Welcome to Plans Are Booked, a podcast for every reader. I'm Molly Gallagher. Stephanie Blackburn. And I'm Caitlin Madison. Welcome to chapter 26. I just have to say when this episode comes out, I will have already been tortured, maimed, and brought back to life by the tortured Poets Department. That's what's on my mind right now. those living under a rock that's the title of the new Taylor Swift album. Yeah. And I'm like, I didn't notice the shot.
but I feel like I did because I watched all the Travis and Taylor videos because guess what? All of her friends played there. It was I spice. It was Jack and bleachers. It was like everybody. Sabrina was there. I mean, it was just. It was delightful, although I will say I did miss last year Dylan O 'Brien dancing in the desert with like no shirt on was pretty great. So but this year was also good. So, we did a two, a single thing together, the past week together, and we started a new life.
Is that right? Yeah. Oh, it's so clear. Right, right. Yeah, well, catch yourself on your way. - Molly just keeps traveling. know I had back -to -back weekend trips which is pretty unusual for me. I'm back in Watertown after three days on Long Beach Island which is on the Jersey Shore. If you're like, oh like the MTV show? Yes and no it is the Jersey Shore but that took place in an area called Seaside Heights. This is a town called Beach Haven and I was reuniting with my best girls.
From camp, I think we've discussed this a few times, Jewish sleepaway camp is like a very big deal in the Jewish culture. These gals and I have been friends for a really, really long time and it was so fun to get together. I also want to say that there were a couple of amazing food places that we went to.
So if you are a listener who lives in the Tri -State area and Jersey Shore is part of your deal, you need to go to the local in Beach Haven, which had one of the best sandwich cookies I've ever had, like whoopee pie style. two edible cookies with salted caramel in the middle, homemade hot charts, and three flavors. a cinnamon -sized human head, and, in three, I had the first mozzarella sandwich. I had four different sandwiches that I liked.
You also have to go to Tucker's Tatter, which is at a box scale. I don't know. I kept wanting to call it like the 99, but if the 99 were nice. And they all wear shirts that say shut up and drink. On the back? I agree with that. And this is not a food, there's an amazing home decor. I highly recommend it. I purchased several items. I wanted to purchase more than I normally would have. I decided to rein it in since the other girls weren't on in as big a shopping mood as me. So it was great.
I felt like I was away for a whole week and then I came back to Watertown and it was like sunny and gorgeous. did happen. I had a little bit of a reunion of sorts because my friend Tessa, who listens to the podcast, was visiting from Oakland, California, and she stayed with me for a night.
And she said to... with two of my other really good friends and so a bunch of us there were like six girls and we went to the Red Sox game on Sunday which was really fun they won the Red Sox hit three separate home runs it was sunny and 60 I got a seats in the grandstands which is covered so nobody got a sunburn we went to the bullpen beforehand which in my opinion is the best Fenway bar there is. It was a fun day, which are completely different. It's Saturday, with a lot of other crap.
open house day in which I went and saw more homes with caving in roofs, rude neighbors saying, get off my lawn. Um, there, I saw a furnace that my realtor was like, this is older than you are. Um, you know, just the works and these are all like homes that are like, you know, to $800 ,000. and they have multiple rooms that need to be gutted or like major structural issues. And I'm a one woman show and I will not be tangling with any of that.
There was one house we didn't even go in because the roof line and the the Eve that were like over the front door were separating from the house. And we could see the foundation like parts of it had crumbled onto the lawn. and we were like, what do we want? it. And we just didn't even go in. It's like, I'm just laughing about it because I'm not in a rush and work I don't. It's not like I've sold my home or I can't rent where I live anymore.
Like I'm in a good spot, but boy is the comical spending these Saturdays going to these trash holes that are then going to sell in like 48 hours because people are desperate. So I was very glad that I had a Sunday fun day because Saturday was like, a whole year. This is for my third Saturday in a while. And so that was good. And what else did I have? Parent teacher conferences.
I got really, I got everyone really jazzed up today and not about Taylor Swift stuff, but because Kit Conner from Heartstopper and Rachel Ziegler from West Side Story and also from the Ballad of the Songbird, whatever that is from Hunger Games. Snake's Valley, something like that. It was really interesting for me to come and for a while, you know, to see if I could... we're all talking about it, and we're gonna find out. in full on work. If I can't find the most time, I never want to.
This is really one thing to do. I've got Boston Calling coming up, I've got Newport Folkfest coming up, I have tickets to Noah Khan. I wanna throw this Kit Kahn or Rachel Ziegler play onto my schedule, Steph. tell us about that. First, I want to show you guys the sample. dog Scout. We had a wonderful dog sitting weekend together. He's always a hoot. But... my first morning started on a farm in the prairie. I was just new at it because you know, April, you know, so I should have been clean.
