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- [00:07]
A
Hello, Book Nerds. And I leave a pause to let my father chuckle, because I know that is a moniker of which he is a little ashamed. But anyway, I welcome you, Book Nerds. I admit that I am a book nerd. It is Thursday. It is time for the bookcase. And I am Kate Gibson.
- [00:21]
B
And I'm Charlie Gibson. I did find a bookstore, Kate, that's called the Book Nerd, and I thought you would be delighted. They have agreed to come on at some future time and talk to us. And I thought that that would please you very much.
- [00:34]
A
Oh, it utterly delights me. And we're going to spend the whole time trying to get you to embrace the moniker of Book Nerd so that we can all say it loud and proud. I'm really excited about this week's book, although I have to confess, it came out in October. We're a little late to the party on this one, but. Susan Orlean and her memoir, Joyride. When my father and I were lucky enough to spend a week together around Christmas time.
- [01:00]
B
You were lucky. You were lucky.
- [01:01]
A
I was like me, me.
- [01:04]
B
I endured it.
- [01:06]
A
I basked in the glory that was my father for a week. And he was reading Joyride by Susan Orlean, and he was so engrossed by it and it spoke so much to him that he read me multiple passages. Multi, multi, multiple passages. So that by the time he read it, I felt like I had two. But I. And so I went and I got myself a copy and I read it. So we're late to the party, but I will let him speak to why it was it moved him.
- [01:32]
B
So it's a funny memoir and she's a wonderful writer. First of all, if you're listening to this podcast, you're interested in the craft of writing, and this is a memoir. It's really a book about writing that is sort of loosely hung on a framework of a memoir. But she has written for years for magazines and particularly for the New Yorker. This is the first book she's written, but it is, as I say, very much about the craft of writing. And she is nonpariel in that people have probably read some of the stuff she's written. It's been in the New Yorker for years and years. She has a wonderful approach to journalism. She doesn't write about the stories that most people write about. She finds things that just interest her. An example, you'll hear us talk about it. She did a whole piece on folding at Benetton. Everything is so neatly folded there. She wanted to find out if there is A method to it. And sure enough, there is. And she learned it. They asked her at one point to write a profile of Macaulay Culkin. When Home Alone, that movie was so big and macaulay Culkin was 10 years old. And she said, I don't want to do that. I want to write about an everyday 10 year old and try to see the world through his eyes, which is. She just says different things that she wants to write about.
- [02:45]
A
My favorite example of that is that her editors called her to talk about the JonBenet case. And she was like, I can't do anything with the JonBenet case. It's being covered by tabloids, by newspapers, by television. But I have always found the idea of beauty pageants for little girls sort of repulsive. And I want to know why. And I'm curious about them, and I need to find out more because they really do capture America's attention. And there are a lot of people that are devoted to them. And I want to learn more about these my fellow Americans. That's sort of how she approaches stuff.
- [03:14]
B
She wrote a whole book about Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepard who was such a big deal in movies long ago. She wrote a book about rare orchids and people who steal them. Anyway, she just has a really interesting approach. And her writing, as I say, is really wonderful. Joy Wright is the name of the memoir. We asked her why she wrote a memoir as her first book, and she told us. And then we'll go right from that into our conversation with Susan Orlean.
- [03:41]
C
I've always dreaded the idea of writing a memoir. I'm used to looking outward, not inward. I like to bring attention to hidden worlds, not to my own. I'm proud of my work and I want as many readers as I can muster. But I hate vanity. I'm used to convincing my subjects that their quiet lives are shimmering and gorgeous and worth talking about. But it's been harder to convince myself of that about my own. Yet here I am. This is my story. Please listen.
- [04:23]
A
Susan Orlean, it is such a pleasure and an honor to have you in the bookcase. Your memoir, Joyride. First of all, dad and I have sort of a taste. Great, less filling debate. Is this a memoir or is this a book about writing?
