Nobody Panic - How to Choose a Book for Your Book Club (with Andrew Hunter Murray)

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

Part 2 of this week’s book club special is about picking those all-important novels. Stevie and Tessa are joined by best-selling author of The Last Day, QI elf, No Such Thing As A Fish podcaster and Austentatious regular Andrew Hunter Murray with some brilliant recommendations and a left field excel spreadsheet.Follow Andrew Hunter Murray on Twitter: @andrewhuntermAndrew’s book ‘The Last Day’ is out now – buy it here.Andrew’s Recommendations:Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey by Richard Ayoade Middlemarch by George EliotThe House of Mirth by Edith WhartonThe Age of Innocence by Edith WhartonStevie’s Recommendations:  Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-AknerThe History of Bees by Maja LundeThe Night Circus by Erin MorgensternMy Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan BraithwaiteTessa’s Recommendations:Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins ReidA Gentleman in Moscow by Amor TowlesChildren of Time by Adrian TchaikovskyRecorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive Productions.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true. Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. to Nobody Panic book club special, how to choose your book for your book club town. Welcome to the podcast.

Today, we are joined by a friend of the podcast, author, political pundit, QIL, all round top egg, Andy Hunter Murray. Hi. Do you go by your Andrew Hunter Murray now? Oh, yeah. Okay. I think we'd better had, yeah, I've got to have some internal brand consistency at this point. And I think as that's the name on the front of the book, I better be that forever now.

So, yeah. It's great. Well, Andrew Hunter Murray. Thank you for being here. So today we're going to be talking about me and Tess have each brought three book club book recommendations. And then we've also got Andrew Hunter Murray here talking about his book, which I just think you'll love. So it's just so that that is both book club book and just like have a readmate book. Andy, of course, shares his name.

name with a passing good tennis player. That's why the Hunter's in there. It's because I was Andy Murray to Whirl and Sundry for years, years and years. And then when I was about 17, people started saying, hey, have you heard of this young tennis player? He's pretty good. And slowly it became more and more irritating until I thought, wait a second, I'm going to throw my middle name in there. If your middle name is Hunter, then you're fine. I know, I know, so it's all right.

It turns out to have been a, yeah, a big relief. Thanks, ma'am. Wanted to get that on the record. My grandma called my dad, maybe my dad's middle name, Trevelyan, for exactly that crisis. I know, Trevelyan. She thought he might be the prime minister. And so she's just like, give him the option, you know? We shall maybe say at this point that Andrew Hunter-Murray's book, The Last Day, is out now.

It's Sunday Times bestseller. and it's bloody brilliant and what is it good about this book is that it's a very good book club book quarantine read because for me look you might have your own categories for what a quarantine read is and who might to judge you

maybe Harry Potter over and over and over again the third one or the fourth one but my categories are the things that I find helpful is something that completely transports you to a completely different place so when you finish you at your little reading portion of the day you're like oh yes this again, this old world. And I feel that your book, Andy, does Andrew Hunter-Mory, does that

so well, because it's about an alternate sort of dystopian universe, or maybe not, maybe it's the future where the world has stopped spinning. So it's so much worse, actually, than what's happening now. It's quite nice to sort of read that. Yeah, absolutely. I wasn't really aware that I was writing comfort reading when I wrote it. I read the early graph. I thought, this is actually, this is a bit grimmer than even I thought it would be when I thought of a world where the rotation of the planet has ground slowly to a halt and now it's 30 years later and everything has gone really badly wrong. But lots of people have written actually saying how nice it is to read something where things are so, so, so awful. Although in the book, the moment where the very first, very, very, very slight signs of deceleration in the Earth's spin happens, that moment is late, May 2020. And a few people who've read the book have been writing saying, please, please don't

let this happen, which it won't. It won't. It won't. But, you know, when you were doing research for it, did any of the people that you spoke, were any of them like, yeah, could, that could, could happen quite soon? Or was it like, could happen at all? Like, what's the spectrum that? It's very much in the could happen at all, but the odds against it are so astronomical that it doesn't need to be in anyone's top ten list of worries, but I wanted to write it in such a way that it would climb the worry list. So, yeah. No, sorry, I was just going to say, I'm sure you're so bored of having to do this spiel,

but just for anybody who has not seen the book, and you will recognize it because it's got most fantastic front cover that is orange and black, and then I saw you put on Twitter, and it just looks like a sort of half and half fade, and then you put on Twitter, anybody spot the face? And I was like, do it be silly, Andrew Hunter, Murray, what are you talking about? And there's a man's a face in there, which is, whoever's done the book design is just incredible. But I was going to say, do you want to just tell people who maybe haven't seen it on the shelves what the broad theme of the book is? Yes. So, it's set 40 years from

