For Us, Anna Quindlen is ALWAYS More Than Enough

Summary

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The Book Case

Episode: For Us, Anna Quindlen is ALWAYS More Than Enough
Date: March 5, 2026
Hosts: Charlie Gibson, Kate Gibson
Featured Guest: Anna Quindlen
Notable Segment: Prologue Books Spotlight with Dan Brewster

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Episode Overview

This milestone episode welcomes back beloved best-selling author Anna Quindlen for her third appearance—a first for the podcast—celebrating her latest novel, More Than Enough. Charlie and Kate Gibson, with their signature warmth and wit, dive into why Quindlen’s writing resonates so strongly, the intricacies of her new book, and her extraordinary career pivot from columnist to novelist. They also spotlight Prologue Books, an independent bookstore in Columbus, Ohio.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

What Makes Anna Quindlen's Books "More Than Enough"

• Familiar but Not Predictable:
  The hosts emphasize the unique comfort of Quindlen’s novels—her profound insight into women’s lives and friendships—while pushing back against the misconception that her narratives are “passe” or predictable.
  • “There's a certain amount of comfort food to her, I think. But her novels aren't necessarily predictable.” — Kate Gibson [03:30]
• Focus on Female Complexity:
  Quindlen is praised for her nuanced portrayal of women’s inner lives, relationships, and the unspoken bonds formed through shared experience.

Exploring the Story: More Than Enough

• Character Deep Dive:
  The novel centers on Polly Goodman, an English teacher coping with infertility, a fraught mother-daughter relationship, and a tight-knit group of female friends, one of whom faces illness.
  • “She has a close group of female friends...struggling to fertility, one of whom is sick. And again, they're not predictable books. But there are certain tells in the book that tells you that it’s an Anna Quindlen book.” — Kate Gibson [03:30]
• Authentic Portrayal of Infertility:
  Kate relates personally to the sensitive depiction of fertility clinics and the quiet solidarity (and tension) among women there.
  • “All of us were giving each other these looks...there's a lot of context to an infertility waiting room. It's a complex process. It takes a lot out of you mentally. And Anna writes about it with sensitivity and beauty and understanding.” — Kate Gibson [05:23]

Book Club Dynamics

• The Book Club That Doesn’t Read:
  Quindlen crafted a book club in the novel whose members often don’t read the book, mirroring many real-world clubs focused more on community than literature.
  • “They pick a book, they buy the book...but they don’t read the book. And from time to time, Jamie will accuse the other members of having read the book, and they all have to say, no, no, they only read the Times review or whatever it was.” — Anna Quindlen [06:44]
• Value of Book Clubs:
  She credits book clubs with supporting her career and the larger literary world:
  • “Book clubs are keeping my business alive, and God bless them.” — Anna Quindlen [08:15]

Crafting Character and Perspective

• On Identity and Self-Discovery:
  The novel opens with an Emily Dickinson quote: "I'm out with lanterns looking for myself," reflecting recurring themes of self-exploration and identity throughout life.

  • “There is that sense of trying to parse out constantly who you really are and what you really care about. And that’s part of what this book is about...” — Anna Quindlen [10:27]

• On Character Surprises:
  Quindlen describes the process of authentically building characters who act according to their true natures, not an author’s whims.

  • “If you build a person from the ground up...there are only certain ways they will behave...and those are the moments you kind of live for when you’re doing this.” — Anna Quindlen [12:14]
  • Favorite quote: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” (Robert Frost, as cited by Quindlen) [13:41]

• Narrative Choices:
  Unlike her previous novel After Annie, which used multiple points of view, More Than Enough stays firmly in Polly’s first-person voice.

