Hi Tracy. Welcome to the What Your Next podcast.

So excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

So excited to have you here. So today we're talking about things nonfiction, but first things first, Tracy is the long-term podcaster before the 2020s, 'cause a lot of people become a podcaster. We became a reader at that time, but we're kinda like the OG in the late 2010s,, in

Yeah.

So talk to us, how did you get started and yeah. And about your podcast.

So the show was called The Stacks, and basically I got started because I was reading books and posting about them on social media a little bit and talking about them with friends. And my boss at the time was like, you should write a blog. And I was like, never. I hate writing. Like, how dare you suggest I write something? And then I was thinking about it and I was sort of an early adopter in the podcast space. Like I was listening to podcasts back in like 2010.

Yeah.

So I was like, oh, I could talk. I could talk about books like that might be fun. I do like to talk and then I wouldn't have to write anything. And so I thought, wouldn't it be fun to talk to, like some of my most well-read friends about books and maybe do like a book club with them. And so that's where it started. And when the show first started, I remember thinking, wouldn't it be crazy if an author came on the podcast, which now like. Seven, I guess eight years. I don't even know. Seven or eight years later I'm like, yeah, could have maybe envisioned that a little better. Like obviously authors would want to come talk about their books, but here we are.

Yeah, I think we started around the same time I started, I've been podcasting since 2015, but this show started in 2017. It was like I had other shows and one show led me to the show, to the other one.

Amazing.

so, and it was the same thing. It was like authors like was gonna happen and Don't know, It was organic. 2020 happened. I was starting to do authors in 2019, but 2020 happened and the world shut down and publishers were like, Hey, can you actually promote our books? Podcast exists? And I was

Yeah. I started in 2018, so a little bit after you started kind of transitioning to books.

Yeah. So, but it's kind of like an interesting, what's a landscape? What do you see in the landscape now that we've, I've seen changes obviously happen, obviously 2020 TikTok, a lot of people are now readers., It was, it's pretty common for me to hear people, like strangers in the street and be like, Hey, I'm actually a reader and I read romantic or read so and so this, and I'm like, awesome. Well, before 2020 it was pretty. Side, like a fringe kind of like hobby.

Yeah.

And especially like different books, not just like the new releases, but also like different backlist titles and niche and all these areas. It's like people having like exploring those interests in books.

Yeah, I definitely think like the biggest shift to me has been the explosion of romantic. Like I don't even think that was a word when I started doing this. Like I definitely don't, I, when someone said it for the first time, I was like, huh. I see it. But just that whole sort of book talk literary landscape, like what they're reading over there, I feel is really new since the 2020s, obviously, because Book Talk exploded since then. But I think that's a really big shift. I also think, when I first started doing the show, like black authors were sort of. Treated not great and fringed out. And then in 2020 there was obviously the explosion and it was like, oh, black authors. And I feel like now I'm seeing that sort of fall off again.

Yeah.

So I think that like I have kind of lived through this trend of literary racism. Obviously literary isn't a trend, but that moment from like 20, 20 to 20. 23 where it was like we care about black people, like hello. And I feel like we have gone now, regressing. And I think also another trend that I've seen a lot and I hope this one is here to stay, is the rise of the trans author. I think there have been so many amazing books that have come out by trans authors in the last few years, whereas when I started the show, obviously trans people existed. Trans writers existed, but they were not getting platformed and they were not getting the opportunities that I feel like they are getting now, which has just been fantastic for the literary landscape.

Yeah, and we're getting diversity in the trans community. Like it's not just in Into ary fiction, into Detransition it's actually in romance and historical and

yeah.

mysteries, and. Mysteries, like we're getting in horror, we're getting like a whole, so we're not getting the pain, which is normally what we normally see when we talk about communities under representative. We think about the pain,

Yeah.

looking at the joy aspect of it. And then the other aspects of you're a well-rounded person

Yeah,

have different interests which. A really great place to be.

Yeah.

in some ways with black authors, we saw the black joy and we see like that space and that space is growing, but at the same time, we're seeing, obviously with the political landscape and how people feel much more comfortable coming out in their racism.

Yeah.

It's that, it's sad, but hopefully trends come back and hopefully we go back Era.

yeah.

When it happens we will see a shift.