- [04:37]
C
Can it be both? You know, it began as a book about writing. That was my intention, was to write a book about writing. It became very clear to me, though, that without context and without telling you who I am and why I've made the choices I've made, it really didn't make sense.
- [04:58]
A
So why now? You've just done a reading. That said, I've always dreaded the idea of writing a memoir.
- [05:03]
C
I would set the scene by saying Covid put all of us in a kind of reflective mood. I think it was a moment where we all sort of took stock of our lives and thought, what are we? Who are we? What matters to us? How are we going to live in this strange new world? And certainly in a less sort of cheerful way, it was a little bit of an opportunity to look at the sort of somewhat vanishing world of journalism that I grew up with. I don't see this as a swan song to journalism in any way, but there was this moment of thinking, you know, I lived through this era that a lot of younger journalists didn't experience. And, you know, those stories are worth telling, I think.
- [06:04]
B
Did you actually write that book and then expand it to a memoir, or was it from the get go, a memoir that included your thoughts about writing?
- [06:14]
C
I began by taking one piece, and it's the piece the American man, age 10, that I've included in the book. And I began writing about that story, how it came about, how I approached it. You know, the. The methodology, if you will. You know, how I reported it, and I wrote that, and it felt interesting but kind of inert. And that's when I thought, this really, just on its own is not enough. This needs to. I need to invite you more into my life and into my world and make this a narrative about my growth as a writer.
- [07:04]
B
You mention in the book that people always say you should write about what you know, and you don't do that. You pick out things that you want to know about and then write them. So I know it's a trite question, but where do you get the inspiration to write about a specific story that's going to be relatively foreign to your readers?
- [07:23]
C
They almost always are. So that that begins with a challenge to me right away. What happens is I will stumble across something and it will resonate with me, no matter how niche or narrow the subject may be. And that doesn't mean every single niche, narrow subject feels like a story to me. But if it is something that I'm drawn to, and I start thinking, boy, I really want to learn more about that. It's a gut reaction to a subject, and usually it's because there's a thematic largeness to it that isn't necessarily reflected in the narrowness of the topic. It's a bit of a contrarian impulse where I feel like I don't understand why people care about this. So let me, let me understand why people care about it. And what does that tell me about the human condition? Beyond the obvious, beyond the. The sort of short focus? There's always this bigger, broader story that I feel that it can tell.
- [08:42]
B
Your father wanted a lawyer for his daughter, and yet you always knew that you wanted to be a writer. Did it start with a fascination of the commonplace and your desire to write about that, or did you have ambitions to be a different kind of writer? And why did you defy your dad?
- [09:04]
C
He felt that law school was just a good overall education for people and you could always practice law if the rest of your ambitions didn't work out. So I think he just saw it as, this is a good education. And I had zero interest in being a lawyer. Like, zero. I would have been a zookeeper more enthusiastically than being a lawyer. In fact, it's something I still think about. But I always was interested in the commonplace because I realized that in the commonplace was a whole world of mystery. What we think of as commonplace, well, very often we actually don't know anything about it. And I loved that. The tension between what seems familiar. And then upon closer examination, you realize, wow, I really didn't know anything about this at all. I mean, my book, the library book, which came out before Joyride, I, you know, I one day was in a library and I suddenly thought, you know, I've been in libraries so many thousands of times in my life, but I actually don't know how libraries work. I don't really know how the day to day of a library unfolds. And so I was really drawn to that, that kind of wonderful tension between. Of course, this is so familiar. And yet you're right, I don't really know anything about it.
- [10:49]
B
You say right at the get go that you always wanted to be a writer for the New Yorker, that the New Yorker sang your tune and you sing the New Yorker's tune. I'm curious how somebody would know at an early age that that's where they wanted to be. What is it about that particular organ that so appealed to you?
