Catherine Newman and Bittersweet Motherhood

Summary

The Book Case Podcast - Episode Summary

Episode: Catherine Newman and Bittersweet Motherhood

Host(s): Charlie Gibson, Kate Gibson
Guest: Catherine Newman
Date: November 6, 2025

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Overview

This episode of The Book Case features an in-depth conversation with author Catherine Newman about her latest novel, Rec, which continues the story of the beloved "Sandwich" family introduced in her previous book. The discussion explores themes of motherhood, anxiety, humor in the face of life's unpredictability, and the bittersweet nature of raising children who will eventually leave. The hosts and Newman delve into how fiction can capture the complexity of family, grief, living in the present, and letting go.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Revisiting the "Sandwich" Family

• Continuation from "Sandwich":
  • Catherine Newman shares that the characters were so "familiar" she couldn’t let them go, and even failed at writing new characters for Rec ([07:18], Catherine Newman):

    "I tried to write this book with different characters... It was not the right thing. They were the same characters. And so then I just allowed it to go that way."

• Rocky (Rachel), the Protagonist:
  • Focuses on her love for family and the looming sense that “she could lose everything” ([07:50], Catherine Newman):

    "This is a woman who is completely smitten with her kids, with her husband, with her parents... it's about her perceived threats... she could lose everything."

2. The Drama of Ordinary Life

• Universal Fears:
  • Newman and the hosts agree that the drama is in the "achingly normal" ([08:32], Charlie Gibson), where the anxiety comes from loving deeply while knowing loss is inevitable ([08:58], Catherine Newman):

    "All the drama of the human condition, which is that everybody's going to die... There are some moments where it drifts right smack in front of you, and you can see nothing but the existential threat to everything you care about."

3. Humor as Survival and Style

• Laughter in Darkness:
  • Both book and author are commended for their humor, preventing the subject matter from being overwhelmingly heavy ([10:40], Catherine Newman):

    "Humor is a strategy, a coping strategy. Michael and I once saw a couples therapist who told us that we seemed to use humor as a crutch, and we were like, screw you. It's the best part of our marriage."

  • Catherine conducts a personal "humor audit" of her drafts to ensure balance ([11:02], Catherine Newman):

    "I did do, like, a humor audit at some point. I read it to make sure it was funny enough."

4. The Infamous Medical Portal

• Modern Medical Anxiety:
  • All participants commiserate on the stress caused by the patient “portal” ([11:50], Catherine Newman):

    "If there were Dante now, the portal would be one of the circles of hell, and you would just be in your patient portal, like, for all of eternity..."

5. Anxiety and Control

• Writing as (Illusory) Control:
  • Newman reflects on whether writing is a way to gain “illusion of control” over anxieties about health, children, and mortality ([14:14], Catherine Newman):

    "Her whole problem is the fact that she doesn't control anything, right?...writing is like the ultimate control. I control everything...maybe it's just like an illusion of control."

• Personal Reflections on Anxiety:
  • Catherine admits her anxiety closely mirrors her protagonist’s, including therapy and medication ([12:55], Catherine Newman):

    "I have all that anxiety, all the kinds of anxiety that Rocky has. I also have. I take the same anti-anxiety medication she takes."

6. The Role of the Writer

• Autobiographical Elements:
  • Newman candidly jokes about making Rocky a writer to “do some of these bits” that reflect her own experiences ([15:13], Catherine Newman):

    "I make her be a writer so that I can do some of these bits. It's just a vehicle for humor for me because I have written so much for so many magazines..."

7. Grief: Living with Loss, Practicing for the Future

• Preemptive and Lasting Grief:
  • The hosts and Newman discuss her poignant analogy:

    "Grief is like the sound of the exhaust fan over the stove. A constant hum that recedes a little to the background over time, though you never get to turn it off."
    ([16:06], Charlie Gibson reading from Newman)

  • Catherine shares that preemptive grief is “humming in the background all the time” as we try to brace ourselves for loss ([16:37], Catherine Newman).