Yeah, totally.

but you know, I think it's interesting too that we have lived through trends. Like it's not just one time it's no. We've seen the rise and fall. Just like romantic was innate. So romany is such a little paranormal with a little bit of fantasy or romantic arc of fren. It was always there. They just needed a new marketing term

Yeah.

it's funny enough, like now that's what's been consumed. And then sometimes it's gonna change. Just like romcoms were a thing for a while and now it's transitioning to mysteries and other spaces. But it's interesting now to be being in the space from this area, from this point of view and seeing like the landscape changing and just being nimble

totally.

you

Totally. I think also like some of it is that the people in publishing, they have no clue. And I feel like they're similar to like us on the outside being like, what's going on? And like shifting based on that. And so I feel like the trends move so quickly in publishing because whoever is like on the marketing team is oh, I saw this TikTok, we should be doing that. And then everyone's doing it and it feels not rooted so much in the data, but just like in the vibes, which I think is a very interesting piece of the publishing world.

Well, we're, see, in the Roman space there was a lot of, like the Kindle Limited, the marketing, the indie two Pub de tra pub. For Roman's author, like I've known traditional Romans authors or people who want to be traditionally published. They're struggling to get to an agent They need to show proof that they actually are, that they're selling books. They need to have social media, they need to have, so they're actually expecting the author to basically build their own business.

Right,

concept and then get a traditionally

which is crazy.

which is like crazy. 'cause in the past it's it's one of the many income streams where you don't have to, you think about it, you just wanna write, you don't wanna think about selling, putting ads, getting our teams, getting marketing, doing the whole work, and do the whole thing that the publisher team should be doing, you

right. That's so interesting.

Yeah, so let's talk about the stacks and

Okay.

can leader listeners expect since we're in a podcast space. And that's when it's ion over to new podcast listeners. And if you haven't heard about the Stacks, and Stacks is a long running show. There's lots of episodes to go back to, which is always exciting.

many.

a one exciting thing when you have someone's I just discovered a show, and then I just go back to your back

Yeah. I always laugh when people tell me they're listening to like older episodes. 'cause I'm, don't judge the audio. Like I just started, I didn't know anything. I was editing the show myself, like I don't know what I'm doing. But the way the show works, at least now it's changed a little bit. So if you do go back, you'll notice some changes. But the way the show works now is just every Wednesday, the first Wednesday of the month, I do sort of a. In depth interview, and this episode might be with an author, but it also might be just with a book lover. That same person will come back the last Wednesday of the month, which is where we do our book club episodes. And then all the Wednesdays in between are more traditional author interviews where I'm interviewing an author who has a new or a new ish book on, I love books, but I also love pop culture. I love politics, I love current events. So the show mixes in a lot of those things. The most recent episode that I did as the time of this recording is with Dan Michelle Norris, who, she's a writer. She's also the editor in chief of Electric Lit, and we were talking about her new books, and then we got off on a tangent of Ezra Klein. So that's sort of what you can expect on the show is like at one moment we're talking about books and literature, and the next moment. We're talking about Taylor Swift's flat boots, and that's just what happens. But I do like to tell people I am a reader. I'm not a writer. So this is a show for readers. This is not a show where you're gonna get the ins and outs of sentence structure and syntax. I don't know, I don't care. I want, I like to gossip. I like to know the details. I wanna know why you made that decision. And aside from the book club episodes, there are no spoilers on the show. I hate a spoiler, so I am aggressively like I will do an interview. The author will start answering the question and I'll interrupt them and be like, sorry, we have to cut that. Can you do it again and take the spoiler out? I re if there's a spoiler, I tell you basically three times before the episode starts and in the show notes, I never wanna spoil, I just can't handle it. So if you're listening and you're thinking, oh, I wanna listen to that episode, but I haven't read the book yet. As long as it's not a book club episode, there will be no spoilers.

I appreciate and someone who has done a lot of other interviews and tried to give them like spoiler free, and I talked about tangents. I love talking about reality TV shows. I love talk about other aspects that make the book actually what you actually write, because a lot of times the essence. You who you are comes from your different interests, hobbies, jobs, experiences, and that's what makes it much more interesting and less about the actual book itself because it's I don't I, it's, you can mention that book, but there's so much more that there's obviously, by the time you listen to my episodes, you, they already have a back list. They have other books you can go to. you understand the per as a person who the author is, and then hearing what they kind of read in my show, I just ask them like, what books do you read? then it tells me like, oh, this is what you're reading, so then I can actually fall off. But I love the fact that you're like, no spoilers too, because sometimes you just don't wanna, you just wanna get to know this person to figure out like, are, can we be friends

Yeah.

will I buy your book

Yeah totally.