now, and it's set in this world where the rotation of the planet, you know, decades ago, started grinding door halt. So the world that we step into as the book opens, is a world where half the world is in constant sunlight, half the world is in constant darkness, and those barriers are fixed in perpetuity from now on. So on the sunlit side, a lot of it is far too hot to live in constant direct sunlight overhead. On the unlit side, nothing survives because you're just facing outwards towards the frozen, inky blackness of the void of space. I'm so stressed. I know, I know. I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to stress people. but I have. And then, however, good news, there is this slim ring on the sunlit side where the sun is high enough in the sky that you can still grow crops, you know, but it's not so high in the sky that everything is a flame. And that is the ring of the earth where life survives and where civilization is just about clinging on. And Britain is in that incredibly fortunate narrow band. And so it's, the book is about this huge change, obviously, but it's also like all kinds of, you know, sci-fi-ish or high-concept books. It's also trying to be about the world that we're in today. It's about a world where the climate is changing.

It's about a world where millions of people are moving around in order to ensure their survival or that of their family. And it's about a world where countries are withdrawing from each other in an atmosphere of recrimination and fear. So those are the things that I really wanted to. look at through this big silly sci-fi-ish idea at the heart of it. Can I add as well? It's also just like a cracking, thrilling plot. It's like the backdrop is so dense and so like interesting the world. So you've got both basically. It's a real page turner as what I'm trying to say, you know? Thank you. Yeah. It's a really fun task. It takes ages to kind of balance together. You think, ah, well, we want a bit more background. We just want to show a little bit more of this world

around the edges, but also the main thing has to be you want to tell a really exciting story that people have to keep reading. So that is always the primary aim. Yeah. Oh, well. Did you find when you were writing it that it was like having to do a, like build a Sudoku for somebody else that you

like, that you didn't, I always think that you just want to like tell everyone the whole plot right away and to just sort of drip feed, you know, the little bits and be like, and now a little hint of the more. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because at any point, you could just find out the huge secret at the heart of this new world, but then you've got 200 more pages of noodling around, which wouldn't work at all. So yeah, it's very satisfying

leaving the breadcrumbs and deciding what size to make them. Shall we do our adult things? Absolutely. So basically, yeah, Andy, we just talk about a very adult thing that we've done each week. Bar's very low, but you can set the bar quite high, you know. You've got a bestseller, so you're already, you know, smashing it, but we'd like to be about the small triumphs. Little victories. Oh, can I submit two for the committee's appraisal? 100%. Yes.

Well, thing number one, kind of weird, we were just talking about breadcrums, because across the room from where I am now, I can smell the first ever bread I've ever made. I made some very, very simple soda bread this morning, and it was super fun to wake up and make it. So that is thing number one. That's just because everyone is using up flour at unwise rates. And it couldn't be applauded, frankly.

I should have saved the flour to bake into a kind of chapati in times of extremists. But it's there. I'm going to eat it later. Can't wait. That's thing one. Thing two is I have, this is, I bet this will be the most boring adult thing anyone has ever submitted on this show. I really hope so. I have a series of amusing novelty coasters in the shape of various different planets.

They've got different planet shapes etched on them. They're beautiful. Now, I've had them for about a year, and they had a very, very rough wooden base, which meant they would scratch my table. And in the very first week of lockdown, I decided my priority was to put felt on the bases of these coasters. So I bought some felt, and I ordered a scalpel, and I now have coasters which can slide around the table without them.

the veneer. And you've also got a scalpel for if the world becomes feral, you can be as a weapon. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. What did you stick you felt on with? Some crazy glue. I wanted to try I was so young at heart. And that was your very first lockdown activity. I know. I know. Don't secure the food supplies. Let's finally sort of this coast a nightmare. It's one of the best we've ever had, I think. Yeah, that would be, if me had said that, that would be Like, yeah, DefCon, one or four, whichever is the highest. Mine's very, very simple. I've not gone on.

And I found a nail oil. And I thought, yeah, right. So I looked up nail oil. I'm putting nail oil on my nails. It's juries out as to what it does, but it certainly makes me feel like I'm helping my nails. I'm covered in oil. That's mine. What a good one.

Mine, I guess, is that I, mine I guess is that I made a window soup from scratch. Oh, la, la. Oh, la la. It was also my attempt number three at it, and it's, A, it's incredibly easy. But yesterday I did it without the recipe. Wow. Oh, my God. And it featured a leak.