8. The Impossibility of Living Fully in the Present

• Being Present vs. Nostalgia and Anxiety:
  • Kate Gibson brings up her experience with mindfulness and the tension of living in the moment ([18:02], Kate Gibson).
  • Newman responds realistically:

    "I do think that's possible. I don't think that's the only mode, though. I think then there's also, like, for me, there's tons of wallowing, which is past oriented, and anxiety, which is usually future oriented."
    ([18:51], Catherine Newman)

  • Beautiful passage on maternal love and memory, referencing how mothers "carry" the image of their children on their hearts ([20:35], Catherine Newman).

9. On Raising Readers and the Importance of Choice

• Letting Kids Read What They Love:
  • Newman shares regrets and insights from raising her own kids to be readers, emphasizing the importance of letting them read whatever brings them joy—even if it’s "crud" ([32:11], Catherine Newman):

    "If it's like a book in their hands, if it's a graphic novel or a crappy comic book or the same picture book they've read a hundred times... just let them read it."

  • Kate and Charlie reinforce this, insisting that early joy in reading carries into adulthood ([35:13], Kate Gibson).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the drama of ordinary life:

  • "The drama is just the human condition…pedestrian drama. The fact that people are gonna die, the fact that you could lose anybody that you care about."
    —Catherine Newman ([08:58])

• On the medical portal:

  • "If there were Dante now, the portal would be one of the circles of hell, and you would just be in your patient portal, like, for all of eternity..."
    —Catherine Newman ([11:50])

• On living with anxiety:

  • "Holding the fact that we're gonna lose everybody — holding it loosely while we love everybody totally recklessly. Cause what are you gonna do?"
    —Catherine Newman ([12:55])

• On humor as necessity:

  • "Humor is a strategy, a coping strategy... It's the best part of our marriage."
    —Catherine Newman ([10:40])

• On living in the present:

  • "I think her being a writer makes sense in terms of the book... she does move through the world as a person who notices pretty much everything."
    —Catherine Newman ([15:13])

• On the lasting impact of maternal love:

  • "If you can cut open a mother without the likeness of their children on their heart. And I thought, boy, no, no, right."
    —Kate Gibson reading from the book ([20:35])

• On promoting lifelong reading:

  • "Just let them read it."
    —Catherine Newman ([32:11])

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• Discussion of “Sandwich” & Introduction to “Rec”: [03:10]–[07:18]
• Crafting “normal” yet dramatic families: [08:32]–[09:57]
• Use of humor and “the portal” woes: [09:57]–[11:50]
• Anxiety in parenting and writing: [12:23]–[14:14]
• Writer as protagonist & autobiographical writing: [15:09]–[16:06]
• Grief—anticipating, living with, describing: [16:35]–[18:02]
• The impossibility of pure presence: [18:02]–[20:35]
• Maternal connection and memory: [20:35]–[21:13]
• Future for Rocky & Newman's writing process: [22:06]–[22:39]
• Rapid Fire Questions (“book person” segment): [25:13]–[32:11]
• Making readers out of children (advice for parents): [32:11]–[35:45]
• Closing thoughts & emotional resonance: [36:47]-[37:12]

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Tone and Style

The conversation is warm, deeply personal, lightly irreverent, and suffused with humor even in the face of anxiety and existential dread. The hosts and their guest balance moments of poignant vulnerability with laughs, practical advice for readers and parents, and literary admiration.

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Conclusion

This episode stands as a testament to the richness of everyday life, the paradox of loving within the shadow of loss, and the importance of both humor and storytelling in making meaning. Catherine Newman's reflections on motherhood and grief—and the capacity of fiction to hold these truths—offer listeners a moving case for embracing both the sweet and the bitter in parenting, reading, and living.

Recommended for:
Anyone interested in the complexities of motherhood, family dynamics, modern anxieties, and the power of laughter and literature to navigate them all.

Transcript

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Favorite scent from the world's number one antiperspirant brand foreigners. Welcome readers all. We're happy to have you with us. Halloween is past you now. Face the yearly question, what do I do with all that leftover candy? Go ahead, indulge yourself. Eat it. It's a lovely time to think that you can eat candy with impunity. Hi Kate.

[C]

Yeah, I agree. The number of times in the last, I don't know, 48 hours that the thought has popped into my head, damn it, it's my candy, you know, I can eat it if I want to. It's kind of remarkable how often that thought has crossed my mind. I also want to say Halloween is the one time of year that I want nougat. There's no other time of the year that anybody really wants nougat. Just Halloween for whatever reason is just.

