where something that was really meaningful to people happened. We’re interested in all of that.

ANNE: Yeah. Well, since you’re not going to run a bookstore, I guess you’ll just have to go to a bunch of them.

BARBARA: Exactly.

ANNE: Yeah. Yeah. Not a terrible plan.

BARBARA: Exactly.

ANNE: Barbara, as we explore what you might want to read for your next trip, I would love to hear more about your first trip, 2016, England and Scotland. How did reading shape that trip? It sounds like you did some before, maybe some during and after. What did that look like?

BARBARA: Yeah. So, for me, a couple books really helped me do what I like to do, which is imagine what it’s like to be someone who lives there. So one of them was a book called Londoners. It’s by Craig Taylor. And it has many, many tiny memoirs in it that he collected. And those memoirs are organized around different aspects of living there: arriving in London, getting a job in London, all the way to leaving or death and building communities. It was organized by aspects of living, and I loved it. It made me feel like, okay, I have a little sense of what it’s like to be there.

[00:10:48] I, of course, also read Bill Bryson books. I mean, who’s not going to read Bill Bryson? So I read Notes from a Small Island before we left, laughing all the way through that. And then while we were still there, reading The Road to Little Dribbling.

I remember we took this long train ride from London to Edinburgh, which was beautiful, especially because it’s summer. You’re like chasing the sun, and it’s just beautiful outside. And you get there and it’s 10 o’clock at night, and the sun is barely setting. On the way, I was reading The Road to Little Dribbling, which sometimes, you know, turn to Robin and read parts of it out loud and just laugh. So I really enjoyed that.

And then, you know, of course, because it’s England, there’s so many books we read that are set there, right? So Robin had read a lot of historical fiction. In terms of sort of straightforward fiction, I’d read some Jojo Moyes, things like that. I’m sure I’m forgetting some because it’s such a common setting. But those were some of the things we read before and since.

[00:11:47] Things that I think I probably experienced differently because I went there is I read Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell series after. And having been to the Tower of London, for example, it just made it so vivid to read those books. And I’m sure I’ve read, you know, many more in England that, you know, now I have a sense of what it actually feels like there.

ANNE: Yeah, I was just thinking of how much contemporary British fiction I read, where I can Google all the locations the characters are visiting, like in the city today that I could go to.

BARBARA: Exactly.

ANNE: [Right?] to go back to London anytime soon. Thank you for letting us come on your past and future trips with you vicariously, by the way.

BARBARA: Yeah. You know, I didn’t even mention that we also went to the Cotswolds. So whenever you read a book that takes place in sort of a quaint English village, now I have, you know, Bybury, which is where we went, is the stand in for whatever quaint English village. And of course, we went to Bath and Oxford. So in Oxford, you see the hall from Harry Potter movies, right? And in Bath, it’s just you’re just in Jane Austen’s world. So all that was really supportive of making reading about those areas even more vivid.

[00:13:01] ANNE: Okay, so you’re dreaming up 50 and Fantastic. You’ve done this once, and I’m sure that’s shaping how you’re planning. What are you envisioning for 50 and Fantastic? What stage are you in in the planning?

BARBARA: At the very beginning. We’d like to start identifying the destinations within the next month or two. So we can start looking at our accommodations. All we have done is narrowed down back to Europe. And we haven’t gotten a whole lot further than that.

ANNE: What are some of the destinations on the table?

BARBARA: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands. Those are some of the ones that have risen to the top. And that’s from us looking at travel articles and hearing what’s a nice place to go right now. So those are some. But we’re still pretty open. I think we’ve decided to take France off the table for now.

ANNE: Okay. This might be too complex to answer, but what’s drawing you to those places?

[00:13:59] BARBARA: I think we do love beautiful architecture. That comes up a lot for us, the idea to see cathedrals. We’re both women of faith, so we’re very moved. One of the churches we went to in Bibury was, when we walked into it, there was no one there, but there was a little guided path you could take through the church. And it seems like such a basic thing or simple thing, but we loved it. We did the little path and we have such a strong memory of it.