  • “I really felt like this was Polly’s story to tell...I also am a big believer in the change up pitch...” — Anna Quindlen [15:20]

• Finishing a Novel—A Sudden Stop:
  On knowing when a book is done:

  • “It actually is like there’s a sound in my head, like a door slamming. And it's like, oh, my God. You know, it’s kind of shocking.” — Anna Quindlen [17:58]

The Leap from Columns to Novels

• Leaving at Her Peak:
  Quindlen explains why she left journalism at her prime:
  • “Almost every [columnist] outstays their welcome and you should leave at the top of your game...But...I had this thing I wanted to do, to be a novelist...and I’ve never felt like I made a mistake for a moment.” — Anna Quindlen [23:16]
• Motivation from Loss:
  Her mother’s early death instilled urgency and the conviction to pursue her dream while she still could.
  • “I was 38 years old when I published the first novel...if I wanted to make a career of that, I better do it soon. Because who knew whether I would ever get to be 50?” — Anna Quindlen [23:16]

Personal Reflections & Quotes

• On Legacy:
  • “The most mind-boggling page on any book for me...is when I turn the page and it says also by Anna Quindlen. And it has this long list, and I think, how did that happen?” — Anna Quindlen [25:26]
• On Reading’s Human Importance:
  • “The best thing about reading is that it makes us feel less alone. And we are in a moment in our country where feeling a sense of connection to people who are different than we are is more important than ever before. And that’s what you can do by reading a novel.” — Anna Quindlen [33:55]

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Notable Quotes

• “She just has a...peephole into the female mind that I think very few writers share.” — Kate Gibson [02:25]
• “When you get in the middle of a book and you say, oh, this is a John Irving book...you get into an Anna Quindlen book and you just feel comfortable.” — Charlie Gibson [01:50]
• “It was kind of a setup for what I’m told by a lot of people in book clubs they do anyhow...instead of talking about the book, they talk about their kids, they talk about their husbands, they talk about menopause, they talk about aging...” — Anna Quindlen [07:31]
• “There are only certain ways [characters] will behave and certain things they will do. So you can’t suddenly decide...that Polly is going to be mean-spirited towards her friends.” — Anna Quindlen [12:14]
• “If I hadn’t done it, I would have always wondered...And I’m so glad that I did.” — Dan Brewster, on opening Prologue Books [31:05]

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[Timestamps] – Key Segments

• 03:30 – Kate and Charlie articulate what defines an Anna Quindlen novel.
• 05:23 – Kate describes her personal experiences with the infertility themes depicted in the novel.
• 06:44 – Anna introduces the non-reading, all-talking book club within the novel.
• 08:59 – Anna describes Polly Goodman and her family/friends.
• 10:27 – Discussion of the Emily Dickinson quote and theme of identity.
• 12:14 – The moment of character “surprise” in the writing process.
• 17:58 – Anna explains what it's like to finish a novel.
• 23:16 – Anna discusses departing the New York Times for novel writing after losing her mother at a young age.
• 33:55 – Anna’s closing thought on why reading matters.

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Independent Bookstore Feature: Prologue Books

Guest: Dan Brewster, owner
Location: Columbus, Ohio

• Dan left the tech industry in San Francisco to found Prologue Books. He was drawn by the desire for meaningful community engagement and love of bookstores.
• Despite the statistic that "40% of the U.S. didn't read a book last year," Dan notes that indie bookstores thrive because they fulfill a craving for physical community and connection.
  • “What we're finding is that people are really looking for physical connection and getting involved in the community and finding offline ways of meeting. And bookstores are a way that are kind of a low friction, familiar way that people can come out and be part of something.” [30:30]
• Prologue is soon moving to a larger space to accommodate its growth.
• The name "Prologue" was selected after considering and dismissing "Exposition Books" for its awkwardness.

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Memorable Moments & Humor

• Kate jokes about not inviting Anna Quindlen to her own book club—“having Ruth Bader Ginsburg to your mock court.”
• Light banter about Charlie’s admiration for Anna:
  • “Women my father would leave my mother for. Although I don't know that fits on the resume, but...Anna Quindlen, you are one.” — Kate Gibson [25:57]
• The playful football rivalry banter with Dan Brewster about Michigan vs. Ohio State fans in his bookstore.
  • “If I walked in with a Michigan hat, would I be in danger?” — Charlie Gibson [26:51]

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Conclusion

Anna Quindlen’s More Than Enough embodies her trademark understanding of women's relationships, struggles with identity, and the complexity found in everyday lives. This episode celebrates her literary legacy, her fearless approach to new challenges, and the irreplaceable value of community—whether in book clubs, bookstores, or the pages that bring us together.

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[For more from Anna Quindlen, Prologue Books, or any titles mentioned, see episode links.]