[B]

Anyway, the word nougat turns me off to begin with. By the way, thank you for the pictures of your children on Halloween night. What did they do? Did they go out for eight hours?

[C]

About that felt like that.

[B]

They must have started at 4 and went to midnight.

[C]

And Minnesota, October 31, really doesn't matter how long you go out. It feels like eight hours because it's so cold. This time it was not icy, so I could. At least I didn't have to wear clamp ons. I could just, you know, carry the umbrella. And it was okay, but. But they really hit it hard this year. They really did. They did very well. They did very, very well.

[B]

To define that as a pile is to. Is to understate what it was. Do you port to them or do they have free reign on their stash?

[C]

No, they do not have free reign on their stash. That's ridiculous. I'm not suicidal.

[B]

Anyway, then their stash is going to last them well into the new year anyway.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Good to have all of you with us this week we are featuring Catherine Newman. If you remember back well a year and a half, she wrote a wonderful book called Sandwich, which was about a family on a summer vacation going to the home that they had rented for years and years. It was a sandwich family. There was an older generation, the middle generation, and then the kids. The same family is back. In her new book called Rec W R E C K. And it's really a book about foreboding. I think it says it all. In the frontispiece, she quotes Nora Ephron as saying, death is a sniper. It strikes people. You love people, you like people. You know, it's everywhere. You could be next, but then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be. That quote, I think, sums it up. It's a mom, Rocky Rachel, who is so concerned that, yes, life is good, but it could turn at any minute.

[C]

Yeah. And life often does. I loved this book. I like Kathryn Newman. There are a few writers that we've talked to that, to me, perfectly encapsulate the way I feel personally about motherhood. Mary Laura Philpott was one and Katherine Newman is, Is. Is another. I love the way that she perfectly writes about the way that I look at my kids. When I look at my kids, I. I find it impossible to live in the present because I'm constantly picturing the little kids, that they were wondering about what they're going to become, but also about the pitfalls and foibles that are gonna come in the future, but also that ultimately I'm gonna lose them. That you raised them to leave you and to be successful people. And so all of those things exist in my mind at the same time. The past, the present, the future. Every time I look at my kids, my mind is a very crowded place. And Catherine Newman, I think in Sandwich and with this book, Rec, although I think rec has a little more anxiety in it, less vacation. Nostalgia is really, again, beautifully encapsulates the way I feel about motherhood personally. And so I. I'm a devotee of Katherine Newman's.

[B]

In this case, it's the mother of the family, Rocky Rachel. As I say, her nickname is Rocky, who faces a health crisis and is never sure exactly what's going to happen and goes through all the trials that the medical profession can put you through. When you're trying to interpret what they've posted in your chart in your. In your. What do you call it? In your portal. In your portal. That's right, portal.

[C]

That word has become dirty for me. Go check your portal. It's in the portal. We'll post it in the portal.

[B]

And. And then you. And then of course, you look up everything in the. In on Google or on the chat GPT or whatever it is the AI and it makes it even more confusing to me at least.

[C]

Well, and I think all those results sort of read the same. It's like, you could have this, you could have this, you could have this. And at the bottom, it's always like, or it could be cancer. Like, or it could be cancer. Is always seems to me to be like the last result in each of these searches.

[B]

Yeah. And so it leaves you. Is. So it leaves you thinking, oh, my God, is this the big one, Elizabeth? Is this, Is this the one that's going to get me? Because they don't, you know, they don't ever. Well, sometimes they say you're fine, but you have to read through a bunch of stuff to get there. It's obviously one of, as we talk about, one of Catherine Newman's pet peeves, and it's one of mine as well. The Portal. It's. It's, it's so ominous. Anyway, she. If she worries through this book. And I kept thinking as I read it, this has got to be personal. Catherine Newman has. Spends a lot of time talking about the intricacies of what might be the disease that Rocky has. And I kept thinking, gee, she knows a lot about this.

[C]

Well, I think Tube Sandwich was also very personal. Again, I think she channels her feelings about aging, aging parents, raising adult kids and growing older as a woman. I think she channels it all into these books. We should mention, by the way, that the Wreck is the November GMA pick. So we're also supporting the GMA Book Club this month because we just love this book and I love the way Katherine writes and I love her personalities. So it's a win, win, win, win, win, win, win. There's so many wins.