So if we can see beautiful spaces that support faith, that matters to us a lot. And where we can eat good food, of course, that always is an interest. And where we feel confident in our ability to get around, to get to places, and feel like we can be sure about that before we go. But yeah, we’re just interested in a different culture, a different way of living, and seeing what that is like.

[00:14:59] ANNE: Barbara, where does the reading come in? Does that inform what your destination might end up being? Is that something you’ll begin in earnest after you’ve chosen your destination? I’m so interested in what travel preparation and planning looks like for you as a reader.

BARBARA: Yeah. So this time we wanted to read the same things to help us choose. And then once we choose, read more deeply on the places we choose.

So back to Bill Bryson, we have one book right now, and that is called Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe. And they’re really these little micro-essays on, I don’t know, about 20 places in Europe. Sometimes it’s about a whole country and sometimes it’s about a city, but we’re starting there and trying to narrow down. And then once we do, we’ll want to read more deeply, some fiction and maybe some more nonfiction that goes deeper into that specific place.

[00:15:57] ANNE: Do you find that you’ll read more stories set in the destinations you visit on purpose after you get back as well?

BARBARA: I think so. When it comes to England, that’s sort of not hard to do, right? There’s just so much out there. So I think depending on where we choose, it’ll be really interesting to see what we find. And we’ll, of course, look there. That was also a fun thing to do when we were there. Of course, we went to bookstores and looking at what are the people here interested in reading and what are the stories that they feel represent what their life is like. So we’ll certainly look while we’re there too.

ANNE: I’m glad to hear it. Do you anticipate coming home with many books?

BARBARA: Yes. I guess we’ll have to see how the luggage is holding up weight-wise, right? But I have a memory of in Bath that we went to a beautiful little bookstore and I got this book called The Bees. It was a telling of the story of the bee’s life in a fictional framework. And it was just really kind of a page-turner about the life of a bee. And I loved it.

[00:17:05] I actually gave it to a beekeeper when I met them once. It was written by a woman whose best friend was a beekeeper and had passed, and she was honoring her life’s work. So, yeah, we’ll definitely be looking for books there, and particularly books that are meaningful to the places that we have visited.

ANNE: All right. That sounds lovely. Barbara, today we’re going to explore some titles you maybe could read as you prepare for your upcoming trip and narrow down a location. I’d love to hear what you think makes for good travel reading. What are the characteristics of a good travel read? You’ve touched a little bit on how you enjoy a present strong sense of place. Your friend Robin enjoys books set in the past, but what else do you factor in?

BARBARA: I think books that are smart and funny and clever and come at something from a different angle. So they really pull you in. And you feel like you’re having a unique experience from another book you’ve read, whether they use humor or bringing together different disciplines, that would be in a nonfiction context, that they’re pulling you in to an experience that is very foreign to you.

[00:18:26] I think one of my favorites, The Secret History, when I read that book, I think the rules of these people’s lives are very different than mine. And yet here I am in it as though I would make decisions within the same set of rules when I would never be anywhere near those sets of rules. That just is so powerful. Like how did the author bring me in that far? When an author can make something challenging funny.

So one of my favorite books is The Sellout by Paul Beatty. He is really demonstrating the absurdity of racism and structural racism, and yet doing it in a way that’s funny. Well, it is funny in the way that he presents it, but you’re recognizing this is something that’s not funny, but this absurdity kind of makes me understand it even better. That is amazing to me.

[00:19:26] Then, as I mentioned, whenever I read an author that you go, wow, you’re pulling together so many different threads. So another favorite book of mine is The Emperor of All Maladies. It’s sort of the, I’m going to make up a word, the polymathism of it all. He’s showing you science and how it’s meaningful to people and how awareness about cancer was built and the draconian treatments, but it’s all centered compassionately around the patient. And he does all that. It makes it a page-turner. I’m just impressed when an author does that.