- [11:08]
C
The New Yorker published those kinds of stories that were about the texture of daily life, about the people who fill our lives without being celebrities, without being powerful, without having a newsworthy label attached to them. There was a story that I read early. I think I was a freshman in college maybe, and it was the profile four brothers who were superintendents of apartment buildings on the Upper east side in New York. And it was about, you know, their day to day life, what they dealt with, dealing with the patrons in the building, dealing with issues with the building. Now you might say, oh my God, that sounds so boring. It was actually incredibly interesting. It was also about the camaraderie between these brothers and the way they sort of, even as adults had this fraternal connection. I read that story and I thought, this is where I want to be a writer. I felt like this magazine elevated this story that other magazines might have very easily said, that sounds as dull as dirt and who cares about some supers of a building? And you know, I can give you 20 reasons many other magazines wouldn't run it. And the story was beautifully written, was completely engrossing. Now obviously the New Yorker has trained its readers or attracts readers who are not scared off by a story like that. The New Yorker has had this long tradition of publishing stories that ask the reader to kind of come into this world for a minute. Let us show you why it's really interesting. And then the reader gets this, you know, really rich kind of story, documentary, story of life that they probably had never thought about before. And to me that's a wonderful thing.
- [13:28]
A
But yet when I'm looking at your biography and this, I said to Dad, I said, when we were having this sort of taste, great lust of this is a book about writing or is this a memoir? And dad said, I think it's probably a little bit more of a memoir. I said, well, except for the fact that she gives like 15, 20 pages about how she writes about a 10 year old boy and cancer is a paragraph.
- [13:48]
C
That was probably the biggest challenge. And that's something where to me it was all about the tone and how was I engaging the reader. I felt like I didn't want to dwell overly much. I mean, you know, having an illness in a weird way, there's not a lot to say. I'm not going to, you know, give you the details of the surgery and you know, and I didn't. I'm not minimizing it because obviously it was a serious illness and fortunately I'm fine. But I felt like I don't have a lot to say about this really, except to say this, you know, came as a shock. I dealt with it, I moved on. But I think that my. I know what it was. I think where I felt that I could teach you something, I spent more time.
- [14:52]
A
That's such a writing nerd. Answer, I love it. It's such a writing nerd.
- [14:55]
D
It's answer I love it, love it.
- [14:57]
C
Love It's a writing nerd answer. And it. But in fact, I felt like I didn't have anything I could teach you about lung cancer. I, I haven't done a lot of research in it. I don't, you know, I don't have a lot that I can share with you that I think is gonna elevate your knowledge. Whereas writing about this 10 year old boy and why I made that choice instead of doing a celebrity and how I went about it, I feel like I have a lot I can teach you. I have a lot I can share about that. So I used my internal sort of meter to assess how what could I share with you that really was valuable versus I'm going to let you know this happened to me because it's part of my story. But I don't have a lot more to say. And that's not being coy as much as it's just responding to my urge to say. Let me tell you more.
- [16:02]
B
Let me ask you about leads. Leads are really interesting, how you engage your reader. When you're writing about the commonplace. You have to convince me very quickly that this is something I want to read about. So if you're writing about folding at Benetton, or a cab driver who's an African king, or just Saturday night in America, a number of columnists have said, Mitch Albaum, Anna Quinlan, David Barry have said to us, we've got to get him in the first paragraph. Book writers will tell us it's the first 10 pages that are really key.