I had grown. How is your adult thing in past? I've grown a leak. Sorry, I forgot. I buried the lead again. The leak, the last time I made the soup, I kept the leak in a pot of water like you were supposed to. And then it re-grew itself. it doesn't look amazing

it looks like a it looks quite sad but I nonetheless made a soup with a little leak that I grew in a pot of water on the windows

and I felt I felt one million dollars Sad leak soup Sad leak soup sad leak soup from scratch it was really it was really wonderful guys

I think the thing that quarantine as daughters is like you can do the things that you never have the time for you know

like you're cutting your felt out correctly and really taking the time to get those because you know you can't see them at home everyone, but those felt posters, they're really a treat with the eyes. Really congratulations. So diving, diving back on in,

diving in like into a good book. Have you had anybody telling you that they've used the last day as Book Club fodder? Oh, I don't think I have. So use it and then tweet Andrew Hunter-Murray. When you use it, you'll have a reaction to it whether you're like, oh, now I'm terrified. Or you're like, this is actually incredibly helpful.

But whatever you feel, whatever your emotional responses, like, it's so rich and there's so many, like, things that are parallels with the world, like, like you said, today, that, yeah, it'll be an excellent one to have just like a good old chat about. Yes, I guess the thing about choosing books, I wonder, Andy, what, how you go about choosing a book, because I know I find it so incredibly stressful to be stood in the W.H. Smith, at least. airport or in the bookshop or whatever and to feel the pressure of choosing a book and I always I've done this very stupid thing in the past where I've like asked for help and then they say well what kind of things are you into and I'm and I want them just to just like look at me up and down

and just say like this this is the book it's like in a restaurant where you say like what do you recommend and they say well what do you like well that's not the point I want you to I want you to tell me. They can only introduce you to yourself. Yeah. Wow. Wow. And I think if you don't know yourself well enough to be able to answer that question, you also aren't well enough. You know, you can't find that like this is what I, you know, this is the sort of thing I like. And so I always say stupidly, holiday trash, please. And but what I really, what I really mean is like just a good, lighthearted page turning, like, you know, we just, I want to be like, what I mean by that is like when you think, oh my God, I want to get.

back to my book. Like that's what I'm trying to describe in that moment. It's terrible that like the word trash has become synonymous, like that's like a thing and we all know what that means. But actually what we mean by trash is yeah, a book that I can't put down. It's so often attributed to like women, women books. Even really good, good kind of well written, interesting women, women novels will be sort of like, oh yeah, like trashy holiday reads. You like, no, it's like so well-plotted and so great. Like, I remember Gong, someone said to me, oh, yeah, you should read Gong Girl.

Oh, no, like, it's so great. It's great trash. And I bet it was like, it's really, like, well done. I've really enjoyed it. It was years and years ago. But, like, and it really, like, I think it's as a real literary snobbery that now I've really learned into, and now I'm just like, no, like,

when I go to a holiday or for any point, I've always got a book on the go that is a page turner. And I just, I just, I just always use it with page turner now. And I'm always like, never trash, or every book is a page turner, or I don't like the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are these mad ghettos of genre, which everyone is weirdly locked into. And one of the things I was really proud of stop with the last day was that it got reviewed under a couple of different genres, which made me very happy indeed. It got reviewed under both thriller and sci-fi.

But I mean, really, I wasn't trying to write a thriller or a sci-fi book. I was trying to write an interesting gripping story set in a world that's changed and which reflects the things we're all thinking about today, which is pretty much what every author is trying to do with their books. No one wants to write a book where people can put it down after two pages. No one is trying to write a non-page turner. And yet, so many of the books I studied in English literature, minding. And yet the infinite jest exists.

Too much jest. I think what we've all learned is that gesture be finite, you know. That's why comedy nights are about two hours long. Yes, they're not called the never-ending comedy night. And that is the thing. Like, there are so many books, like, very, what we might, I'm saying, worthy and inverted comments here, books that you might, like, dip into and be like, oh, what a profound thought about the human soul.

But ultimately, you're like, I want to be just transported. I want good old-fashioned storytelling. I think really great books that are like Trojan horse books, you know, the ones that you start reading and they kind of blur you into the sense that it's going to be like a, like a, a sort of a fun little dallet and then it gets really hard and heavy and you're like, oh, great. Like as in like, I feel like, but it's like, it's basically the Shindler's List situation where I didn't watch Shindler's list until I was about 30 because I was like, I'm just never in the mood for Shinders List. I've never gone, oh, yes, now's the time. And then I was really like, oh, come.

on Stevie, like, this is terrible that you haven't watched it. Watched it. It's excellent. It's also quite funny in part. It's incredibly moving. It's incredibly sad. And I was really glad that I watched it. But you need to be in the right mindset. And when you're told, this book is very important. And it will make you think. And you're like, I don't want to think. The whole point of reading is I don't want to think. Absolutely. I can feel completely the same way. I still haven't seen the endless list because I think of, I mark it off in my head. And in fact, there are lots of categories on streaming services, which are called five-star films.