So I think a good book when you’re traveling is the same as a good book when you’re home. Those are elements that I like to see. One of my favorite experiences reading a book is when an author says something that you feel like, oh, I’ve had that experience, that feeling, but I never did or never could put words to it. I love that feeling.

[00:20:25] ANNE: Ooh, that is a wonderful feeling. Barbara, that’s interesting to hear, the kinds of books you typically enjoy. Now I’m thinking about what this means for your upcoming trip. Describe to me how you’re scanning the literary horizons to choose books set at potential destinations. What’s your process?

BARBARA: Well, I take that sort of the modern role between me and Robin. It’s actually amazing. The Bill Bryson book on travels in Europe, I was just in the used bookstore of a library and found that one. So I kind of felt like it was meant to be for us to connect with that book.

So I tend to think that way. I tend to think about: I want to know what the modern experience is of being in that place. Because we haven’t picked a location, I haven’t zeroed down any further than that one.

And then Robin is always reading historical fiction set all over the world and continues to influence her interest in Europe right now. And then once we hear your recommendations, then we’re really going to dig it.

ANNE: Okay. I love it.

[00:21:35] BARBARA: We’re also interested in anything, in order to narrow it down, especially because we know where we’re going to, countries where there’s quite a bit of literature about, is that we’re thinking about the stage of life that we’re in. We’re in the sandwich generation right now. We have kids in school and college, and we have parents that we love and adore that are aging. We are always thinking about our next act. We develop ourselves personally. What do we want to do as our children grow? And then what supports our spiritual growth?

So anything that makes the trip an opportunity to explore the stage of life that we’re in and to just give us inspiration and support our marriages. Sorry, I didn’t mention our wonderful husbands. And anything that inspires us at this stage of our life that we can explore together there we love to do things like that.

[00:22:37] ANNE: Well, that sounds lovely. Barbara, it sounds like this trip is an experience you get to have with your best friend on the other side of the world, but also a time to really reflect on what’s happening in your life back home as well. Can you say more about that?

BARBARA: Robin and I, we met when we were 14 and 15 years old, and we see ourselves as we’re going to end our lives together. For example, we both have two children and we really say she and I have four children. We share each other’s challenges. She supported me through cancer treatment three years ago. Her son is in cancer treatment for the last three years and has probably a few more to go. Whatever we’re challenged with and whatever we’re trying to develop within ourselves, we’re each other’s biggest cheerleaders.

[00:23:36] We just feel like we’re living a life together with our families. Her family is my family, my family is her family, both the nuclear and extended. So we really think through life stages together. We then feel through them together and then experience them together.

So finding inspiration in other places. Oh, look, this is how people do these things here. Or this is just how people set up their lifestyle in a way that’s supportive to them. Or these are just the interesting things that are in other people’s lives we get inspiration from.

ANNE: What a gift to have such a friend! How did you meet?

BARBARA: Met in high school. We met at a baseball game, at one of our high school baseball games.

ANNE: I love that for you all. About how long will you be gone on your trip?

BARBARA: We’ll probably be there for about two weeks.

ANNE: Okay. And have you identified the season you’re going in?

BARBARA: Yes, we will go as early as we can in June. Because she’s an educator, she needs to be at school during the school year. So in order to beat as much tourism as possible, we leave… last time we left within a day or two of her being done with school so that we could get over there as soon as possible.

[00:24:48] ANNE: Barbara, I’m so excited for the trip you have coming up. Thank you for letting me be a part of it vicariously. And let’s take a look at some books you can read.

Barbara, we’re going to tootle around some of the destinations you think that you may visit with Robin and see what sorts of books you may enjoy reading in preparation for your trip, maybe even deciding on your trip. If nothing else, I hope this may give you a sampling of the kinds of books you may enjoy reading.