So for the book clubs, like what kind of books do you tend to pick up? Do you tend to pick up, like it obviously has transition over the years, but do you have like particular like niche or particular

No, we do everything. We do fiction nonfiction once a year in April for National Poetry month, we do a poetry collection. This month we're reading a book called The Lilac People. In September, last month, we read Braiding Sweetgrass. We read Lolita this year. We read in the past. I mean, we've read our first book Club Pick was Exit West. We've done Between the World and Me. Basically the way the book club works is I want it to be as wide ranging as possible. We've done romance. The only thing we don't do is horror because I am scared of horror. But I think this year we're going to, we're gonna do one. I'm really nervous about it, but I think we're gonna do it.

can do a horror light. You don't have

Yeah, we'll see.

for horror

yeah.

like specific things that you're like, maybe I can give it a

Maybe I have very bad nightmares, so we will see.

Yeah.

but aside from that, we basically I'm not opposed to anything. The way that we pick the books is usually once I pick the guest for, this is probably like 90% of the episodes book club picks. Once I pick the guest, I float a list to them of some titles that I think might be a good fit based on who they are, what they write, what they're into, and I ask them to float me a list of some books they're interested in. I tell them, the only real rule is that it can't be brand new, 'cause I don't wanna deal with library holds and all of that. So like the our September book came out in April this year, and that's probably the newest thing we've ever done. Usually. It's six or eight months. But I love to do backlist too. I'm not Reese Witherspoon, so I'm not trying to turn it into a movie. I wanna just read a really good book. And I think a lot of people want to go back and read some of the classics, wanna go back and read things maybe they missed from 5, 10, 15 years ago or 150 years ago. So we try to do, like we've done Shakespeare for book club, we try to just mix it up and keep it fresh. I try to not have two nonfiction books back to Quebec or two novels back to back unless it's really different. And I am, I'm open to reading whatever. So I try to fit it more towards what the guest wants to read because I'm gonna read a book this month for book club. I could love it, I could hate it. And that's another thing on my book club. I will hate things. I am not trying to sell you the book. I'm just, I wanna talk about it. So there might be a book that I absolutely love, but there's this one scene that drives me crazy and we'll talk about that.

Yeah. I love this idea of like just that it's okay for you to hate it. It's okay that you're not marketing driven. A lot of times publishers want you to highlight books for book love, and they do a. Ese as be good example, this celebrities book club, but also like podcast book clubs. They're like, you're looking for Hey, can you highlight this book? It's coming out and it has to be certain publishing schedule and it's like kind of like nice

Oh,

to not

I don't do any of that. I don't do any of that.

anymore.

No.

I don't wanna do any publisher rules because I don't I want my readers wanna listen to things that are of easily available in the library, easily available on can limited, like we're on a budget right now, we're

Right.

buying. Fresh new books every day. We're not pre-ordering books, we're not doing ahead of time. We're marketing the readers who just wanna be able to go dive into a book that they actually, it sounds interesting and it doesn't matter. That's been driven by marketing dollars.

Yeah.

think that's been like a shift, in this content creation space.

So I think for me, I've always been, I mean, I've always said this and sometimes people tell me that I'm too self-absorbed, so sorry. But this is a show that I created. I wanted to talk about the books that I wanted to talk about and the ways that I wanted to talk about them. And that was sort of my original founding principle. And I still think in a lot of ways that is still the principle of the show. Obviously I have an audience and I think about them and what they're interested in, but. I'm never gonna put someone on the show because a publisher asked me to. I'm never gonna feature a book because it's what other people are talking about. The one exception was last year we read a Colleen Hoover book for book club. 'cause I'd never read Colleen Hoover and I just needed to know what everybody was talking about. But even in that regard, it wasn't 'cause I was like, I wanna be part of the Colleen Hoover movement. It was like, I need to know what this mess is about.

Yes.