[B]

And the book is funny. Yes, it is. You're always attracted to books that are funny and it sounds ominous the way we describe it, but it is. She has a wonderful sense of humor. And humor obviously carries Catherine Newman, probably personally, through any uncertainties in life, and it certainly carries her through this book. It is wonderfully readable. It is very funny. And here's our conversation with Katharine Newman about her new book, Rec.

[C]

Kathryn Newman, it is such a pleasure to have you back in the bookcase. So what is the first thing about Rec that wouldn't let you go? What was it that made you decide to continue Rocky's story from Sandwich?

[A]

You know, those characters, they're very, very familiar to me, if you know what I mean. Very familiar to me. I tried to write this book with different characters, and it was an exercise in something. It was not the right thing. They were the same characters. And so then I just allowed it to go that way. Like, I couldn't get out of Rocky's voice, basically.

[C]

At what point did you get through it where you're like, this is not speaking to me. It won't speak to me until Rocky's sitting in the driver's seat?

[A]

It was like I just couldn't even write it. It just. I was trying to do a different family, and I just. It was like these characters banging on the door. And so I just. I thought, I'll write it with them and then I'll see. And if nobody wants it to be that, I'll try to change it. This is a woman who is completely smitten with her kids, with her husband, with her parents. So Sandwich was also about that, and this book is about that again. And it's about her perceived threats to that orientation that she is suddenly made aware again that she could lose everything.

[B]

That is so achingly normal. Catherine, somebody who's in love with her family, who actually likes her husband, who has two kids that she honors a father that is a little peculiar, but. But she thinks is terrific. Where's the pathos and all that? Where's the drama and all that? You've written about a normal family that is facing some unusual situations, but they're achingly normal.

[A]

Is that a real question or a R or a bit of rhetorical sass? I can deal with either if it's rhetorical sass noted. If it's a real question. I mean, I do think the drama. It's like, I know that this is not news to you, all the drama of the human condition, which is that everybody's going to die and you. To live in the world and care about things as much as we must, you put that in a bubble. You sort of leave it to the side for as much of your life as you're able to. And then there are some moments where it drifts right smack in front of you, and you can see nothing but the existential threat to everything you care about. So we think that's. The drama is just the human condition. And it is a very pedestrian drama. The fact that people are gonna die, the fact that you could lose anybody that you care about.

[C]

I wonder why. Because also through this very serious plot, there's also a lot of funny. For instance, there's a. My favorite moment in the illness is somebody in the medical profession saying, we made a note in your portal. Ah, yes. At some point, I got an email that said, I had a note in my portal. Only when I clicked the link, I got in my portal. It said, only you have a note in your portal. I've been there so many, many times. And based on just that quote alone and portal, I'm shaking my fist. For those of you at home, portals are the bane of my existence. But do you think humor is important to Rocky stories? Always. And do you try to be funny, or is it just natural to you?

[A]

It's some combination. It's definitely. It's my M.O. as a person. You know, humor is a strategy, a coping strategy. Michael and I once saw a couples therapist who told us that we seemed to use humor as a crutch, and we were like, screw you. It's the best part of our marriage. And, like, never went back. We were like, what a crutch.

[B]

Like.

[A]

And we were, like, bonded forever because of that. We were like, wow, she knew nothing. I think this book would be a little unreadable if it didn't have humor in it. Honestly, I think it would be a little relentless. I did do, like, a humor audit at some point. I read it to make sure it was funny enough.

[B]

But I also got a pretty good sense of your pet peeves. And one of them is that medical business of the portal and how you get information and should you indeed go to the medical sites to try to understand what it is the medical profession tells you, which is in Greek, so that it's so hard to understand. Am I right? Those are all pet peeves that you have.

[A]

Oh, God, the portal. It really does feel like something Dante. Like, if there were Dante now, the portal would be one of the circles of hell, and you would just be in your patient portal, like, for all of eternity, like, clicking on stuff and, oh, my God, I. So, yes, the portal is, like, my greatest. I want to say pet peeve slash. Like something more serious than a pet peeve. Like, the portal is slowly killing me, and I'll find out on the portal that, in fact, the portal has killed me.