My family went to Germany almost a year ago now, and so I have also been on the lookout for more German fiction. One of my resolutions was to read, not resolutions, but one of my loose reading goals was to keep an eye out for more German fiction. So I feel like I’ve been reading quite a bit, although not a lot of it has that strong sense of place that you’re looking for. But some of it does have a strong sense of history.

[00:25:46] The first book I have in mind is by Jennifer Chiaverini. It’s called Resistance Women. And I thought this was so interesting because her story is inspired by a real-life woman who I believe was from Wisconsin. Chiaverini had so many details on her life, but her story was untold until not long before she wrote this novel because the U.S. government deliberately buried it after the war. But Harnack was part of this very real resistance movement called the Rote Kapelle, which is the Red Orchestra. And it was a network of American and German resistance fighters.

The bulk of the action takes place in a setting that I found to be unusual. It’s between the wars beginning in 1929. And this is very much a novel about Nazi Germany, but it begins so early deliberately because… well, first of all, this is the life of this real woman but also as a reader, you see events escalate over time through these women’s eyes.

I feel like more novels have come out that do portray that between the war period more thoroughly than what we think of as a traditional World War I or World War II novel. But this is one of the first I’ve read. I really appreciate it.

[00:26:54] The setup is leisurely, but the payoff is worth it. And she’s also describing… I mean, this is historical. This book is almost 100 years old now. But she’s also winding her readers and her characters through the real streets against the real locations of her actual German cities, which I would really appreciate if I was gearing up for a trip potentially to that country. How does that sound to you?

BARBARA: I love that. And I love that for two reasons. The first is one of the things that interests both of us about Germany is the reconciliation and reparation process that occurred based on the actions of the Nazi regime.

So it would be interesting to hear some of the stories that kind of are the seeds of that. And I do like what you said about, you know, they’re walking through the streets of Germany and you’re getting that experience too. And then I believe Robin has read this and I haven’t. I believe she’s actually passed the book on to me. And so that’s also great. It’s one that I can read and we will both have read it and it can influence our selection.

[00:28:02] ANNE: All right. That sounds good. Next, I’m wondering about a contemporary memoir by Luisa Weiss. It’s called My Berlin Kitchen. Do you know this book?

BARBARA: I do not.

ANNE: Okay. Well, she started it as a blogger. Her blog back in the day was called The Wednesday Chef. And she started it because she was cooking her way through her massive recipe collection and she wanted a way to document it with pictures.

But at the time the story in this memoir began, she was living in New York but just kept dreaming about going back to Berlin. And this is her account of how she finally decided to move back and all that happened after. And I love this for the way she paints a portrait of a contemporary city that despite my numerous trips to Germany, I have never been to and would dearly love to go to. It’s beautiful. It’s historic. It’s storied. The food and arts culture are both so strong there.

[00:28:56] And something I like about her book is I expected it to be all German everything all the time, but it’s a cosmopolitan city. She describes what she does with American friends, but also with German friends and what she’s eating and where she’s going, and how she’s spending her weekends and weeknights. I think that slice of life from a contemporary perspective may be a nice augment to some of the historical fiction I have no doubt you all will read because of Robin’s interests.

BARBARA: That sounds wonderful. And as I mentioned, you know, Robin kind of represents that looking at the historical fiction. We both will read it. She generally brings it to the table and then this really reflects usually what I bring to the table, which is that, as you mentioned, slice of life, what is it like today?

And I do like that it’s focused on, you know, just what it’s like to be in a metropolitan space. I love New York City. Most of my travel list is metropolitan cities, just because I think it’s kind of like a way to have a sample of the communities that exist in that country in one place. So I really love that idea.

[00:30:05] ANNE: Okay. I love that for you. This next one is a more contemporary release. It was translated by Europa, which is where I find a lot of translated literature coming out of Germany and other countries. The book is Barbara Isn’t Dying by Alina Bronsky. It’s short. It’s less than 200 pages.