- [16:38]
C
I give myself the first sentence. It's interesting to hear people say the first paragraph, the first chapter, and I think the first sentence. You know, people, I'm sort of tired of this notion that attention spans have shrunk, but let's just say the competition for attention has grown. I'd rather look at it that way. If I'm saying to you, I know that this is not a story that you thought you had any interest in. I give myself one sentence to like, at least put one pin in your foot and not let you leave. Then I give myself the first paragraph to put the pin in your other foot. So you're really trapped and I've got you. And you know, I think it's. I spend proportionately much more time on the lead than, you know, it's not that I blow through the rest of the piece, but proportionately I spend much more time in the lead also because to me the lead has to be a little minuet. It doesn't necessarily have to tell you exactly what the story's about, but it has to be. It's like making an entrance into a party, and you want people to go, oh, this person looks really interesting. When I was writing the Orchid Thief, I thought, you know, a lot of people aren't interested in orchids. A lot of people won't at all think that this subject is interesting. A lot of people aren't interested in Florida. I mean, there were a million categories of people that I could imagine not being interested in the story. And instead, I decided to begin by describing this very unusual, compelling, curious guy who people are interested in people. And if you can say to someone, here's a really quirky guy who I think you might find very interesting, then you start luring them in. Then you can say, all right, the reason that I know about this guy is he was arrested for stealing these rare orchids. And I can't tell you the number of people over the years who have said to me, boy, I sure didn't think I'd read a whole book about orchids. And I consider that a fabulous compliment.
- [19:19]
A
Do you write the lead first, or have you written them sort of in the middle, first, last?
- [19:24]
C
Like I write, I write them first, and I do. And it means that I don't have a lot of forward progress until I write the lead. And that can be really scary. I may know, you know, very clearly chunks of the book or the story that I am going to write, but I feel that I can't. I can't sort of tack the lead on after it. I feel like it needs, you know, the model that I look to all the time, in a way, is the simplest model, which is, how would I tell this story out loud? And you would never tell a story out loud starting in the middle. So similarly, I would never write a story starting in the middle. I start in the beginning, and it leads me to what comes next. And that organic structure feels really important to me in how I write. And I often feel like in a perfect world, I would just tell you the story out loud. And, you know, when you're telling a story out loud, you may take detours. You may say, oh, you know, that reminds me of, you know, it's not linear exactly, but you always are very conscious of keeping the audience engaged. And so that's the model that I really lean on. And that informs the way I feel about how I want you to experience the story.
- [20:56]
B
Well, Susan, Arlene, it is a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for joining us. In the bookcase, the name of the book is joyride. And if anybody thinks that a book about writing and a memoir is going to be dry, there is no coincidence that the word joy is in the title of this book. It brings you joy to read it. It is funny, it is fun, and it is lovely to be on the ride with you through your life. Thank you.
- [21:23]
C
Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me here with you. It really means a lot to me.
- [21:29]
A
Plus, he used the word fun as an adjective, which he hates.
- [21:31]
B
Oh, I do hate it. Yeah, I do hate it.
- [21:34]
A
I love that. I love that you just did that. Susan, if you would stick around for some rapid fire, we would be grateful.
- [21:46]
B
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.
- [22:01]
A
What do you have to lose?
- [22:02]
B
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
- [22:06]
C
50 off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees.
- [22:12]
D
Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy.
- [22:15]
A
See terms.
- [22:17]
D
Hey, y'.
- [22:17]
C
All.
- [22:17]
D
As a growing family, my husband and.
- [22:19]
C
I love game night, especially when it's Wayfair edition.
- [22:22]
B
Let's do it. You gotta name as many Wayfair furniture and decor categories as you can. Ready? Go.
- [22:28]
A
Sofas, bar stools, beds, ottomans, outdoor seating.
- [22:31]
C
Bookshelves, kitchen tables, garden sheds, mid century modern lamps.
- [22:35]
B
Time.
- [22:36]
C
Nice.
- [22:37]
B
You got nine out of a lot. Not too bad. Keep practicing by visiting Wayfair.com where you can shop every style for every home.
- [22:44]
A
Wayfair every style, every home.
- [22:52]
B
Rapid fire Questions for Susan Orlean. Our listeners can't see it, but we can. I think you're in your writing room and there is a giant queen of hearts behind you. And you have a typewriter and not a computer on your desk. Why?
- [23:07]
C
Well, the typewriter is made of Legos and it's mostly. Yes. And so it is mostly for my amusement. I wish I were such a Luddite that I wrote on an on a typewriter, but I don't.
- [23:26]
D
I write on a computer.
- [23:27]
C
But a Lego typewriter is something every writer should have.