Transcript

[Charlie Gibson]

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[Anna Quindlen]

Because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon music app today.

[Kate Gibson]

Welcome book nerds. It is Thursday, another Thursday, and we are always, always so happy to have you back or happy to welcome you for the first time. I'm excited about today's show. Before I introduce my co host, he can sit there quietly for you.

[Charlie Gibson]

I'm right here, I'm here, I'm here.

[Kate Gibson]

But I'm gonna talk about to you guys like, he's not here because who cares about him? The thing is, is that now we've been on, gosh, it's gonna be close to 200 episodes. As a matter of fact, I think next week's. After this week is our 200th episode, which. But we've been on long enough now that I think we have authors that I think of as old friends of the podcast. Even though, you know, they've probably been on like a handful of times at that. But I just think of them as old friends because we love talking to them, we love their books consistently. Ann Patchett one, John Irving another, and this week, the great Anna Quindlen, who we just can't say enough wonderful things about. And every time she finishes a book, we call each other. You can't hear us at home because these are personal calls, but we call each other and we go, woo hoo. Anna Quinn has finished another one. And so that's this week. And so that's a very exciting episode. Okay, now I'll let him introduce himself. Now he's gonna sit there and give me the silent treatment.

[Charlie Gibson]

Now I'm.

[Kate Gibson]

You guys get like a little front seat at our dinner table when you.

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, we have. This is with. This is the first time we've had an author on for the third time, and this is our fifth year. Anna Quinlan is one of our favorite people for good reason. And her novels are some of our favorite novels. The new one is called More Than Enough. More Than Enough is the name of the book. And it's a wonderful book. And you always know, at least I said it to John Irving. You get in the middle of a book and you say, oh, this is a John Irving book. It's just, it's idiosyncratic. You get into an Anne Quinlan book and you just feel comfortable. You feel comfortable with the characters. And it's a lovely book.

[Kate Gibson]

Well, and I think that's an interesting subject. What do you know you're gonna get from an Anna Quindlen book? As an Anna Quindlen reader, the reason that I love her writing so much is because I think she gets to the complexity of women, their inner thoughts, their friendships with each other. She just has a. I don't know, a peephole into the female mind that I think very few writers share. And it doesn't come just with the blessing of being female. You know, I'm a female, and I couldn't write like Anna Quindlen. There's just a special insight that she brings to the page about women. And I always know that I'm in for that when I pick up one of her books. And this didn't disappoint.

[Charlie Gibson]

She did that when she was a columnist. She really. I believe she changed the editorial pages of newspapers in America when she wrote the column for the New York Times about women's issues. And then she retired to write novels. She wrote for a while for Newsweek columns. But the books, they really do have an insight. I think you're absolutely right. Into the female mind. And they're very. They're very comfortable. I just feel comfortable in her novels. I may have said that before.

[Kate Gibson]

Well, yeah, but I don't want to give people the impression that she's Kraft Macaroni and cheese. There's a certain amount of comfort food to her, I think. But her novels aren't necessarily predictable. This book is. Is a wonderful story of Polly, who's struggling with infertility. She's struggling with a complex relationship with her mother. She's struggling how to be an adult child to her mother. She has a close group of female friends who are witnessing her struggles to fertility, one of whom is sick. And again, they're not predictable books. But there are certain tells in the book that tells you that it's an Anna Quindlen book. I read a review, and now, of course, she gets great reviews. She always gets great reviews. But every time I. I'm sorry to confess this, authors. Every time we have an author on, I do look at the reviews and I just see if I agree with them or not. And I found one review that actually sort of annoyed me, and it talked about was Anna Passe. Because she only really looks, you know, at the minds of women and the friendships of women.

[Anna Quindlen]

And.

[Kate Gibson]

And I object to that. I object to that.

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, there's nothing. There's nothing passe about this. Each novel is very distinct, even though, as I say, there's a quality that lets you know, you're in an Anna Quindlen novel. They're very distinct, if that's. Can you say very distinct? I guess you can. I just did. So

[Kate Gibson]

I love when you have a semantic argument with yourself, and I don't even have to be there.