And this isn’t the kind of book where you’ll read about locations and real places you may like to visit — it’s set in a German small town — but it has such a German sensibility and sense of humor. I wonder if a book like that may feel like it belongs on your literary travel preparation list.

So this is a tragicomic story. There’s a man named Herr Schmidt who wakes up one morning and discovers nobody has made the coffee. His immediate thought is that his wife died because that is the only possible explanation she could be. She died in the night, so there is no coffee. There’s no other explanation. But it turns out she is alive but unwell.

[00:31:03] The story here is that we see this curmudgeonly, set-in-his-ways husband learn to do all these things he’s never thought twice about doing for his entire married life, which has gone on for many decades. Things like cook a potato or turn on the vacuum cleaner. And we see him make adaptations and learn new things and make silly jokes about it along the way, with a big harrumph, sure. But we see him put together a community as he enters, along with his wife, this challenging new stage.

There’s a lot of emotional ground covered in this book, even though it’s real short. The closest I can give you for what this book feels like is Fredrik Backman, but it’s definitely not a [reader-like?]. Does this sound like the kind of thing that might belong on your pre-travel reading list?

BARBARA: That sounds like so much fun. I mentioned that the 2016 trip, we spent a lot of time in London and Edinburgh, big cities, but we made sure that we had a sojourn into a more rural area so that we could get a taste of that. I love that about it.

[00:32:12] A funny thing about when we travel is these summers, 2016 and 2026, are also big anniversaries for each of us. So in this case, it’ll be my 30th wedding anniversary in June and her 25th. And we joke that for our special anniversaries, the two of us go off by ourselves. But we’ve talked about, maybe we’ll let the husbands join us for a portion of the vacation. And I just think it’s cute to the idea of reading about husbands trying to survive without the assistance of their wives.

ANNE: Maybe that’s not the worst thing to read before you travel abroad by yourself. Barbara, I want to slide in one more book here. I don’t know if the nostalgia factor of a book connected to The Parent Trap appeals to you. What do you think?

BARBARA: I only watched that movie 40 or 50 times when I was a kid.

[00:33:08] ANNE: Oh my gosh, it was my favorite. Well, the book that movie is based on is German. It was published there. You know what? I’m not going to read the German title for you. But it was published as Lisa and Lottie in the UK and Australia when it first came out.

It is, in fact, about identical twins whose parents separated them when they were infants because they got divorced, but at an all-girls summer camp on the lake many years later, when they’re nine and a half, they meet each other at camp. They don’t get along at first, but everybody notices like, hey, you kind of look alike. So you can get this in English. You can read it if you want to. It’s called Lisa and Lottie.

This novel was published in 1949. So you think The Parent Trap is old in 1961, but the German book is 20 years older than that. Does that appeal to you at all?

BARBARA: Yeah, absolutely. I had no idea that that was based on a German book. I would love that. I would love to read it from the perspective of the campus somewhere in Germany, not in the US.

[00:34:07] ANNE: Yeah. And there’s fun little details like Luise lives in Vienna, Lottie lives in Munich. The counselors have wonderful German names like Ulrike and Gerda. I’d love to hear what you think about that. You can enjoy your leisurely lakeside setting through the pages of this camp novel.

BARBARA: Absolutely.

ANNE: The Austrian options aren’t as readily apparent to me, but listeners, we would love your recommendations. Our comments are always open for me, for Barbara, and for anyone looking to plan literary tourism in that direction of the world. Barbara, have you read any Austrian novels or memoirs yet?

BARBARA: I don’t believe so.

ANNE: Okay. I can’t speak in as much details to these stories because they are on my want-to-read before I go. I really want to go back to Salzburg one day. Reading list. But nevertheless, Barbara, here’s some fun books you can read. I don’t want to reveal what happens in the whole series, but have you read any of the Tom Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith?