And it is unbelievably hard. It's like having a restaurant that's just called vegetables and nothing else. Yes. It's good for you, but you don't want it. Yeah. And there are so many books that fall into that category of feeling like, oh, they're good for me.

Like, I should read this as opposed to I want to read this. Yeah. Or if they were, you know, marketed as, I read Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. last year. And it's an absolute cracker. It's so much fun. She's absolutely raucous. And she just runs around the world, having adventures and stealing stuff and repenting. I mean, the repentance is a kind of thin varnish put over the surface of all the really fun sin that she does. But, you know, now, just because of time, it has turned into a classic and a worthy book on a pedestal.

But as you say, there are only page turners or rubbish books. Yeah. In the bookshop and the Orwell you're sort of searching online for your next great read, what kind of things do you look for, what questions do you ask, or like, how do you make that choice about what you're going to read next? Wow. I quite like handing the decision over to someone else, kind of, as you've been describing, Tassas. So there's one service I signed up to, which is a company called Persephone Books, and they are a small publisher.

They've got one shop in central London, and they have published, republished, 130 books. That's their whole list, 130 books. And they specialize in mid-20th century fiction, almost all of it by women, that has been forgotten and deserves a comeback. So, you know, they're a brilliant company. They all come in this unbelievably distinguished gray, you know, beautiful design. They've all got lovely endpapers. And they're just, you know, beautifully done. But also the books are wonderful. Yeah, I've been introduced to authors like like Dorothy Whipple. Dorothy Whipple! What a name! What a name! What a gal!

Dorothy Whipple, E.M. Delafield, Marginita Lasky, there are all these fabulous authors who I never would have discovered off my own bat, but a friend got me a six-month subscription because Persephoneiebushly books send books out through the post. And once a month, a new interesting book arrives. So I like making my decisions through recommendations. So these books come in the post, do they? Yeah, you can go to the shop, which is in Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, but they do most of their stuff by post. And there is nothing nicer than getting home at the end of a long day,

you've been out, working, and then there's this gorgeous streamlined package with a special stamp on it, so you know it's from Bezephani Books. I mean, it's great. That is great. Because I was going to say, like, my main thing is just like going through that, you know, when you, if I've liked a book, I just disappear down the Amazon Recommends thing, which I think a lot

of people do and a lot of... It's almost like having a book valet or a book butler. They will just pop to the cellar and they'll come back and I'll say, I think sir, might rather enjoy this little number. And, you know,

so they also have a guide, you know, they tell you, they give a little one paragraph description and you can say, yes, I fancy some domestic, interesting noir, or whatever it might be from the 40s. You know, it's, yeah, it's fair. I love that. How do you choose books, Tessa?

Oh, yes, I too have a book butler who disappears to my cellar. And oh my God, that's my dream. I think, I was just thinking, I think part of the magic of that is that somebody else presents it to you and you might love it or you might not. But either way you sort of took that choice away from you. And so I think that's why booktubs are so excited. because, you know, you are the chooser, somebody else is presenting the book and you don't have to love it. You just have to, you know, get through it. And so I think I went through a period of trying to get through like the hundred greatest books, which I didn't love them all. It all felt a little bit like these are the things you should read. And now I've really taken to really talking to people in bookshops. And also I often, in my local book seller. An independent book shop has got a little thing of like

the staff recommends, which I know they also have in waterstones and places, but everyone's written a little card saying why they liked something. And I've got a few books from there and it's nice to, you know, be given something that somebody else's chosen. For that exact reason, I really like it when on Instagram or Twitter or someone and someone does like a book stack, you know,

like Pandora Sykes of the Hilo does a good old book stack. And whenever, whenever I've taken a recommendation from somebody off Instagram or Twitter, and I've really liked it, it's great because then I'm like, oh, well, then I'll like all the other stuff that they like, I guess. Sometimes it can be tainted, though, because obviously people will put their friend's books in there, which they may not have enjoyed.

So you're like, oh, you have to like cede out the ones that have been sort of there for posterity. But on the most part, I've got a couple of people that I'm always like, I'm always asking you what you're reading, Tessa, or I've got a couple of friends as well who just, we just like the same book. So I'll just watch out and be like, any good books at the moment. And then also,

to my shame, my boyfriend does a very good job of just, just like seeing things in the Sunday Times magazine or whatever, and to be like, oh, so Steve you'll like that. And then just buy, he doesn't talk like that. And just buying me books.

So then you'd be like, I've got three more books that I thought you'd like. Essentially, the choice is not in my hands. Because if the choice is in my hands, and I panic, I'll just read the same book over and over again. Reading Northern Lights every weekend. It's lovely to have somebody take that thing away from you.