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, when you argue with yourself, I lose those arguments. But there's nothing passe about her at all. And I couldn't disagree more. The other thing I would point out, there is a lot about Polly Goodman, who was the principal character, her struggles with infertility. And both you and your sister faced that. And I thought she wrote about it beautifully. Beautifully. She did and explained it, I thought, with great sensitivity, with great understanding, and with great specificity about how it works.

[Kate Gibson]

There's a whole unspoken dialogue that goes on in the waiting rooms of fertility clinics. There just are. We all know what we're there for. A lot of us come out of the elevator or up the stairs, staring at our shoes because we feel like we're failing at the one thing that we're supposed to be able to do as being a woman. When we're successful, we're quiet about it because we know how rare that is in that room. I remember once when I was in the waiting room and one woman had brought her child, and you're not supposed to bring children to the fertility clinic. And I remember all of the moms, none of us called her on it, but all of us were giving each other these looks like. I mean, it was just. It was funny. All of us had this unspoken anger and fury, but none of. I mean, it's just. There's a lot of context to an infertility waiting room. It's a complex process. It takes a lot out of you mentally. And Anna writes about it with sensitivity and beauty and understanding. And I loved this book.

[Charlie Gibson]

You said there's a lot of tears in those waiting rooms, and I'm not surprised. Anyway, let's get to the conversation. The book is More Than Enough. The author is Anna Quindlen. Anna Quindlen, it is such a pleasure to have you back in the bookcase. The book is More Than Enough. It is basically the story of Polly Goodman, and she's a member of a really interesting book club. Tell me about the book club.

[Anna Quindlen]

Polly's in a book club with Jamie and Helen and Sarah, who is her best friend in the book club. But they try to pretend that they're not besties because they don't want the other two to feel left out, and because early on, Jamie, who is kind of the tetchiest member said, listen, I just want you to understand, I'm never reading the book. They decided that the terms of engagement of their book club would be that they pick a book, they buy the book because authors run on royalties, but they don't read the book. And from time to time, Jamie will accuse the other members of having read the book, and they all have to say, no, no, they only read the Times review or whatever it was.

[Charlie Gibson]

Right.

[Anna Quindlen]

But I thought it was. It was kind of a setup for what I'm told by a lot of people in book clubs they do anyhow, which is instead of talking about the book, they talk about their kids, they talk about their husbands, they talk about menopause, they talk about aging and whether to let your hair grow gray. And that's what the members of this book club do.

[Kate Gibson]

Is that a book club of which you could ever be a member?

[Anna Quindlen]

Well, I've never actually been in a book club.

[Kate Gibson]

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, if I had a book club, I don't think I'd ask you to join, because that would be so intimidating. I mean, it's a little bit like having a mock court and being like, look who I brought to my mock court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. No problem.

[Anna Quindlen]

People come up to me and they go, oh, nobody reads anymore. And I say, well, then who are all those people in book clubs I meet at my events because I'll have a book signing. And I'm sitting there, you know, signing, and all of a sudden, instead of one person stepping up to the table, there's kind of a clot of, like, six people. And they. One of them will say, this is our book club. We've been meeting for 14 years. And I've thought, book clubs are keeping my business alive, and God bless them. And so I decided to put a book club in this.

[Charlie Gibson]

So Polly is obviously a lot more than just a member of this book club, and it really does spend a lot of time on her life. So tell me more about Polly.

[Anna Quindlen]

Well, Polly is an English teacher at a girls school in New York City, which might have rung some bells for you.

[Charlie Gibson]

It does.

[Anna Quindlen]

Called Windsor. And she really loves her job. She's married to Mark, who is fantastic and is a vet at the Bronx Zoo, which just occurred to me as I was writing about him, and then charmed me the entire rest of the way. She has a father who is in the middle stages, I would say, of dementia and living in kind of a special facility for that, and a mother who is a highly successful judge in New Jersey where she grew up, and a wonderful brother named Garrison who is in some ways her closest confidant. And then the members of the book club and as I said, Sarah is the one that she's closest to and has the closest relationship with. And the great strains in Polly's life are, number one, that she and her mother have a thorny relationship, and number two, that she and Mark have been trying to have a baby for a while and have so far been unsuccessful.