[00:35:10] BARBARA: No, I’ve read one of her books, but it wasn’t a Ripley book.

ANNE: Okay. Well, Ripley Underground, which is a later book in the series, is partially set in Salzburg. And while these are definitely of their era and not contemporary, they do have a strong sense of place and feel very much like … I mean, they make wonderful travel reading. You could read the series in order. You could read yourself a nice summary and drop right in with Ripley Underground. But I was delighted to be reminded that that one is partially set in Salzburg.

For a historical author, the works of Stefan Zweig are on my radar for when I plan my trip. I haven’t read these yet. But the ones high on my list are The Post Office Girl, a novel, and The World of Yesterday, a memoir, with a strong and heartbreaking personal backstory.

Now, the film is not particularly like the book, but The Grand Budapest Hotel, the Wes Anderson film, is an adaptation of The World of Yesterday and additional personal experiences not contained in that memoir.

[00:36:18] But back in the 1920s and 30s, he was hugely popular. He was one of the most widely translated and widely read authors in the world, not just Europe, not just Vienna, where he was raised. And those books have been enduring classics and are often recommended to those traveling to Austria and have really held up over time.

For a more popular historical approach, Allison Pataki, who’s now a prolific historical fiction writer, her second novel is called The Accidental Empress. This fictionalizes the little-known and highly tumultuous love story of a woman known as Sisi. She was the 19th-century Austro-Hungarian empress and the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph.

Now, her husband is much better known in history and the one taught in history classes around the world, but Pataki thought Sisi’s story was worth its own telling.

[00:37:18] She thought it was her sister who was going to be empress, but she ends up taking her sister’s place, which is a great relief to the sister. But her mother-in-law did not like this development. But Sisi turns out to be absolutely unprepared for what it’s truly like to inhabit this role as empress of this huge empire at the time. She can’t get a hang of the protocol. She doesn’t like not having any control over her life. She’s always clashing with her mother-in-law and also her husband.

Pataki brings this woman and her struggles to life against the backdrop of the greater political and historical landscape in this novel. So you see lots of, like, Viennese court intrigue and political machinations. It’s not written like Wolf Hall, but it’s not unlike it as a type of story. How does that sound to you?

BARBARA: That sounds great. It’s sort of an area of history that I’m sure Robin knows about, but that I know nothing about. So that would be great to learn and just get a sense of what that political environment felt like.

ANNE: Nothing yet. And there’s no motivation like travel.

BARBARA: Exactly.

[00:38:26] ANNE: Okay. Let’s go to Italy.

BARBARA: Yes.

ANNE: Now, I imagine you’ve read more widely about Italy. Are there any books that have really jumped out at you?

BARBARA: This is a very talked-about book, but I did read Eat, Pray, Love.

ANNE: I’ve never read that.

BARBARA: It was fine, but I have probably read other books that were more positioned… oh, oh, well, of course, I’ve read the Elena Ferrante series and loved it and want to read more of her books. But I’ve read the Quartet.

ANNE: Okay. I’m glad to hear that. Now, there’s so much you could read. And a lot that we’ve talked about on the show, I’m thinking of, oh, what’s the book by Sarah Winman? Still Life is the one set in Italy. We’ve talked about André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name. We’ve talked about Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer, and I feel like that is the tip of the iceberg.

BARBARA: I did read One Italian Summer. I liked it okay. It wasn’t my favorite, but I did read that one.

[00:39:25] ANNE: The thing that I remember best about that book is that you get to go to Positano with no tourists and perfect weather.

BARBARA: Yes. Definitely, the environment and reading the parts about the environment were great. The story of the protagonist was not as developed as I would like, but yes, all of the descriptions of the space I did love.

ANNE: Okay. I’m glad to hear it. Let’s start with a memoir. How would that be?

BARBARA: That would be great.