[C]

Yes, absolutely. You know, when I read Sandwich, it felt like anxiety was a low. I don't know, a note that was just played throughout the book. But it wasn't the central. Central theme. But this. I get the sense this book rec is very much about anxiety.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Anxiety about losing your kids, anxiety about losing your parents, anxiety over your own death. So do you have those anxieties? Did you write them to work them out? And did you work them out? Is it all out of you now? It's all done.

[A]

It's all finished, Kate. Thanks so much for asking. Yeah, it's all. I just now am just purged of anxiety. I have all that anxiety, all the anxiety, all the kinds of anxiety that Rocky has. I also have. I take the same anti anxiety medication she takes. I also have a kid who struggles with anxiety. So I. I really appreciate that because I just think that that's right. I think sandwich there's anxiety in it. And I think wreck to some extent is about anxiety. And about. Again, just holding the fact that we're gonna lose everybody, holding it loosely while we love everybody totally recklessly. Cause what are you gonna do? What, are you gonna hold yourself back so that it won't hurt so much? It's not gonna help anyway.

[C]

I found myself wondering because in the acknowledgments you say, my mother is very much alive. I love her to death. She's great. In this book, Rocky's mother is dead. And I thought to myself, I wonder if by practicing it in her writing, she thinks it might make it easier at some point. And did the practice run help or did that make it much harder? Like, again, I felt like I was experiencing not just Rocky's anxiety, but your anxiety as a writer while I was reading this.

[A]

I mean, I think it's a good question. The question you were asking about, like, whether the experience of writing is like a purging experience. And I'm really not sure about that. I mean, I think one thing that's great about writing is I'm just trying this out on you guys. I've never said this before, but I think it might be true that I think, like, here's Rocky, right? Her whole problem is the fact that she doesn't control anything, right?

[C]

She.

[A]

If she could control everything, she'd be fine, right? She can't control her health. She can't control the safety of her kids, her dad. And I think writing is like the ultimate control. I control everything. And I. I haven't thought about it in those terms, but your question makes me think that maybe it's just like an illusion of control. Like, it's just practicing the feeling of being in control. But I don't know. I'll leave that as a thought.

[C]

Why is it important that Rocky is a writer?

[A]

Cause I have no imagination. Honestly, I swear to God, I make her be a writer so that I can do some of these bits. It's just a vehicle for humor for me because I have written so much for so many magazines, and I just think some of that stuff is comedy gold. Like I just love writing about it, and I know it well. And like her Spatchcocking article that she's writing forever and they hold it so long that she has to rewrite it. That stuff is just, like, lifted out of my life. I think she has a writer y personality. Like, she's a. I mean, she does move through the world as a person who notices pretty much everything. So I think it's plausible. Like, I think her being a writer makes sense in terms of the book.

[B]

In so many books, we have talked about the fact that grief is addressed by the author. And you have a great line about it. Grief is like the sound of the exhaust fan over the stove. A constant hum that recedes a little to the background over time, though you never get to turn it off. I think that's a really, really nice analogy. And it seems to me authors have to sort of struggle to find a new definition of grief that's really going to. Going to resound. How do you think of it? How do you think of it that way?

[A]

I mean, I definitely. It's so.

[C]

It's.

[A]

I'm in a slightly delicate, like, life situation, so it's a little hard for me to talk about it. But, you know, I think. I think there's this way that there's a kind of. You anticipate loss maybe for good reason. And there's this way that. That preemptive grief starts just, like, humming in the background all the time that you. That swelling, like, you'll talk to somebody that you anticipate losing in some sort of near future. And you feel that. The swell of meaning and feeling. You feel. You know, if it were a movie scene, you would hear the violins. Like, it's so crisp and so it's like a sunset. It has that feeling of, like, a moment that you just wanna really pay attention so it doesn't just pass you by. So I think that there's that kind of preemptive grief which you were talking about, Kate. And then I think there's the grief of the hole where the person was after somebody does die, where you go all the time to talk to them. You know, you go to the place in your brain where you're like, oh, I gotta put this away to talk to my person about. And then there's just, like, the vertigo of them missing.