I was just thinking, I do have a book butler, and it's you, Stevie, and every time I would go to your house, Stevie has this, like, I know you've possibly seen it if you're following Stevie's tort toys, because she's always walking up and down the hallway where Stevie has this long line of books, and Stevie will choose me something and present it to me, and then

I love. And then sometimes months later, I'll recommend it back, and then it back to Stevie. And she'll be like, I know, mate. That's my book. So, if you had to be somebody's book butler, Andy, for these upcoming months in isolation, where we all get a little bit Jane Austen and we just... Get a little bit sexy! A little bit sexy.

I recently read a book about what's best described as some horny wizards. What's the book? Police. It's called Upruted. and it's certainly good. This actually was recommended to me by the independent bookseller. I didn't love it, but it wouldn't be a desert island book for me, but it was about to a 150-year-old wizard and a 17-year-old girl doing magic together,

and then the magic very quickly becomes six. Wow. Okay, what age gap? It's always the way, it's always the way, isn't it? It's always the way. the way. But if you had to be the book butler for people's, and these can be modern books, the ancient books, these can be anything, what would be your sort of top recommendations that you would give to somebody else for these upcoming days in isolation? I did, I have been

looking through, is another aspect of how sad I am, I have a little Excel document, little Excel spreadsheet of every book I finish, and I've just been looking through that for my recommendations. How big is the spreadsheet? it depends on the screen um no come on how many cells are we talking thousand no no no no there are a few hundred in there and it goes back some years so you know it goes back years and years but then you can just look back and what better wait a while away in evening in lockdown that by

casting an eye over the books you were reading four years ago that you didn't really enjoy at the time um do you review them in the Excel spreadsheet do you have like a I don't, but I should. I should open a new column up. What is the point? It's to, well, counting. Hello. Do you want to know what columns I've got?

100. Yeah, that's all right. All right, here we go. Well, I've got title. I've got author. These are all, you know, standard. Classics. I've got what year it was published

in case I ever want to know the average of the average year all the books are in to publish. I can do that. I've got when I finished it, I've got purpose, which is either for my work or for leisure, but, um, right. But not if you liked the book. But not if I, I've got a column, which I've recently introduced my innovation for this year of the, whether the author is a man or a woman, because I want to find out if I've got any patterns there and, and try and, you know, rectify them if I'm not reading enough by women, for example, which is a thing that apparently often happens. Um, so, But I have nothing for the opinion.

This is a piece of a data collection. You're making a graph, basically. Thank you. I'm not trying to make any kind of qualitative judgments, you know, each book gets online. No, no, no. And I respect it, you know, take the magic of literacy and just pick it down to its base level. Thank you so much. Please do share us your insights from your Excel spreadsheet.

And do do this at home, everyone. I think we're all chomping of a bit to start our own. You know. This is my one person. book club, which features no opinions. It is. You just go to the book club every week and you say, yes, I finished it. Sorry, what was the question? Was it what would I recommend? Yes, you're the butler now. So you've got to go into your spreadsheet. Brilliant. What are you bringing the people? And so this literally, our entertainment for the coming months

rests on you, Andy. Oh my God. Okay. Well, so something, something, you know, kind of heavy and, you know, Big hitter maybe, but also some nice light stuff. So I, for comedy and lightheartedness, I've recently been reading the books of Richard Ayuadi, which are screamingly funny. The first one he wrote is called Iowadi on Ayuadhi. And it's him interviewing himself as a film director over 10 punishing, grueling interviews.

One of the funniest books I've ever read. It is just screamingly funny. They're so good. And then for the big hitters, oh, I was looking around, I'm reading Middlemarch at the moment, which is, frankly, it's great, but it's very hard. It's so hard. Some of the sentences are very tricky. It don't make sense.

No, exactly. There's a lot of like, oh, I would have put that part of the sentence at the start, but you could have finished there. I read Middlemarch when I was saying English shit and I was so, I hate it. so many of the books so I was so pleased to like it because it's a very big book, a massive book, and it's so sprawling and about all different families and not, I don't know, just so much going on. But it is, if you're into like period business, if you're into period business, it is great. Yeah, so I'm really enjoying it. And actually, it's that it has that, it does have that page turning quality.

It's just that you're turning a page is every 10 minutes instead of every two. And being really disconcerted by how long you've got to go. You know, do you guys do that thing where you get, you take your book and you sort of gather it into pages read and pages yet to read and you just think, yeah, that's all right. Yeah, okay, I can do this. I've been doing that a lot with Middlemarch. But as I say, it's about that.

