Mary Heim

who will find a lot to love here.

That is Dan and Green Gables by Ray Terciero.

Yeah.

Meredith, I feel like this was a perfect example of how you could sell ice to Antarctica in that I was like, yeah, this doesn't sound like it's for me at all.

But that was so compellingly set up that I can totally see how this is going to be the perfect hit for the right reader.

I love that.

All right.

Well, I will pivot us again.

I don't know if it's a hard left, but we're at least going left again.

And that is with my third book, which is Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan.

I was so excited, Meredith, to know that I would be recording this with you because I knew I had an excellent...

poetry book in my back pocket and was thrilled to get to share it with you alongside some of my other favorite instagram poets you will find joy sullivan known for her beautiful prose and themes of striking out on your own again in a different direction both metaphorically and literally

than perhaps you initially intended.

In this collection, Joy tells the story of how, mid-pandemic, she left the man she intended to marry, she sold her house, quit her corporate job, and drove west.

While pretty much none of these things describe the phase of life that I'm in, I found so much of what she writes about to still be so deeply familiar when it comes to the questions of what happens when we heed the call of furious reinvention, as she says.

I thought that it was so fascinating to watch her story play out, not explicitly told.

There is enough continuity in this collection to generally understand the trajectory of her experience.

And for the most part, it does kind of follow the timeline.

We're not jumping all over the place.

She's not directly telling you her story, but she is absolutely telling you her story.