[C]

I'll get personal for a minute. So I've had a very tough year. And one of the things my sponsor, my AA program has been talking to me about. My sister actually made me a hat with a sign on it says, be where your feet are. And it's French for trying to live in the present. But reading Sandwich and reading Rec, Rocky seems incapable of that. She lives in the past and the future and the present all at the same time. And so I'm wondering if always being present, that great Buddhist mantra, is even possible. You know, in Sandwich, she has to live in the past because, you know, her past vacations, her kids, her parents, and she's sandwiched in between. And this one she's in a little bit in fear of her future. So she's living in the past, present and future. Do you think it's possible just to live in the present, or is that just not possible in the human condition? It's so good.

[A]

I mean, I don't. It makes me wonder if I have never quite understood that admonition to live in the present. I. I mean, I feel like, you know, those moments where you think, and especially now, not to invoke the cliche of like the phone unplugged in, but. But yes, now, that feeling that you don't want to always be like, hurtling towards something different, that if you do that, you're just gonna miss all of it, you know, and. And so the willing yourself to, to be tethered to the moment, to actually be listening to the person you're talking to, to pay attention to everything. I do think that's possible. I don't think that's the only mode, though. I think then there's also, like, for me, there's tons of wallowing, which is past oriented, and anxiety, which is usually future oriented. I mean, I think it was Sandwich where I described the kids as like Matrushka dolls, all their little selves. And I do think that's so true as a parent, that, that the past is just like inside your child in some really tender, strange way that is always going to provoke a certain amount of nostalgia, like almost all the time.

[C]

Page 34, where she talks about the saintly woman who was autopsied and it. And when they cut her open, they found her heart, that there was a likeness of Jesus on the cross, literally on her heart. And Catherine asks if you can cut open a mother without the likeness of their children on their heart. And I thought, boy, no, no, right.

[A]

It's just like not at the surface level, whatever it is. This is. I know the more they figure out too, and obviously you don't have to carry a baby to be connected to a person, a child of your own, but they find out more and more about these weird cellular exchanges between mothers and fetuses and the resonance between the cells that, you know, these cells that are carried by mother and child. I sometimes I just think some of this stuff I bet we only half understand.

[B]

To be a guy is to be so much easier. But I do envy always the bond that exists. You carry that thing for nine months and it creates a bond that we of the male persuasion can never equal. It's just, it exists. The other line I love when kids willingly recreate parts of their childhood. It feels like such a vote of confidence. And it's true. It's absolutely true. You unleash all these pearls of wisdom, you know, to your children and you don't think they hear a word of it. And then it all comes back 20 years later when they have their own.

[C]

Kids as Rocky moves on in her life and mirrors Catherine in her life. Are we going to see more Rocky?

[A]

I hope so. I don't really know. I feel like I need to have a better answer to that question because I think it's going to come up. I'm taking a lot of notes right now about like very particular kinds of caretaking of older people and I don't know where it's headed. And you know, I do this thing where I take notes for years and then kind of shake it up and see what it looks like, you know, if it's a book and I just don't know if this is a book or not, but that's what I'm thinking about.

[B]

Kathryn Newman, a pleasure to talk with.

[A]

You again for sure.

[B]

Rec is the book following Sandwich. I don't know when you're ever going to come up with a multi word title, but maybe it'll come in times. Thanks for talking to us.

[C]

Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, Katherine, if you would stick around for our rapid fire questions, we'll have some of those for you after the break.

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[D]

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[B]

So we've got some rapid fire questions for Kathryn Newman. We should explain. She makes mention of an ARC that is an advance reader copy. It's a copy that a lot of people get before a book becomes actually published. It's for people to review or people to comment on things like goodreads and authors get them and they don't have to pay.

[C]

As do we sometimes. As do we sometimes.

[B]

As do we a lot.

[C]

Can I tell you? Like, it never gets old for me. Like I never come home and go, oh, another package. Like I'm always like oh, I wonder what this one is. I just love getting arcs. I think they're fantastic and I enjoy. I have a pile of them that I date and I go through. And if you're lucky enough to have a profession in reading and love reading like I Do. It's every day is Christmas.

[B]

We just came back from a summer away on Cape Cod and then a couple of weeks in Greece. I was getting arcs all the time when we were on Cape Cod and I came home, Kate, and there were 11 books. 11 books. What a treat. Anyway, that's what an ARC is. ARC advanced reader copy our rapid fire questions for Kathryn Newman.