May I just bobbing to say that I have exactly that with Wolf Hall sat beside my bed. and pages red is seven. And it has been seven for about three years. Every night you check. Did I manage any today? No, I literally pick it up most nights. I read page seven again.

I'm so overwhelmed by how much I have to go in it. It's dense. It's dense. It's dense. And everyone called Richard, all times. Thomas. I can't grasp who anyone is. And we're jumping around through time.

You know, I'm like, oh, is that the same man? I know. I know. Believe it or not, after page seven, those problems are only compounded because they introduce yet more characters called Thomas. Like I say, she's won the book twice. She's going to win it a third time. She doesn't need hollow price from us.

She should have put more surnames in. So, um... Slam. Slam. Hillary. Down, Andy. Imagine if this became like a smack down rap battle and the next time we get Hillary Mantell on

just to smack Andy down, you know? I'm happy to segue into that. I think her main thing would be there's not enough characters called Richard or Tom Ritz in your book. Which was my main criticism. Yeah, fair enough. Can I make one more recommendation? You can make as many like it.

Oh, right. So I... Well, not all your Excel. Come on. There's no time. But if you want a, if you want something which feels, and that horrible quote unquote improving, but, you know, something where you feel like you're kind of tackling a really great book, then I think anything by

Edith Wharton, who I only discovered within the last couple of years and have been enjoying more, you know, I've read a few of her book so far. And I just think they are wonderful. Any warden, warden heads here? I haven't read any of her because I was supposed to and then I didn't. again, Frangletch, as I continued, I just stopped reading. But what's a good, like, in book? Like, what's like a good gateway, a gateway Edith, if it were? The House of Mirth and the Age of Innocence are both unbelievably good.

They have all the rich, dense characters and the emotional plots of Jane Austen, but they're written and set slightly later. So they're dealing with end of the 19th century New York, which is this amazing social scene with huge fortunes being made and lost. And they all deal with the condition, they deal largely with the condition of women's lives in this world where women own very, very much less than men. And so the House of Mirth is about a Lily Bart who is a beautiful, vivacious young woman who is slowly losing her chance to find. the settled footing in life, which at the time means marrying. And so it deals with the choices that she is faced with and the men who she has a chance to either settle and compromise by marrying or whether she's going to try and keep her independence

and make her way in the world in a way that isn't really possible at the time. It's unbelievably beautifully written and so emotionally involving. It just, it is a complete page done. So, yeah, Wharton is my big tip. Great. Edith Wharton. I've never even, to my shame, ever heard of her. No shame.

No shame. Zero. Never. Zero shame. But I also haven't. I'm excited to get in. Oh, amazing. It's so thrilling when somebody recommends a book to you.

I mean, I wrote down those all on my phone just now when you were talking. And it's so thrilling when someone gives you a recommendation like that. You're immediately like, yes, off I go. I always feel like it's like somebody's giving you a little portal. It's like, oh, I can go through this little portal tomorrow, you know? Isn't it? And that's the amazing thing about books that, like, you know, someone's literally like, would you like to go to another dimension?

Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I would. Stevie, do you have any that you'd like to, what's the butler bringing from cellar? The butler is bringing out. I've got three quick recommendations and then a fourth, like, oh, this is good. But I read it so quickly that I don't think it can be a book club one, because the book club meeting would be, yeah, that's great, great book.

And then you'd all adjourn. So I've tried to pick ones that I think there'd be some chat about. Also, I won't apologize, but if I was going to apologize, I would apologize for them being quite obvious choices, maybe. They're not like cool old books. They're quite new, and everyone's heard of them. So the first one which everyone has heard of in is, you know, blah, blah, is called Fleishman is in

trouble and it's by Taffi Brodessa Akner who's a new, she's a staff writer for the New York Times and it's absolutely excellent. It's one of those books where I can't I didn't read the blurb, I didn't read anything about it and my boyfriend

bought it for me and I was like, Fleisch, flesh man, is this about like it's like that such a horrible like quite evocative name and I was like, what's that? I don't have no handle on it. But it's a very very contemporary book set in Manhattan about a guy who's just come out of a divorce. And to be honest, he's going on like a sex mad Tinder spree.

But it isn't about that. It then does some absolutely excellent Trojan horseing where you're like, oh, it's going in this direction. And from what I've seen, some people really, really responded well to it. I did. I was really like, oh, to the extent where I had, like, my boyfriend was like, do you want to come to you? I was like, shut up! It's like, I'm so sorry, it's just the book's turned. And I got chills when it was happening.

It was so great. I thought it was just a really great and very, very detailed look at how people respond to marriage and relationships and how different genders respond to marriage and relationships. And while it's very, very male at the start, more female characters come in. And it's excellent. Also, really well-written, funny and cool American book. So that's the first one. Lovely.