[Kate Gibson]

I want to start with the first page, which is the Emily Dickinson quote. I'm out with lanterns looking for myself. I'm wondering when that became the flyleaf quote and how you see it applying to the story of Pauli Goodman.

[Anna Quindlen]

It's been a quote that has hovered around my head and my life practically my entire life, because I think it's such a good way of describing where most of us are at various points in very different ways when you're 23 and when you're 73. But there is that sense of trying to parse out constantly who you really are and what you really care about. And that's part of what this book is about, not only for Polly, but for some of the other characters. For Josephine, for example, who's her most able student, who has had an incredible crisis after graduating from high school, and at some level for her father, who is. Who is losing who he is. So there's these little bits of who he once was that, that pop out every now and then. And I just think that idea of identity, of interrogating your own identity is something that's a part of the human condition, basically. I would say maybe from 9 or 10 on. I think little kids have a really clear idea. Your average 5 year old knows exactly who he or she is. And then little by little we lose that and we have to restore it. And since I thought this was a book so much about identity, it made me think that that was the right way to begin.

[Charlie Gibson]

Lately we have been sort of fixated on character and on the fact that character can surprise writers, that your own characters can do things that surprise you. Were there surprises of that kind in this book as you wrote it?

[Anna Quindlen]

They're not exactly surprises. They're oh, that moments where you realize that if you build a person from the ground up and you make them real, there are only certain ways they will behave and certain things they will do. So you can't suddenly decide, for example, that Polly is going to be mean spirited towards her friends or that her brother is going to be warm and fuzzy instead of kind of wry and sardonic the way he is. But what you can excavate and what will sometimes pop up is what's underneath that obvious level of personality. So there certainly were surprises for me. And those are the moments that you kind of live for when you're doing this. I mean, so much of it feels like pushing a rock uphill. There are whole stretches in the middle where you just feel like you're moving it along. And then when you hit a moment like that, you think, you know, ha cha. I mean, there's a moment almost at the very end of the novel where Polly asks her mother a question and her mother responds with a sentence that's about as lacerating emotionally as a sentence can be where I typed that and thought, boom. You know, boom. You hit it. And it's those moments when you feel like you got to the skull beneath the skin, you went deep with people in a way that you didn't realize you were going to be able to do. You know, I think I've told both of you before, there's this quote that I really am guided by from Robert Frost, of all people, where he says, no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. And I think of it every time I start to cry when I'm rereading anything that I've written. Because, you know, if you feel it yourself, if you feel that boom yourself, then it makes you more confident that the reader is going to have that same reaction if you don't look, if you don't feel it, if you're not living in it, if the people aren't really real to you, you're done. You have to start over again, because this is a failure. And so that's what you want for the reader. You want Polly and Sarah and her dad and all the. You want the reader to feel like she's really met them, because you have.

[Kate Gibson]

After Annie, the last book that we talked to you about is a kaleidoscope of perspectives about sort of one incident. And I thought as I was reading this, she could have done that. Like, we could have gotten Mark's perspective on their journey with infertility or Jamie's perspective on the fact that Sarah is sick and doesn't tell anybody. But you didn't. You were Polly's voice all the way throughout.

[Anna Quindlen]

Now, After Annie definitely had to be written the way that it was written because of. Of what it's about. But I really felt like this was Polly's story to tell Polly's story of realizing who she was and what she cared about and where she came from. I also am a big believer in the change up pitch. I felt that really strongly as a columnist. You know, I never wanted any reader to open the paper and think, oh, here's Anna Quindlen banging on again about X. And I wanted the reader to think, oh, today's kind of a funny one, or at least her trying to do a funny one. And this one's much more serious and this one's politics and this one's the Catholic Church and so on and so forth. I feel like that serves the reader, that kind of change up pitch. And after Annie, which is, as you said, third person, Kate was followed by a first person novel. And the novel that I've been working on since we locked More Than Enough is another third person novel. And it's actually told again from three different points of view because it's three different siblings approaching their mother's birthday.

[Charlie Gibson]

Once you get into the meter of a character and you feel like you are really into those people in More Than Enough, can you put them aside and leave them and just move on and go to another set?