ANNE: I’m thinking of From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke. This came out some years ago now. I think in 2019. Is this a book you’re familiar with?

BARBARA: No.

ANNE: Okay. I wonder if this will appeal to your reflective self, thinking about big transitions and calling and meaning and identity. This is a grief memoir. In these pages, we see actress Tembi Locke describing how her husband died young.

[00:40:26] Here she wants to tell a story of how she fell in love with him, even though perhaps they didn’t look on the surface like they belonged together because of the things they did not hold in common like race, class, and culture. They had to overcome a lot to be together and ended up meaning everything to each other. Losing him was so painful for her. She really lays out, this is why I felt I needed to tell this story.

And she does such a moving job of telling how she found him and how really food and chance brought them together in Italy. His Sicilian family was not wild about him marrying Tembi. She’s an African American woman from America. And that splintered the family for many years, though she talks about how reconciliation was finally possible.

But this is full of love and reflection. There’s a lot of pain here, but also a lot of celebration of the love they shared. And the settings that she lovingly portrays in this story are, I think, something you’ll especially appreciate as you’re planning your trip. Not just Sicily, but lots of Sicily. How does that sound?

[00:41:32] BARBARA: That’s a bullseye for me, for sure.

ANNE: Okay, I’m glad to hear it. Let’s do another memoir. Have you read Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome?

BARBARA: I have not, but it’s been high on my list. Robin has read it. She’s the one who passed it on to me.

ANNE: This is a wonderful and very slim memoir. It’s less than 200 pages. I feel like you get quite an experience in just a tiny little package. I don’t know if you feel like you have a lot of ground to cover. I don’t want to project on you, but the truth is, it’s short.

It’s called Four Seasons in Rome because this is about the one year that Tony Doerr got some kind of writing grant, fellowship something, where he got paid to move to Rome with his family and write for a year to work on a big writing project.

And it’s kind of fun to know how the story ends. Now we know that the book is All the Light We Cannot See and it won a Pulitzer, but you just read his journal entries here that are just fleeting references to the story he’s working on.

[00:42:33] But he believes that to hone his writing skills, he just needs to write a journal page every day about what he’s been doing, the sights and sounds he’s taking in, like what he sees on the street when he’s walking to buy tomato paste or whatever. And that is what this book is.

So he won a writer’s grant. He found out he won it the same day he and his wife brought twins home from the hospital, and they’re like, “We can’t go to Rome with twins.” And then they decide, “Well, I mean, people have babies in Rome. Let’s go.”

So here he chronicles the everyday grocery shopping, like his harrowing stories of trying to navigate a double stroller down ancient cobblestone streets and how hard it is to source baby gear for twins. But his wife gets really sick at one point and he describes navigating the Italian medical system. And I will say only that that story has a happy ending.

But he also talks about sightseeing, like something you’ll definitely be doing and how he happened to be in Rome during Pope John Paul II’s historic massive funeral, and what a sight that was to behold. I googled so many tourist destinations, especially churches and cathedrals. He references streets, trips to small towns out of the city. I don’t know. What do you think? Robin was excited about this one for you.

[00:43:53] BARBARA: Exactly. And it’s been on my near-to-read list for a long time and it’s time to move it up. I always love those ones that touch on different places, the different sightseeing, and love that it’s also talking about or he’s discussing his relationship with writing. So everything about that is interesting to me.

When we were in London, they were voting on Brexit. So we were so excited to be at a place something monumental was happening like that. So I’d love to hear his stories about the Pope’s funeral.

ANNE: I love that you drew that connection. Okay, next I have to share from one of my favorites. Europe is really old. So we’re going to go back further in time to 1560 with Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait. Have you read it?

BARBARA: No.

ANNE: Okay. This is historical fiction, but this is definitely not like a lightly fictionalized retelling. She drew inspiration from a Robert Browning poem to write this book. But it has a strong sense of time and place.