I had one at the course. from the hospital in September. So I was in the hospital, I felt like my life was again. a bicycle. I just want to say, first of all, you guys know that I cried everything. The first... she's a tiny little four -year -old she is She got on Willie and she's going to score from time to time. I'm not sure who I think. I mean, obviously, if the child can't speak and she got onto a horse and felt joy, I also would cry.
the therapist and her volunteer did not warn me that I would be singing the whole entire session. So when we were getting with the pony, luckily facing forward, no one could see that I had a more emotional breakdown, and we were singing like made up songs to her the entire way around the ring. I think we went like five times around the ring. I was going to say, if they were singing... little light of mine, I would have fallen apart.
everyone get immediate tickets to heaven like what happened like I feel like that's a Hallmark movie and Everyone's spending their time bringing this girl joy should get like to cut the line or something mother and her, I guess, maybe aide, who is like a full -time person who clearly adores the crap out of this little girl, were taking video and photos the entire time at like the entrance to the ring.
It was just, I mean, it was raining and gross and no one cared because she was like living her best life. Unfortunately, because I'm like the horse handler, I don't get to see the actual physical therapy that's happening on horseback behind me. Maybe I'll try and get sneak peeks, you know. Lily is behaving, but it just, I walked out of there like so early and it was like full of light. It was wonderful. you become besties with her aide, the aide will text you the videos.
Yeah. hope one of them has like a really hot aid and then this is like your meet cue. You should see Molly's face right now. I mean that's pretty good, right? But I but I'd prefer my idea where yeah the meet cue. Yes. Yes. Well, there will eventually be three people, one right after another, but the middle person or child is not here until I think June. But the second person who ended up being later in the morning is blind and he's a little verbal, but not really.
And he's blind, he writes backwards. And he is just in his own world. He also, I mean, he wasn't like screeching with happiness, but he was clearly enjoying that out of himself. It was just... I walked out of there and being like, this was amazing. Can't wait till next Thursday. I love that you're doing this.
We need reminders, I think, that like, just to get out of our own way and like out of the day to day like grind of garbage and just like, I know for me, like teaching does that to some extent, but there's just like, you know, I'll be at work and somebody will be like, I can't believe you fit me in. That was so nice that you called and like you're you actually use your cancellation list and like blah, blah, blah. And it's just like every once in a while, like somebody makes you stop.
And like that is like a really big time stop the music moment of like, OK, there are other things going on out here. And like, it's not all bad in gloom and doom. Okay, so I have a question. I can't promise this is going to happen every single week, but this just came to me. So I'm going to ask you guys, okay, what is the one thing that you read it in a book and you're immediately like, I'm out? It can be anything. It can be like grammatical issues or a character says something.
What is the thing? And I'll let you guys think for a second for me. how did you finish Dun and Dust it that's in there. Just saying. Oh, geez. Well, mine's incest. Mine's incest. I'm out on incest. Oh, my God, VC Andrews. You never read any of those? Oh, no, I read that as a child. I will say I did watch The Fosters for a long time. And I don't count that because Callie and Brandon were not actually related and she got adopted into his family as a teenager.
So that was like a little bit of a mom to my parents and I would have taken them off and take them on as children though because she was like this one and she was about to lose her family. But yeah, it was just one that like I don't tango with. I guess I should say... I guess I don't know the correct, like, in this review, like, somebody's name for you is like a, it's like a - dad and a daughter or an uncle and a daughter or whatever, like that is like a different story.
But if it's like, incest and like the people are choosing to be together even though they're related and it's not allowed not on board with that and i will stop reading mine is more of a formatting thing, which is that I cannot stand when there are not quotation marks around dialogue. That is just like sends me I can't keep track of who's talking when it's internal when it's not like no just absolute no. I also just think back to the romance genre when someone uses the word folds.
I'm just like, can we not? I just really feel that as a descriptor that should not be allowed. I yeah, I'm can get behind that. I don't know that I've bred enough romance to come across folds, but it's in there a lot. Oh, I don't know. So you can't read Sally Rooney books then. She doesn't use a quotation. She barely does paragraph breaks for when somebody else is talking.
other issue for me, which is maybe not a writer issue, but an editor issue, is if I see tense change and I know it should not have changed, not going to say a book that I read recently that happened in, that for me is like, and listen, I do spelling errors all the time in life, in writing, but that is something that an editor should catch. and on a related note, the tense change.
If there's jumping back and forth in time, and it becomes too impossible to keep track of which part of the story we are in, I give up. All right, well I keep thinking of questions to try and help some below that. Also, before we get into our book pack for today.
you are listening to this hopefully on Thursday, April 25, which means we are just two days away from Indie Bookstore Day, which if you've been listening to us since the beginning, or this is your first time listening, we are very big independent bookstore people. We prefer to shop like that all the time. We'll be since times our next funds in November. We mostly try to patronize independent bookstores. So we hope that you will support whatever stores are near you this weekend.