[Anna Quindlen]

I can't tell you how many times I'm asked about a sequel. For every book, for every single one of the books, there's this odd phenomenon that I've never managed to really get a handle on, which is I sort of know how the book is going to end, but I don't know exactly when it's going to end, except that what happens is one day I type a sentence and I think, oh my God, I'm done. Like, that's it. That's the last sentence of this book. And it's happened with everyone and it happened with this one. And it always surprises me. And then I am done. And it's a little bit like having lived in a town and then moving to another town. You know, you still remember all the people in the place where you formerly lived and you're still fond of them all and you think of them from time to time. But you've moved to a new town,

[Kate Gibson]

so you really don't know it's your last sentence until you're in the middle of writing it or when you're done, I'm getting granular here. People just deal with it. Or when you're done, you're going, I'm not going to type anymore. Like, I'm just like, what does that actually feel like?

[Anna Quindlen]

It actually is. Like there's a sound in my head, like a Door slamming. And it's like, oh, my God. You know, it's kind of shocking. And this book inevitably led up to what turned out to be the last sentence. But still, I was thunderstruck that I was done. And of course I wasn't done. I was done the first draft and then I had to work on it and so on and so forth, but I was done that particular part of the journey. Hmm.

[Kate Gibson]

You said the last time you were on the show that every time you tackle a new novel, you want it to scare you. You want the project to scare you. What about more than enough scared you?

[Anna Quindlen]

Oh, boy. First of all, the first person novel scares you because if you don't get that voice right, if you're not really in the skin inhabiting the person, you're going to know, but readers are going to get it in a heartbeat. And so you've really got to be there 100%. And that scares me every time that Polly Goodman doesn't sound like Anna Quindlen, that it doesn't sound like ventriloquism. It really sounds like her. And then I was very concerned with certain more delicate aspects of it. I wanted to make sure that her father was a real person at the same time that you could sense how diminished he was. I wanted to be fair to Mary Goodman, judge Mary Goodman, in part because I think some of the issues that Polly has with her mother are issues that younger women have with women of my generation. So to some extent, I was standing up for her and I wanted to make sure that the secondary characters didn't overwhelm the rest of the book.

[Charlie Gibson]

At this point, I will say, Anna Quindlen, it is so good to have you back. So good to talk to you. A reminder, the book is more than enough. It's only 240 pages. It's not more than enough. So I look forward to the next novel. Thanks for being with us.

[Kate Gibson]

Me too. Thank you so much.

[Anna Quindlen]

Come on with you two anytime.

[Charlie Gibson]

From 30 for 30 podcasts.

[Dan Brewster]

Did you say someone got shot?

[Charlie Gibson]

Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down the key to this case. It's Brian.

[Dan Brewster]

An hour before he died, he was on the phone arguing with somebody.

[Kate Gibson]

This might be a hit.

[Dan Brewster]

You want the truth?

[Charlie Gibson]

They just want a conviction. Being placed under arrest. We had a killer amongst us. Murder at the U. Listen now. 91 1, where is the emergency?

[Kate Gibson]

It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey shore. Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19 year old Sarah Stern.

[Anna Quindlen]

Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows.

[Kate Gibson]

Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life. I'm juju chang from 2020 and eight abc audio. Listen to bridge of lies coming March 10th. Wherever you listen to podcasts,

[Charlie Gibson]

There's one other part of the conversation that I wanted to set aside. We just thanked Anna and, and, and we do. But there's one other thing. As I said earlier, she changed the editorial pages of America. She wrote a column about women's issues for the New York Times, and it may have been about women's issues, but I read every column she wrote. I just found it with real insight. But then she quit. She quit at a young age, actually, and decided to write novels. She went off, as I said, and wrote for a while for Newsweek, but she devoted herself to novels. And I've often wondered, I said to her, you know, Michael Jordan quit basketball for a year to go play baseball. Why would you quit something when you're so good at it and do something that you're not certain about? I've always wanted to ask her that question. I suspect she's been asked a thousand times, but she. She answered it. And I thought the answer was really interesting. So here it is. It has occurred to me often when I read your books, you changed the editorial pages of America. You brought something new to the editorial pages that had never been there. And, and I think it is reflected in editorial pages now, everywhere that they write about things that wouldn't have been on the editorial page before that are so pertinent to readers. And then you quit and you decided to write novels. And I thought, no, no, don't do this, Quinlan, not you. Michael Jordan quit to play baseball. No, no. When you do something really, really well.