[C]

What are you reading? And did you pay retail for it?

[A]

My God, that's so embarrassing. Like never. It's either from the library or they sent me an arc. I just read Aaron Summers the Ten Year Affair and it is so good and strange and really epically funny.

[C]

Ooh.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I loved it. But I did get sent an arc.

[B]

Have you ever asked another author for an autograph?

[A]

Is that the same as asking them to sign my book? Yes, I've asked them to sign my book. I haven't like stood in line with like my old autograph album, but I have asked them to sign my book.

[C]

Can I just say I love that I've now decided that signing books is an academics autograph. I've decided that.

[A]

Just bring it. I should find it. It's probably in this apartment. I'm in my parents apartment that I grew up in. And I just find my old autograph album and start bringing it to books.

[C]

You should. Lily King.

[A]

Yeah. Could you sign my autograph book?

[C]

Oh, speaking of which, we loved Hart the love. It was so good, so good, so good.

[A]

I just can't even take how good that book was.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Is there an author whose book you'll read just because she wrote it or he wrote it?

[A]

Lily King, definitely. Ann Patchett. I mean, I definitely have those. Like Samantha Irby. There are people who. Anything they write, I'll just read it for sure. Ann Patchett. I have it to the extent that if I see something she's written in the New Yorker, I'll read it first. Like any. She could just write anything and I would read it.

[B]

And I have a crush.

[C]

He does.

[B]

I have a crush on her.

[A]

So on ampat. He does. I have a crush. I have a crush on her too. I went to Parnassus last year and I had so much weird energy about it. Cause I'm such a fan. I love her so much and I couldn't decide what to like, what to bring her. And I ended up bringing her this. I made granola and I brought her this massive jar of granola. I traveled with it on the airplane. It was one of those things where I felt good about it until I was walking into the store with it. And I was like, katherine Newman, what is your problem? And I was like, here? And she was like, thank you. Like, what? Anyway, I love her. I love her so much.

[C]

Is there a book that you haven't read yet that it's kind of shameful that you haven't read it yet?

[A]

Okay, So I don't think anyone should be ashamed about books they haven't read. But because I have a PhD in literature, like, I literally have a comp lit PhD, and there are so many books I haven't read. And occasionally I sort of. And I don't believe in this as a rule, I. I'll, like, half pretend to have read something. Like, I won't just say like, oh, I haven't read that. I won't lie and be like, oh, I have an opinion about it, but I'll just hedge. Moby Dick. I thought I was going to read it during the pandemic. I went. The last day our library was open, I went and I got Moby Dick out, and I was, like, going to read Moby Dick. I got. I got like, eight months or whatever I thought it was at the time. I read, like, a hundred pages. And then I was, like, kind of got the gist. I get the vibe.

[C]

There were two books I read when I was breastfeeding because I knew I was gonna be an absolute captive audience. Two audiobooks, Moby Dick, oh, my God. And Crime and Punishment while you were nursing a baby.

[A]

Listen to Crime and Punishment. Cause that is so twisted.

[B]

How many pages will you give a book that you're not liking?

[A]

Okay, that's a great question. And I am always curious about other people. It depends who recommended it to me or how I came to it. If somebody very reliable recommended it to me, I'll give it a lot. A lot of pages. 70 pages. Like the safekeep. I was a hundred pages into it, thinking, I'm going to be the one person who doesn't understand this book. And then I loved it. But enough trusted people had recommended it. I can sometimes give a book a page if it starts and there's, like, dialogue in some dialect that I can't bear to read. Done. I can return it before I've gotten out of the library. Wolf Hall. I opened Wolf Hall. I saw that family tree that goes on for, like, 15 pages. Closed it and, like, took it back to the circulation desk. And she was like, wow, that was fast. I was like, this is not a book for me. Really variable.

[C]

We had somebody tell us that you should read A hundred pages minus your age.

[A]

I like building in your age because life is short. Like, how much are you gonna give it?

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

But the only thing I sometimes think besides Safekeep, Bel Canto, ann Patchett's book. 50 pages. It took me to understand what that book was about. I was like, I don't care about these, like, opera singers. None of this means anything to me. And then at that time, it was the best novel I'd ever read.