- [23:31]
B
And the queen of hearts, well, the queen of.
- [23:33]
C
I love dice and playing cards and all things that are sort of iterations of kind of game pieces. I'm fascinated by them. And I was Walking through the Rose bowl flea market one day, and this is painted on a giant piece of wood. And I saw it, you know, across the aisles and thought, that is mine. That is mine. I don't care that it weighs 5,000 pounds and that it will barely fit in my car. I have to have it. And it gives me so much pleasure. It's. You know, some. Some person decided to paint a giant playing card. There may be 51 more out there that make the rest of the deck.
- [24:20]
B
How long will you give a book that you know isn't necessarily well written and that you think you're not gonna like?
- [24:26]
C
I would say about 50 pages, which I think is more than fair. And, you know, I feel like if I'm really not digging it after 50 pages, it's not. It's just not gonna happen.
- [24:45]
B
What would convince you that you don't want to read that book?
- [24:48]
C
Characters. I don't care about writing. That's lazy. A plot that I don't believe. I'll read every different kind of fiction. I don't have a. Well, I shouldn't say every kind of fiction because I don't read romance. I don't read science fiction per se, But I'm sort of open to just about anything. So it's not a matter of. It's not my wheelhouse. But I've got to care about someone or I have to. There's some magnetism that a book has to exert over me, and if it doesn't, after 50 pages, it's just not going to happen. Hmm.
- [25:32]
A
What do you use as a bookmark?
- [25:34]
C
God, Whatever is close to me. Usually a bill that I will then like a bill from the electric company. And then a few weeks later, I'll be walking around going, oh, God, the electricity's off. I wonder if maybe we haven't been paying our bills.
- [25:55]
A
When you finish writing a draft of either an article or book, do you have a celebration ritual?
- [26:02]
C
Well, I started one when I finished the library book because it was so challenging. I got a tattoo, and then I thought, maybe this should be my new ritual, that I'll just get a tattoo every time I finish a book. There were a lot of objections in my family. So the ritual started and ended with one tattoo.
- [26:31]
B
This is a highly improper question, but I've asked it of one other person, so I'll tell you who that is later. What's the tattoo of, and where is it?
- [26:40]
C
Oh, well, the tattoo is on my wrist, and it has three little charms hanging from. It's essentially a bracelet there's an A, which is both the first initial of my dad's name and my son's name. A J, which is my husband's name, and an E for my mom's first name. Okay. So, you know, I could have done a book. I could have done something library related, but I wanted something that wasn't quite so on the nose.
- [27:15]
B
I asked that question of George Shultz, the Secretary of State. He has a tattoo of a tiger on his butt. And what.
- [27:23]
A
What a terrifying image of a tiger on his butt.
- [27:27]
B
He went to Princeton and he did it when he was.
- [27:31]
A
I gotta say, if you're putting it on your butt, I'm not sure it's an homage.
- [27:36]
C
Right. It seems like a little bit of a diss.
- [27:39]
A
Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, that's not the part that I. Anyway, yeah. I'm not picking that up and playing with it. Susan Orlean, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you so much for sitting for this conversation. We were really excited to talk to you.
- [27:53]
B
Yeah. Susan Orlean, again. The book is Joyride, another memoir. But I do love memoirs. And I should mention again that we're gonna have a third memoir in a couple of weeks written by Joan London and her story. And I'm in it. So, you know, I mean, everybody's gotta go by that.
- [28:14]
A
That's why we're doing.
- [28:15]
B
Yes, exactly. Of course.
- [28:16]
A
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, people, if you wanna get on the show, write a book about dad.
- [28:21]
B
I'm just kidding. Well, I don't make it until about page 250, so I was a little disappointed. First of all, I thought the book should be dedicated to me, which it's not.
- [28:30]
C
That's sad.
- [28:31]
A
And I can tell you what my comments are now, even though I haven't read it yet.
- [28:34]
C
It's going to be.