[Kate Gibson]

We are not, by the way, equating your novels with Michael Jordan's baseball career. Please know that. I just want to put that in as a caveat.

[Charlie Gibson]

Exactly.

[Anna Quindlen]

I always wanted to be a novelist. I only went into newspapers to pay the rent. And then as a well brought up Irish Catholic girl of a certain sort, I discovered that being a newspaper reporter was the best goddamn job on earth because you could ask people questions they didn't want to answer with impunity. And then, incredibly enough, I got to be an op ed page columnist. And my feeling about columnists is that almost every one of them outstays their welcome and that you should leave at the top of your game. But the other thing was I had this thing I'd always wanted to do, which was to be a novelist. I also was. Had been deeply affected by the fact that watching my mother die by inches, I knew that nobody has any idea how much time they have. And that therefore, if I wanted to be a novelist, I was 40. No, I was 38 years old when I published the first novel, that if I wanted to make a career of that, I better do it soon. Because who knew whether I would ever get to be 50. I know that sounds preposterous, but when your mother dies at 40, you think like, who knows? And so the combination of feeling the wind at my back and feeling like I was going to walk out with people still saying, geez, Anna Quindlen was a hell of a columnist, combined to make me make that decision, which in general the women of America felt was definitely letting them down. Since you may remember, Charlie, I was the only woman on the page. And the two women who came before me didn't write anything about being women. Flora Lewis and Ann O' Hare McCormick, who both wrote about foreign affairs. So there was a sense of enormous disappointment. And I just kept thinking, yeah, but this is my life and I've never felt like I made a mistake for a moment.

[Charlie Gibson]

Do you feel as great satisfaction with each?

[Anna Quindlen]

You know, I said to somebody the other day, and it's really true, the most mind boggling page on any book for me when I get in the box of books is when I turn the page and it says also by Anna Quindlen. And it has this long list and I think, how did that happen? That's what I wanted. That's what I dreamed of. How did that happen? And yet here I am,

[Kate Gibson]

The amazing Anna Quindlen, who can also add to her resume under special skills, women my father would leave my mother for. Although I don't know. I don't know that that fits on the resume. But there are other women in that category and Anna Quinn than you are one.

[Charlie Gibson]

I get teased a lot because there's a whole lot of people on that resum? Anyway, we're going to take a break. We got a bookstore for you, Columbus, Ohio. The name of the bookstore is Prologue. We'll have that when we continue. Dan Brewster, Prologue Books in Columbus, Ohio. Dan in Columbus, Ohio. I'm a Michigan fan. Am I welcome in your store?

[Dan Brewster]

We welcome everybody into our store and we are near Ohio State, but. But we are still happy to have everybody in the store, regardless of their football affiliation.

[Charlie Gibson]

If I walked in with a Michigan hat, would I be in danger.

[Dan Brewster]

You might be in danger of ridicule, but I think that would be about it.

[Kate Gibson]

Excellent.

[Charlie Gibson]

So how did you get into this business? You've been around since, since what, eight years now. How did you get into this and why?

[Dan Brewster]

Yeah, so previous to this, I worked in the tech industry out in the Bay Area, but I'm originally from Ohio, and after a number of years working in tech, I really decided it was time to try something different. I could see even then that so much of what was happening in the companies I was working for was not necessarily think I always agreed with. And I was really ready to move into a different direction. I had previously worked in the library, and I was a big fan of bookstores, of indie bookstores, of which there are so many incredible ones in San Francisco. And I was inspired by many of them and thought, you know what? I'd like to go ahead and try this. And I went and I spoke to a bunch of people in the industry, toured a bunch of stores, and decided to take the plunge in 2018, which was both a great time and a scary time in a sense, to go ahead and start and been here ever since.

[Charlie Gibson]

Not in San Francisco. You didn't want to do it in San Francisco, so you went back to Columbus.