But because I started the show without any. Connections to publishing and I started the show By the time publishing found out about it, they knew what my deal was. They knew, they couldn't tell me that, will you do this book for book club at this time? They just know if I'm gonna do their book for book club, maybe they'll get an email from me. But a lot of times I don't even tell the publisher. I just announce it and I tag them on Instagram. But also I don't know that. Penguin Random House Classics cares that we're reading Romeo and Juliet, like they're not marketing Romeo. You know what I mean? So I think some of it is like they don't care and I don't care. But also like my audience, I don't work for publishers. I work for my audience. I work for myself. Like my show is about our community and if it is favorable for the publisher, if the book gets a rave review from me, that's just because I like the book. It has nothing to do with any outside pressure. And I think. I think sometimes, I think part of the problem we're seeing in the literary landscape is that too many people are trying to be too buddy-buddy with publishers and authors. And it does a disservice when you don't have a real critical, like a critical community to go along with the artistic community. You lose out on so much. Too many book reviews in the New York Times and other places are just plot summaries from other authors who don't wanna say anything mean because they don't want somebody to say something mean about their book when it comes out. And I think that is so bad for books, and I think that's why we're seeing less and less people reading and less people knowing where to find books because they can't trust the trusted publications. And so for me, it's really important. I make a show that is a show that I would wanna listen to, but also a show about books that I would wanna read because there are people like me who wanna read things that are not Colleen Hoover which I've not gone back to, believe it or not. And that's no shade to her per se. It's just not for me. So yeah.

Well, I think it's and it's, it is just basically, we've been in this space for a long time. We've been readers, I'm assuming you're a reader before you

Yeah.

this platform. So you have been a reader for a long time. I was a reader most of my life, and I write, I read what I like and I like what I read. And when I was screening I one point, because of the influx of this show was like a lot of authors and a lot of specifics. lost its purpose and I had to go back to it, I think, and I think I share because you were supposed to. and sometime in February. And at that time I was like, I don't even know where I'm gonna

Yeah.

I needed to have a reckoning from that space of what is the landscape looks like? Because it looked like a lot of people were just regurgitating what the publisher wanted to, they wanted the free books, they wanted to have the attention, they wanted the money. They think that's the way to get the money. And the reality is that. You lose if it becomes a job. It doesn't. You read less. One, two, you read things that you don't like and you put yourself in a place where you're just like regurgitating the marketing plots. And I had to come back and be like, no, I don't wanna do any of that stuff.

Yeah,

just wanna talk to readers. I just wanna talk to maybe some authors who have some interesting thing to tell, but I wanted to talk about other aspects of it, not just what's. Selling right now.

totally.

what selling like the market trend, that right now it's going viral to talk about beyond those books and be like, let's talk about literary fiction. Let's talk about nonfiction, which we'll talk about. Let's talk about other things that are actually interesting because I had to expend my taste beyond what was being sold because I've, again, I lost I hated most of the books that I was sold and I was like, well, we kinda have to go back to basics. And

Yeah.

moved away from romance. And ended up in mysteries and I was like, this is a whole new world. And I enjoy like this idea of murders and idea of like cozy and idea of the space of a place that's a little bit different than what I was sold. That is this is what you need to read right now. I ly who were back in 2016, it was a one and done. go back. And that's my feelings. That's something that I'm like, I was passionate about. I read a lot of those book talk books in 20 16, 20 17, and now I was like, yeah, I don't need to go back to those.

Yeah.

but you know, I think it's interesting the landscape of everyone wants to be an influencer or feels like everyone wants to be an influencer. Everyone thinks that they can make money out of books and I think you. We both have been in this space where we talk about yes, compensation is part of it,

Yeah.

just different things, but I think it's also having a strong voice and a strong place of like in the community and having to say here's my boundaries. Here's what I like and here's how I honor my community, and here's how I support and respect my audience, and providing them what they're looking for

Yeah.

to what we're being told that's gonna, sell.

Yeah. I feel like sometimes people don't understand. Which I get don't understand like what an influencer, like a content creator's job is. And it is not to work for the brands, it is to have a critical and thoughtful opinion about whatever. I mean, their job is to basically, if their taste makers, their job is to say, this is what is good, this is what is bad, this is what matters. Whether it's a pair of jeans or. A literary fiction novel. And I think sometimes people think they wanna do the job because they wanna talk about books, but I think a lot of people quickly realize that the job is actually about having discerning taste a lot more than it is just talking about a product. Like it's very easy. Very easy to talk about something that you genuinely love. It's a totally different skillset to talk about something that you're sort of lukewarm on or, hit or miss and not that you're do like, I mean, and that's to say I don't wanna be confusing here 'cause it's slightly different than like a jean, a pair of jeans, like makeup. I talk about every book I read. So every book I finish, I review. So for me, what the challenge is how do I talk respectfully about a book that I hated? Also get across the point they're like, I hated this book and let's write about it. Right. And I think that's the part that is tricky for some people. They think it's just oh my God, I love this book, pay me money. And it's very much not that because also there's not very much money in book publishing influencing, there's basically none. So I think yeah, part of being an influencer in anything is having a discerning voice and also having a unique. Voice having a, an authentic voice. And I think people quickly can sniff out when someone does it. And I also think people who don't have an authentic voice, if they're just in it for like free books or whatever, quickly fall out of the work. It doesn't, the amount of work is not, does not match the cost of a $30 book.