- [28:36]
A
Well, the book kind of slows down at page 250.
- [28:40]
B
Yeah, you'll find it so. And she's very nice to me. Thank her very much for that. Anyway, Joan London, in a couple of weeks. We have a bookstore for you this week. A young owner, relatively young. Summer Anderson, her name is. And she had for years and years a column, I guess it was a blog that she used to write called Summer says.
- [28:57]
A
Yeah. Online website, platform on the website.
- [29:00]
B
That's what it was. And she would write about books and review books and obviously loved books, and then decided, heck with it. I'm going to take a plunge and open a bookstore. It is called Lady Bird. It is in Charleston, South Carolina, on King street, right?
- [29:17]
C
Yes.
- [29:17]
A
It is. And her, we put her with joyride, because wait until you hear this woman. She's full of infectious joy. She's. You'll love her. So without further ado, Summer Anderson from Lady Bird Books.
- [29:34]
B
Summer Anderson, it's great to have you on the bookcase. You're new to this. Lady Bird has of recent vintage. Tell me how this came about.
- [29:42]
D
I originally worked for years in New York in events and then started to build my platform, Summer says, where I read, review books. So that's been going for years, and always had a little itch that maybe this wasn't the end all, be all. But I loved it. So there was no immediate reason to, you know, do anything different. And my family and I moved to Charleston, and that was probably about 10 years ago, and somebody put a bug in my ear, and I thought, hmm, that's interesting. And it was about a bookstore. And I thought, well, not now. I need to get my children settled. This, you know, we've just moved all the things. But it never went away. And I guess probably two years ago maybe I started to kind of. It just kept coming back. And then in January, I woke up and I was like, it's time. We need to do it.
- [30:32]
A
Well, let's take a step back, though, because I want to talk a little bit about your past and where Summer says comes from.
- [30:38]
C
Okay.
- [30:39]
A
And what your goal was when you were starting that.
- [30:41]
D
Interesting. I grew up in a house of readers, and my dad and mom were huge readers. And in our home, we were never allowed to watch TV until we did our homework, which I never did. So I read a lot of books, and I talked on the phone to a lot of friends, and so majored in English, went to the University of Mississippi, home of Faulkner. And I've always had a huge place in my heart for Southern lit. And I think. What was your question again?
- [31:09]
A
How you got started. How you got started with Summer Says.
- [31:12]
B
What your mission was, when you should explain. What Summer says. Summer says is that would also be helpful.
- [31:19]
D
Okay. Summer says is a platform where I review, read, and recommend books. And really, in my life, I've always wanted to talk about books. That's. I mean, I like to talk about other things, too, but I feel like when you have an talk about a book with someone, that you have an instant connection and you have a friend for life, honestly. And so that's the beauty of an independent bookstore, is that you can go in and you may come in and say, I want the Correspondent. And you're like, great. Unbelievable. We're Sold out. Holy God. Okay, but if you like that book, you may like this. You know what I'm saying? And so my hope is that, I mean, I can wax poetic for a real long time. And so glad to hear that y' all will edit this. But, you know, with Lady Bird Books, I feel that the place of independent bookstores is sometimes there's not a person that I know that has sailed through life and hasn't encountered grief or hardship or true exuberance and joy and success. And I think what independent bookstore does is it meets you wherever you are. So you may come in and you may be in the throes of grief, and we have something that you can feel seen in. You may come in and be in a situation where I need to disappear from my life. I need to check out. I need to go complete escapist. And we. It's like a pharmacy for the soul.
- [32:41]
A
That's a great way of putting it.
- [32:44]
B
Charleston is a beautiful city, but it is not for want of bookstores. You're opening in an area with a bunch of bookstores right around you in downtown Charleston.
- [32:56]
D
Yeah.
- [32:57]
B
So what gave you the chutzpah to think I can do well?
- [33:02]
C
Yeah.
- [33:03]
B
Existing in an area where there's a. There's going to be a fair bit of competition.