Second one is The History of Bees. I've no idea what it was about. I've got like an uncorrected proof, so I think I stole it from one of my previous magazines I worked at, but buy it. I really liked it. It's three different narratives, and it's all about, so that one narrative is in the future

where food production, because of the bees becoming extinct as meant that the world is thrown into complete disarray. It's set in China because that has emerged as the superpower that kind of survives basically. And then another narrative is in 2007 when the bee colonies first started dying

and the third narrative is like the 1800s when a man is like trying to create the first standard beehive to not harm the bees. And it's very, it's very interesting because one of the narratives is a woman who is living in a very kind of like oppressed society and then the other two are men, and it's written in a way that shows the attitudes towards women

in all the different three narratives. And all three are written very, very well. The problem with the narrative, split narrative, I always find is that there's always, like, one that you're like, yeah, I want to stay here. And then whenever it switches, even with, like, Margaret Outwards, the Testaments, I was like, oh, I love it, but, like, I do want to just stay with them. But with this one, I think, from what I can see, different people respond differently to different narrative strains.

That's really good. And then my third one is the night circus for Erin Mogerson. And that is my favorite book that I read last year. Because if you want to be transported into a different world, it does that so well. It's like really, I don't like, when I say it's about two kind of warring magicians, that makes it sound like it's a kid's book, but it's an incredibly adult book, essentially about a circus that is for adults that just springs up in various towns. And it's about the people who work in there, the people who are caught up.

in it and there's something very, very malevolent going on at the heart of it. And I basically felt like I'd drowned in the book. It was like I wasn't alive when I was reading it. I was fully in the book. So if you want something completely, it's got a really lovely central romance in it as well, but it's also very, very cleverly, it's very, very smart. And very very quickly, the one I read in a record time of four hours is my sister, the serial killer by Oynke and Braithwaite. and it's set in Lagos in Nigeria and it's very simple sister, her younger sister is a serial killer

and it's... Does what it says on the tin. It's a real page turner. It's really fast read and I think if you did it for a book club you just be like, yeah, but it's a banger so you wouldn't have anything to discuss but it's definitely buy it

and read it because it's great. There's my ones. They're fantastic. I'm really excited. Okay, so my first one is something that I think a lot of people will have seen the moment. I know Stevie, in fact, recommended this to me, my butler. This one is Daisy Jones and the Six. And it's by Taylor Jenkins Reed. And it is, it's got lovely red cover that you'd recognize. And it's just, and again, as similar to the you saying about my sister, the serial killer, it's not, there wouldn't be the most great discussion about it at book club. Because I think you would just say, everyone's very sex. aren't they? And you say like, don't you fancy everybody in this book? Yes. It is an absolutely fantastically written story of a band in the 70s and it's written as though the band are completely real, which is such a lovely trope and supposedly lots of people who have read it and looked up the band to be like, you know, to find their music and stuff, which I think is really nice. It's written and you genuinely do believe in it. But it's got that real page turning. Like you just

want to spend time in the book and it's something for me you know I'm always what you say about that trojan horse thing I'm always afraid when it starts like hearted and then suddenly and then it's like hard left turn into horror um it was like some terrible thing happens and you're like oh come on I thought we're going to oh please um this one doesn't make any hard left turns um which is just really nice and it's just such a fantastic uh isolation read I really loved it um my next one I know I've talked about in the past but I truly love I got this one from my dad's book club, he started a gentleman's book club in the village, which is 90% drinking. And this is, my whole family would read whatever dad was reading at the book club. And, and again,

it's just nice to be given something, isn't it? But their very first one was called A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towels. And it's just, have you read it, Andy? No, weirdly, my wife recommended it very highly to me. I then didn't read it, but we did go and see him speak about the book. He was over very briefly. And so I have been to an author event about this book and have not read it. Was he nice? Yeah, it was lovely. Yeah, yeah. An amazing speaker, a really fascinating about how he thought of the book, which is a very, it's sort of a very isolation themed one, isn't it? It's very much so. It's about a guy during the, it spans a lot of time in Russia, like over many years, I guess beginning during the Russian

Revolution and he is basically under house arrest but in an extremely fancy hotel um and it is just I would almost describe it as like it's just it's one of those books that it's not a page turn it because sometimes you get to the end of a sentence and you go back and read it again for your own pleasure like it's just such a beautiful use of language and words and like it's not only like an adorable story um there's so much like heart and all the characters are just lovely it's been made into it's going to be made into a film and I don't feel very good about it because I hope they give it the amount of like magic and joy and love that it deserves. But it's a really, it's one of those books that you're like, what a fan,

yeah, I can believe that this guy was really good in his talk because what a fantastic, like, use of language and oh, I really, I absolutely adored it. It's one of the few books I read and read the last year is that I really was disappointed for myself halfway through that I knew it was going to end. You know, you're like, I want to go back and read this. I want to go back and read it again. This is so nice. Gosh, okay, I'm definitely going to read it.