Not even, it's just a digital book, like a 1599, you

Yeah.

book. So thank you for engaging with this conversation about it. 'cause I feel like there's a lot of curiosity around this

Totally.

lot of people wanna talk about, I think you're a good person to talk to. You've been doing this for a long time and we've seen the trends and I think it's someone to, it's a contemporary in that space. So now let's talk about with the subject that I'm very excited to talk about, which is nonfiction.

Me

with you

too.

before that, I have a newest nonfiction listener. I love audiobook nonfiction. I've been listening to a bunch of history of the aughts and the nineties. Millennial TV, music true crime, but the actual white collar, true crime, the scams and everything. So it's kind of like a mix of what did Transition Out podcast into actual nonfiction books. But I'm curious to hear from you, 'cause I know you're passionate about reading nonfiction and you have great starter guys on how to get started and how to find your actual niche with that. So let's talk about nonfiction.

I love nonfiction. I don't know what to tell you. I, part of the whole read the books I wanted to read and the way that I wanted to read them. Is because I wanted to talk about nonfiction. I've always loved nonfiction as long as I can remember my nonfiction reading has been a huge part of my life. I am nonfiction first. I will read a novel. I'm so much harder on a novel. I've I'll never give a novel five stars. I'm always like, well, I didn't like that part. Nonfiction. I'm just obsessed with. I know a lot of people think that it's boring or they are. They'll say, I don't read self-help, and there's just so much more than self-help and business productivity books in the nonfiction space. Not everything is dry history or academic, though there are some amazing history books and amazing academic texts. And also quite frankly, some really good self helpy kind of books. I parenting nonfiction as a genre, not the how to stuff, but the sort of like philosophy and psychology of parenting and nonfiction. There's some good books in that space. But yeah, I just, anytime someone is sort of dismissive of nonfiction, I take it personal and then it becomes like a vendetta of how can I find the nonfiction book for them? And I am pretty confident I can find a nonfiction book for anybody. Not to toot my own horn, but I just, I believe that nonfiction books exist for anybody in the same way that a lot of people feel like there's a book for, like, when someone's I'm not a reader. I'm like, there's a book for you, please relax. So yeah.

So let's get started. What will you be like if you're a starter guy, like a starter person who is intimidated by nonfiction as myself? I have been for a long time. I was like, I don't know where to get started. Hello. That's what to read next is a podcast because

Yeah.

idea what to read next. What, what things do, you should look into it. I, long term, I used to read a lot of personal health development, self-help and I just. Need to take a break from that and actually look for other areas like my interests are history, things about culture, reality TV stuff, as well as some history specifics and some true crime.

Let me talk. So I have a new series that I do on my substack and it's called the Nonfiction Files. And every month I write about nonfiction in some way. And so I want to just direct people if you really want to dig into this. My first two one is called it's the Nonfiction Taxonomy where I go through. A taxonomy of nonfiction in the same ways that you would of like animals, like kingdom file, whatever. I go through that for nonfiction. And then the second one I did was how to pick a nonfiction book you'll like. And that one has a lot of language around, what are the words, key words and phrases you might see in the back? Co. Like the jacket copy of a book that can help you to identify what kinds of nonfiction you'll like. So for example, if a book says that it's moving or comprehensive or definitive or maybe you hear the word lyrical or exploration and how those key words are cluing the reader into what the nonfiction book. Is going to be like, because in the taxonomy I talk about how you can have a book that is the topic is the same. Let's say it's a book about, school shootings or guns, and one might be an academic book that explores. The history and the details of that. And one might be reported journalism, that is talking to people who've been impacted by gun violence at schools. And like those two books are the same exact topic, but the style, whether it's academic reported or like maybe a memoir, they're gonna be different. They're gonna be approaching the issues differently. So one of the things I really have been trying to do with the nonfiction files is key people in to the fact that. You could be interested in a topic, but maybe you don't like the style of the book you've read, or you could be interested in a, you could, some people I know just like narrative nonfiction, period. And they'll read about any topic as long as it's written by an investigative journalist, or and so I think having better language to understand in the same ways that we have all this nuanced language around fiction, right? You're talking about mysteries and is it a cozy mystery or is it a, is it a murder mystery? Is it a. Is it like a heist, whatever. But people know what those words mean, and those words exist in nonfiction to clue readers in to what they might like.