[B]

Elvis or Sinatra?

[A]

Sinatra.

[C]

You've had a couple of shows recently about the fact that kids are not reading. Only 30% of 8th graders in the US are reading at grade level or above. You are a teacher I know of, not that age group. A little older. But I wanted to ask you, why do you think it's important to turn kids into a reader? And how did you turn your daughter into a reader?

[A]

Oh, man, I find this just so painful. And I. I don't. Honestly, it's like a place where my natural optimism falters a little. I. I feel like the slimming down of everyone's attention span is so profound. I mean, we'll be with our kids and they won't want to watch a movie because it's such a commitment. Like, they feel like a movie. It's like two hours long. Like, they, they're used to watching like a 40 minute, really good TV show. Fair enough. You know, like, there's so much good tv. I'm not knocking tv, but so reading. I mean, I still, I think there are things we did wrong. And I just, I look back at raising the kids and I think there was a moment where I was like, hey, Ben, you gotta read something that's just not a Magic Treehouse book. Like, you've read a hundred Magic Treehouse books. And I look back at that and I'm like, what was my problem? He was reading. And I thought I squandered it. I thought I could fine tune this and it would be even better. And I just think, oh, my God, just let them read whatever it is they're reading. If it's like a book in their hands, if it's a graphic novel or a crappy comic book or the same picture book they've read a hundred times or even like a cookbook or whatever it is, just like, let them read it.

[C]

I love talking to Kathryn Newman, and I love that last bite. It can be hard when you walk into, you know, your kid's room and they have a comic open or they have maybe, I don't know, a piece of Romantic smut with, you know, ripped bodices on the COVID Or in your case, a horror novel that had two skulls in the car hood for Christine by Stephen King. Like, it could be hard to walk in and go, my kid's mind is not expanding. They're just reading crud. And you gotta let them read the crud because you read crud for fun. I read crud for fun. Not that Stephen King is crud, but I'm just saying, I think Katherine Newman's point is just, you just want them to read what they're going to read.

[B]

You let them read what they want to read. I loved what R.L. stein, Bob Stein said to us. I don't, I don't want to teach him vocabulary. I don't, I don't want, I'm not, I'm not in the teaching profession. I just want to give them good stories and if they get good stories, they will read. We've talked a lot about this now, getting young kids to read. I think a fair bit of our listenership are, shall we say, of age, but they are.

[C]

So are we. By the way.

[B]

That's not an instance, but they are. I hope they are looking for things for their, for their grandchildren or children, if they're still younger, to, to read. And so we keep talking about the fact that it's so important for people in that young age cohort, say 8 to 15, to be reading. It's really, really critical. Get em off screens, get em in the pages.

[C]

It carries into your adulthood. I now have a huge long list of authors, some considered great writers like Ann Patchett and some considered maybe more low brow writers like your Paul Tremblays. And every time I see that one of those folks has a new book out, Richard Osmond, again, every time I hear that one of those fol has a new book out, I get excited. So that addiction to reading what you want to read never goes away. And it's gone well into my adulthood and it has served me well. So please let your kids read whatever it is they have hidden under their bed in front of you.

[B]

So it was great to talk to Katherine Riemann. I love, I love the way she laughs and her books excite laughter as well. I think this book was, as I mentioned to her, was worth reading just for her description of what a family Thanksgiving is like. She really nails it. Anyway, Catherine Newman, the book is rec. We thank her. We'll bring you up to date on who makes this podcast possible. And a final thought, a complimentary thought to us of all things a complimentary thought to us who knew? From Kathryn Newman.

[C]

The book Case With Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.

[A]

The coda. I mean, I don't know, I feel like when I talk to you guys, I just. It's so thematically resonant for me. Like it's so what I'm doing in my own life is having this relationship with my parents and it's like these conversations that mean this sort of everything to me. And so I think there's something about talking to you and talking to you about these books that are about parents and kids, and it just kind of kills me. I love it.

[B]

I love it. 91 1. What is the address to your emergency? This 911 call began an that would.

[C]

Turn the town of Ashland, Ohio into a crime scene.

[B]

We've got something big going on here.

[C]

The first thing hit my mind is a Monster, a new series from ABC Audio in 2020. The hand in the Window out now.

[B]

Wherever you listen to podcasts.