So that's my hard recommend. And then this one is absolutely stupid. This was recommended. Again, I heard this recommended on a podcast. It's called, this is a real curveball from me. It's called Children of Time by Adrian Chikovsky. I've heard of this one, but it sounds amazing. Sci-fi is not something that I would normally ever pick up, but it was recommended to me.

And it's a very big book and you think, oh, bloody hell. But once you're in, oh, boy, are you in? and it is just an outrageous story set way in the future. It spans, you know, it's about, I'm not going to give anything away, but I really would like everyone to read it so we can talk about it because I think it deals with a really, really interesting concept and it does, it does something that you really don't see coming. And yeah, that's all I want to say on it.

I mean, that's like the perfect book club book, like you're so desperate to talk about it. Like, that's so great. it's because there are bits that you just once you get to this particular there's several bits in it that you just want to close the book and be like I really would like to discuss this now with with somebody and it deals with very tiny human themes but also basically the biggest sort of human questions there are but in a way that I would describe as an absolute romp oh my god those recommendations for banging I feel really excited guys should we start a book club I feel really excited about everybody everybody everybody start a book club up. Yeah, that's so, oh God, I just, I'm going to go on Amazon. No, I'm going to go somewhere else, not Amazon. You're going to ring your independent bookseller and see if I'm going to ring my independent bookseller. This has been, I feel so excited. This has been amazing. Andy, thank you so, so much for coming home and talking to us. What a treat. What a treat to be able to tell people

about the spreadsheet, finally. Finally. Do you know how many people have seen these coasters? None. One, one other person apart from me has seen them. And now, the world gets to see it. You can fly across that table at your heart's content. Just slide it. Andy, apart from your book, which is obviously available at all independent booksellers, but also online, is plenty of fish still happening in 20? Do you mean no such thing as a fish, the podcast will do? Or do you mean plenty of fish, the dating website, which I actually am not a member of previously. I've mentioned wife there. Plenty of fish is still going. Andy, would you just like, how's your plenty of fish profile? It's doing well. It's gathering dust, I'm afraid.

I'm so sorry. How is no such thing as a fish? I mean, I sound like I don't know what it is. I'm actually in a habit, listen. No such thing as a fish. Question. Is it still going? Yes, it is.

Yeah, absolutely. Are you doing? We are. We are doing working from home episodes. And they're kind of pretty fun to do. And we've actually, we've just re-uploaded 1004 old episodes, which we've taken off the internet. because we sort of sold a special. We had a vinyl of our first year of fish,

which we put out, which was great fun. Anyway, we've put 104 old episodes back up online because, you know, we think people might want a bit of entertainment during this rather weird time. So, yeah, but we're having a way of a time. Oh, amazing. And the Private Eye podcast, of course. Yes, page 94.

Yeah, yeah. That is sporadic because I'm in charge of the schedule. But, yeah, we are still going. We're doing, we're doing monthly episodes now. So, yeah. You do too many, almost too many things to a high level. We could say. But yes, buy Andrew Hunter-Murray's book The Last Day,

wherever you can get your hands on it, we won't judge. Mine is sat on the bookshelf in the other room, and I've genuinely been saving it for myself. That's so nice to hear. But, I mean, in general, please, everybody keep buying books. The book industry is, I think a lot of people stocked up on books in the first few weeks, and then they've now stopped buying books. Please keep buying books.

Keep reading them. It's a really good way to spend the time, and we will all have lots of time. For heaven's sake, keep buying from your local independent bookshop. Keep the book industry alive. Do a little book stack on Instagram. I'll watch it, and I'll buy all those things. That's what I'll do.

Oh, yeah. I love a recommendation. Get that book club going. Hope some of these were helpful. I, for one, I'm already excited. I don't care if it's any used to anybody else. Same. Yeah, if you have any suggestions,

for future podcast episodes, please do tweet us or email us. Tweets at Nobody PanicPanickpod or email us, nobody panic podcast at gmail.com. And Andrew Hunter Murray, what's your Twitter handle again? It's at Andrew Hunter M. And I'm at Stevie M, the S's a 5. What? Thank you, Simon, for listening to our book club special

How to Choose Books for your Book Club time. And see you next Tuesday. Oh, okay. Wow, I've expectedly aggressive sign off at the end of an otherwise amenable hour. Andy, thank you so much for Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening.

Bye.