- [33:08]
D
I'm like, I will see a cliff, and I will run 90 miles an hour and jump off of it. So risk, to me, is not. I don't. I mean, I think it's a product of crazy amounts of adhd. And I'm not kidding. I don't think I really sat there. Like, I remember when I was like, I'm open a bookstore. I jokingly said, charleston doesn't need another bookstore, but they're going to get one. It was purely selfishly motivated. I wanted to open a bookstore. It's probably crazy. I did it. And one thing that I really love. I mean, I do think that there's enough pie for everyone. I mean, I would like to X Amazon out of the equation, admittedly. But other than that, I do believe that there is enough pie for everyone. And the beauty of an independent bookstore is that everybody is doing something so different. You know, you. You don't go in and see two bookstores that are exactly the same in the independent world.
- [33:56]
B
So you're new to this game. How's it going?
- [34:01]
D
I have said it's like being shot out of a cannon, but with confetti.
- [34:07]
C
It's great.
- [34:08]
D
It's a lot. I mean, I have to say, I felt like we were all, okay, so we opened the store two days before Halloween. Then a week later, we moved 8,500 more books into the Dock Street Theater because we were the bookseller, proudly, for Charleston Litfest. So we opened a bookstore, then we opened another mini bookstore. Then we closed that up 10 days later. And we are. And we were already didn't have enough staff, so we were just like. And then we moved right into December. Like, I remember someone asking me, like, oh, are you going on vacation now? I was like, vacation? I was like, it's December in retail. Like, no. We're about to go into the busiest month of our year. So I tell you what that's great at. You do not need a staff retreat.
- [34:49]
A
That's.
- [34:50]
D
That's your staff retreat. Okay? Everyone is all hands on deck, putting out fires right and left. And, you know, I just want to say that it's all about the people.
- [35:01]
C
Okay?
- [35:01]
D
I don't. I mean, you could even back it up to the people that write the books, the people that market and sell the books. The manager that we have is amazing. They had book buyers, amazing receivers, amazing. Like, every person in an independent bookstore is so necessary. It's like you. You just.
- [35:21]
B
It's.
- [35:22]
D
It is a family. It's a little family, you know? And speaking of family, we were all sitting around the Thanksgiving table. We got, you know, tons of people. We're all there, and we all go around and say we're thankful for this or that. One of my teenagers said, well, back when mom used to live here, I was like, okay, yeah, you know, like, you know, it's having a baby.
- [35:40]
B
Summer Anderson. The store is lady bird. It's on 299 King street in downtown Charleston. If enthusiasm and energy can make a bookstore successful, you're going to be wildly successful. We wish you well.
- [35:55]
C
Oh, boy.
- [35:55]
D
Well, thank you guys so much for your time, and this is such an honor.
- [35:59]
C
I appreciate it.
- [36:04]
A
Summer Anderson and her bookstore, which looks amazing on King street in Charleston, and we thank her for joining us. We will remind you about the great folks who keep us employed and keep the podcast on the air. Thank you. All those people. And then we'll have a coda from Susan Orleans, so stick around for that.
- [36:21]
B
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions, and our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make special mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Culver, and Ariel Chester of ABC Good Morning America and Josh Cohan of ABC Audio. You can Follow us and rate and review this podcast Wherever you get your podcasts and if you like to find any of the books mentioned on this podcast, you can find them listed in.
- [36:51]
C
The episode Description this is my words to live by. My whole life has been about being curious and I sometimes think. I think all the wrongs in the world could be solved by genuine curiosity of people about each other and that if I could wish one thing to change, it would start with that. Keep your eyes open, keep your heart open and stay curious.
- [37:30]
B
Everyone deserves to be connected. That's why T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces. Switch to T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built in benefits they leave out. Check the math@t mobile.com switch and now T Mobile is in US cellular stores. Savings versus Comparable Verizon plans plus the.
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A
Cost of optional benefits, plan features and Texas and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third.
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B
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