That is brilliant because I had just to do, I just read actually a. Like a literary textbook about mysteries understanding every single format of mysteries look like. And I was like, oh, I need the language so I know what to pick based on that. So we're gonna link into your substack for you to grab it and to

Yeah,

nonfiction

normally plug myself that hard, but it does exist and I'm really trying to help people find a way in. So if you are interested like it, I have it for you in way more detail than I can do right now.

Awesome. Can

I,

do some book recommendations? Some, you

yeah.

recommendations to get started.

like broad nonfiction books that I like.

broad, let's do broader, like what you consider like starter guide, like

S Okay, so for people who like audio books but never read nonfiction, I always recommend to start with a celebrity memoir. That is nonfiction. If you like an audio book, it's like you're gonna have Michelle Williams as Britney Spears right in your ears saying crazy things to you. Or Jessica Simpson has an amazing celebrity memoir. I don't even care about her that much. And I was like, this is the best book ever written. So I def. Yeah, I'm like, she's amazing. Chicken of the Sea. Totally. Yes, I'm there. Lauche is the worst. So.

and John Mayer. Janelle, go for

Yes. Bad. So that's a very often easy recommendation 'cause there's so many celebrities and there's probably, they're all writing books these days and they're, most of them are reading their own audio books. So, so that's a place that I usually tell people to start. I think if you are nervous about nonfiction, you think you don't like nonfiction, finding books that read like a novel. So for example, this year, a book that came out was called A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst, and it's a, it's very slim. It's about a couple in the 1970s who decide they're gonna sail from England to New Zealand, I believe on their little boat, the boat gets hit. Bumped hit eaten by a whale and they have to survive at sea in their little dinghy, but it reads like a novel. It's so propulsive and I think it is totally the kind of book that people who don't like nonfiction, quote unquote, will like. What else? I think if you like. If you're interested in sort of history, politics stuff, there's a book or, and like law and kind of current stuff. There's a book by Ellie Misel. He had a new one this year, which I haven't read yet, but I. It's called Allow Me to Retort, and it's sort of like a funny book about the Supreme Court. And so if you wanna know how the Supreme Court works and why certain rulings matter and stuff like that's, I really like those kind of books as well. And then there's this other kind of nonfiction that is my, one of my favorite kind of sub genres where. A journalist will be talking about a top, a topic or an industry and they'll pick four or five people that they follow and then they tell the story of that industry through these personal narratives. So for example, if you know the book Evicted, evicted does this beautifully. This year there was a book called Bad Company, which was about private equity. That was fantastic. And then another book called There Is No Place For Us, which is about the working homeless. Also fantastic. These books also often sort of read more like a novel. You're still gonna get a lot of information that's braided in, but you're following a person or a family, so you're getting that much more narrative arc. So those kind of books, if you ever see a book that says something like, this book explores X and follows four Ys, then that's sort of a good clue that might be one of those kinds of books.

Yes, I've read a couple influencer books like that actually. It's been interesting to understand. The influencer I think is. Something, click or influence or step off of the click or something. And it, I like four influencers as they

Oh, interesting.

out of bloggers into a space, into actually space. I think it would be fascinating to see looking at from that perspective, what industry are you interested in? I'm definitely gonna bump off the private equity one,

It's so good.

it's so, it's so interesting. Like you get to understand the industry from the insiders and understand and have somebody else to relate it back to you.