[00:45:00] So the story here is that in the 16th century, a 15-year-old girl left Florence to marry this horrible, horrible man named Alfonso. And when she did, she became a very fancy duchess. Less than a year later, she was dead, and the rumor is that she was murdered by her husband.

That tragic story inspired this little puzzle box of a novel. Early in the story, she has her portrait painted. And it’s clear because of what unfolds at the sitting that she is in trouble. She can’t give her husband an heir. The reasons aren’t her fault, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to be the target of his anger.

She knows enough to be scared. The people close to the duchess are telling her she needs to figure out an escape plan. But that’s easier said than done. But this story is about a young girl in a position of great privilege and also great danger trying to find a way out of an impossible situation in Italy mid-16th century.

[00:46:03] I love Maggie O’Farrell. I think she might be my favorite living author. This book doesn’t have the emotional heft like my very favorite, This Might Be the Place, does. But it is so interesting and smart. And just her prose on a sentence level is like, dang, what a sentence. That was great. Give me more, Maggie O’Farrell. How does that sound to you?

BARBARA: I love that book. It falls in the category of a very small number of books that I’d be willing to reread because one of those people struggles to reread. And so I agree, her writing is fantastic. And I’ve been meaning to read more. So this is great.

ANNE: All right. I’m glad to hear it. Let’s do a new book for our last book. Are you okay with that?

BARBARA: Sounds great.

ANNE: I mean, it’s new, but also very old. Georgia Hunter has a new book. It comes out March 4th. It’s called One Good Thing. But this reminds me that her old book… I think it came out in 2018. She’s been on What Should I Read Next? and told the whole story behind it, which was amazing. I highly recommend that episode.

[00:47:06] But it’s based on her family members’ lived experience in World War II. And her relatives that survived all fled Europe and landed in different parts of the world. But much of it does take place in Germany. So maybe that would be a good one to read as well.

But One Good Thing is set in Italy. And Georgia Hunter says in her author’s note that she was drawn to it as a setting for many reasons. Big ones were Italy’s Jewish community is one of the oldest in Europe, but its Holocaust history is unknown to many. And I would definitely count myself among those who just didn’t know. So here she’s telling that unknown history of Italian Jews in World War II during the Holocaust through the eyes of an ordinary young woman and also her best friend.

She also says that her parents, who are both American, but they met in Rome in the early 70s. And so she grew up hearing about how Italy, everything about Italy, the food, the culture, the coastline, the energy that she says was somehow chaotic and laid back all at once just sounded incredible and have been so incredibly meaningful to her.

[00:48:15] So this is the story of two young Jewish women who are trying to survive in the run up and then during World War II and who also feel called to help others do the same. How does this sound to you? World War II novel in a setting that I thought felt entirely new and like nothing I’d read before. What do you think?

BARBARA: I think that is a perfect fit for both of us. I think we’ll both love to read that one.

ANNE: Well, you don’t have to wait long at all now at this point. Okay. Barbara, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We went to Germany, to Austria, and to Italy. Now we don’t know yet where you and Robin are going physically, but on the page, is there a title that stands out? What do you think you might read next?

BARBARA: From Scratch is probably the top for me and My Ber-

ANNE: Ooh, okay. I like how that… there was no hesitation.

BARBARA: Yeah. And my Berlin Kitchen, too. Like I said, I think the One Good Thing and I think The Marriage Portrait are also two that both Robin and I would enjoy.

[00:49:21] ANNE: Okay. Well, I’m excited to hear what you think. I’m really excited to hear where you end up going. I wish all the best to you and Robin as you get ready for 50 and Fantastic.

BARBARA: Thank you. And we’ll let you know.

ANNE: Thank you, Barbara. It’s been a pleasure.

BARBARA: Yeah. Thank you.

ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Barbara, and I’d love to hear your reading recommendations for her upcoming trip. Get all our links and notes, including how to connect with Barbara, and also that full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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