[Dan Brewster]

Yes. I throw this statistic out all the time. If everyone was shocked by it in San Francisco, the city and Columbus City are about the same population. And in San Francisco, there are 10 times as many bookstores as they are in Columbus. When I opened in 2018, obviously, you know, it was a frightening time and we had no idea what was happening. And I think it's easy to forget how scary those days were. Looking back, it was and for a long time too. And we were very lucky, though. I think we were open just long enough so we were able to invite people to purchase from us online. And that had always been kind of an afterthought of our business. And so very quickly it had to ramp up and become for that whole year, it was more than half of our sales. And for months it was all of our sales. And basically what happened is I would just come in by myself and work 8 or 10 hours each day just ordering and packing and shipping, and got very familiar with how all that worked. And the first couple days of lockdown, we were getting a thousand dollars of orders every day. And wow, from that and from everything else I was seeing, I was like, you know what? I think we have a good chance of making it through this. I think we're going to be okay. If we can continue to get this level of support. And our community really came through.

[Kate Gibson]

So you mentioned you worked at a library when you were younger, but that you left the tech industry to do this because you needed something different. Now, you know, there are a lot of things that are different from the tech industry. You could have become a NASCAR driver. You could have swiveled cotton candy on the midway. What is it about a bookstore specifically that answered what you were looking for when you left the tech industry?

[Dan Brewster]

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. When I was leaving tech, I thought a lot about what are things that I'm passionate about? What are things that I think I could stand to do every day? What are things that would scratch me into something that was interesting and would keep me interested through a long period of time?

[Charlie Gibson]

I don't mean to make you the seer of the entire book industry, but there was a story last night on the PBS News that 40% of the country did not read a book last year. 40% of the country. And yet the number of independent bookstores is expanding. To what do you attribute that?

[Dan Brewster]

I think that what we're finding is that a lot of people are really looking for physical connection and getting involved in the community and finding offline ways of meeting. And bookstores are a way that I think are kind of a low friction, familiar way that people can come out and be part of something. You know, I think people are buying more books. I'm not sure pool of people who actually is necessarily getting larger.

[Charlie Gibson]

So was it worth it? Would the 2026 Dan Brewster tell the 2018 Dan Brewster? Boy, I made the right decision.

[Dan Brewster]

Yeah, I think so. If I hadn't done it, I would have always wondered. I would have always been like, oh, if only I had taken that chance. And I'm so glad that I did. It has been a really interesting journey, definitely full of ups and downs every day. But it has been a really fantastically different one. It has. It got me out of my comfort zone and it taught me so many things, and it introduced me to so many people and places. And it's so easy, I think, to get in a rut and do the same thing over and over again. And I always get really afraid of that. And I'm very happy that I took the chance and did something completely different.

[Kate Gibson]

Are prologues your favorite part of books? Is that where the name came from?

[Dan Brewster]

I spent a good chunk of 2018 working on the name, and I had a bunch of different ideas. I really liked the idea of a bookstore called Exposition Books, which was like the part of a story where you're getting, starting the book and kind of like an exposition of ideas, like an expo. But the problem is that's a difficult word to say, especially like for me, no one understood what word I was saying. And so when I found Prologue, and at the time, there were no prologue bookshops, really worldwide, I think at that point. And I'm like, you know what? This, this rolls off the tongue. Well, and I think this is going to be a great choice.

[Charlie Gibson]

So you're about to move from one location on North High street to another location on North High Street. You're, you're getting about a block away or two blocks away from where you were. What's occasion to move?

[Dan Brewster]

So the new space is over twice as large.

[Kate Gibson]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan Brewster]

So that, that really is it. That is the reason. It's a little bit closer to the convention center, a little bit more tourist traffic, but it's larger.

[Charlie Gibson]

All right, Dan Brewster of Prologue Books in Columbus, Ohio, getting to a larger store. We wish you luck with that. I can guarantee you there are two words that you will never hear spoken in the new store. Go blue. Thanks for being with us, Dan Brewster. The bookstore Prologue is on 841 N. High St. Stop by if you get a chance. We want to bring you up to date on who makes this podcast possible. And then we'll have a final thought from Anna Quindlen.

[Kate Gibson]

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.

[Anna Quindlen]

The best thing about reading is that it makes us feel less alone. And we are in a moment in our country where feeling a sense of connection to people who are different than we are is more important than ever before. And that's what you can do by reading a novel.