And I did an episode with the author Megan Greenwell. So if folks wanna hear that conversation, you'll get a better sense of the book. And Megan, and she's fantastic. And it, she makes it, she really breaks it down because I didn't know a single thing about private equity, and now I've made private equity, my entire personality.

yeah, it's not, and I mean, number one you know which one I read that I really enjoy and I just benched them. Were about. Malls. The Selling Sexy, which is the Victoria Secret story about how the mall came about,

Okay.

perspective. And then the J and I ended up like pairing it up with the J Crew. Kingdom of Prep, which actually talks about the rice and fall J. Crew

I just,

years to what it was in Dawson's Creek. 'cause I was like, I remember I was like the

yeah. Oh yeah.

And it was interesting to see the rice and fall of the malls and how we have shopping things at trends have shifted

Yeah.

are going in. So that was like a fun one that you wouldn't think of it, it's like the stories about, you

Yeah. I mean, that's another thing for people to think about. If you have like niche interests, there's probably some really fun audio books or printed books about these topics. One of the jokes in the Stacks Pack, which is my Patreon community, is there's this book about grocery stores that like. Everybody loves, and it's like we're the weirdest people. There's a book about parking lots and parking that I loved called Paved Paradise. So there are these, we, these like super niche, kinda like micro histories is what we call those kind of books that really dig into a topic. There's a book that came out this year called Shade that's all about literal shade. Covered pace, places from the sun and the history, and also the politics of that and how it's shifting. So if you're a person who really likes to know how things work or like where things came from, there are a ton of really good non-fiction micro history books. And I usually tell people, in that case, you probably wanna lean on a topic of interest versus just the general kind of book, because. I don't care about certain things though. I thought I wasn't gonna care about parking and I live in LA so it turns out I care a lot about parking.

Yeah, I love this idea of looking for your interest, looking to see if there's books around the interest and looking for opportunities to understand the history or just nuances. Like I know the normal gossip, I she had a book about gossip

Yeah.

was fascinating. It was like, oh, gossip, it's storytelling.

Yeah.

Rico, so it's very like gossipist very like established culture and it was fascinating to hear even niche podcasts having their own actually nonfiction about the history. It's. Specific things

Totally.

sometimes like authors to meander around the topic and to go on tangents and understand a little bit more nuance that you wouldn't understand from what perspective.

Yeah.

yeah. So

talk about memoir. People love memoir. I used to love memoir. This year I'm so out on memoir, I basically can't finish any memoirs. But if you want, I think like one of the best recent memoirs is heavy by Kse Lehman. I don't, I've never recommended it to someone who didn't. At least like it, most people love it and become obsessed with it. It's fantastic. So I do believe there are good memoirs, but right now in, in fall 2025 or late summer 2025, I'm so out on memoir. I already said I'm not reading any more memoirs this year. Like I just, I can't get into it. But if you've never explored memoir, you might really like it. I think I've gone, I've read too many at this point.

Yes. And maybe that's why movies just for me, Romans is too much and I'm just going to a different genre and try to explore

Yeah,

the genre.

I'm taking a break.

beauty of books and the beauty of the diversity of. That we have, because we not only have just the traditional publish, but we also have independent publish. We have different smaller press who are putting different work. So we have access to thousands of books and opportunities. And obviously there's a book for everyone, nonfiction and fiction. So, Tracy tells, we can find online, tells about the Substack, the Patreon, the podcast, and all of the

Oh my gosh. I'm all okay. This is the easiest way to find me online. Go to the STA at the Stacks Pod on. Instagram and click my link Bio. It has access to the Patreon, to the Substack, but I am on both of those places. I'm on threads. I have a website, the stacks podcast.com, and then the show, the stacks comes out every Wednesday on all of your. Podcast listening platform. So wherever you're listening right now, just go search for the stacks. You'll see a pile of books, you'll see my converse, you'll see my little ankles. That's me. You can listen and Laura said before there are. 300 and, well, there's over 400 episodes, but numbered, there's 380 something. So we've had so many amazing authors on the show. If you search for a book title or an author's name and the stacks, you might be able to find something that you love. So kind of have to explore.

Yes, there's plenty to go back there. So if you have a back list, you wanna go dive into this tax is ready for you and you have, it can keep you busy. One episode a day can be a whole year,

holy. Over a year. Over a year. Oh my God. Oh my gosh. I've never thought about it that way. I wanna die.

You can keep someone's company.

Yeah I'll be with you for an hour a day for the next year if you want, but also if you don't want, I don't hold it against you. I don't wanna be for myself, with myself for an hour a day, let alone all the hours I have to be with myself, so I get it.

It is all good. Thank you Tracy for being

Thank you.

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