We will certainly be sharing all the fun stuff that we're doing and how we're solving it. So keep a close eye on our Instagram because we will share some more stuff. But with that, today we are talking about actress and activist Kerry Washington's memoir, Thicker Than Water. I did not intend originally to read this book. Kerry did a huge press work in advance of this. She was on the RGR expert with Jack Shepard, she was on We Can Do Hard Things with Brian Doyle.
I listened to both of those episodes in full and it was those conversations that made me go, whoa, like I have to know everything about this situation. Then my mom went to Carrie's appearance at the Miami Book Fair in November, which is run by Books and Books, my favorite independent bookstore in Miami. and she brought her book at the event, so that was like part of, including with the ticket I guess.
She read it very quickly and said, you should definitely read this and maybe it will be good enough for the podcast. So I traveled home with it from next thing weekend. And as I was reading it, I was like, so much of this is like not about everything that I heard in these podcast interviews. I really thought it was going to be about this big reveal about her family's lineage. And I would say like, 80 % of the book is actually not about that.
And I felt like it left around in time in terms of her life as a young girl. getting into the Hollywood scene, meeting her husband, settling in LA. There is like a very big reveal at the end of this book, and I felt like it took an eon to get there. And then I didn't feel like there was the kind of payoff or epiphany that I wanted.
on the - pluses, I would say if you're a fan of Scandal, there's so much good behind the scenes stuff about how she got that role of being the middle woman on the college year, how that changed her life. how she became a producer. Twitter parties, yes, all of the things that were part of being part of ABC's TGIT. So there is a lot of cool behind the scenes stuff if you're like a celeb memoir person and you like that.
But the things that reeled me in... these podcast conversations turn out to be kind of not. So I, when Molly's mom gave her this book, Molly said, oh, this is Karen Washington's memoir, and she finds out about Blake, dotted up about Blake in her family, and this is what it's about. And Molly had been writing it. And so I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And so that didn't worry me more about it, it got passed to Seth, it got passed to me, I wrote it this week.
And I agree with Molly, the majority of the book is Molly's book. that reveal. And I feel like it's like preparing to have a free of talk about something in the first five pages, and then finally feeling like I'm flying above the edges. But I really feel like it was, because all of it, and sure, all of it, but the second one was the podcast. So this was like out in the universe what the appeal was.
And so I'm looking at the book and I'm like when is the book going to be about this traumatic thing that happened? in our family, is it real? And that's really not what the book was about. And I also have to say, and I just really like your thoughts, and I watch the end of Forever, and I've lived a lot of different things. But this book came off. as so prissy and like eat, pray, love that I like wanted to throw it out the window. Like I really did not like this book.
Like, it's like, oh my god, it's really hard to understand this one thing. It's always like, what is this? What is happening? What is this? Oh my god. had a truck with a lot of film. It's like, there's just so many things we're not able to do. This is gonna be what should exist. And like, you know. talking about her past and like, you know, whatever she grew up with dealing with and whatever.
And... it's not that nothing happened to her, and it's not that a number of people are always bad stuff, but she really seriously needs, and then doesn't even really dig into it at all. And so I just felt like there was no there wasn't really a good arc, like whoever her editor was, like, you know, the conflict like the major conflict in a story should happen like between the like mid to late part of the book, and then you have a resolution and it's like, that didn't really happen.
And it was almost like she decided to change her book. It was just like a time -packed life. I was like, this is a time -packed nightmare. This is a tie. It didn't work. It just didn't work for me. It fell totally flat. I was 60 pages in and was like, man, I got to finish this. Like, sorry, Carrie, I thought it stunk.
For me, coming off of the Minka Kelly memoir, all I could think is like, her mom must have died because Minka's whole thing was she wasn't gonna write this until her mother was no longer. And I kept saying, oh, this is where headed. Like, clearly she's not writing this with her mother still alive. Spoiler alert, her mother's still alive, which I think is such an interesting thing.
I can't even imagine what sort of conversations went on behind the scenes to be like, I'm going to talk about all this in a very public way. Did her mother approve that or did she just say like, I'm telling it and. the other thing is I keep thinking about it, I think it's more about it. thinks I'm not a traumatic paladin. Are you? Yeah. lighthearted thing we did learn is that she went to this Richie Rich private school as Caitlin said.
Her first ever performance was alongside Gwyneth Paltrow in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which we have discussed A Midsummer Night's Dream many times. Caitlin teaches it. It's come up in a lot of other conversations. I was like, what a like little Easter egg in here.
there and there were some moments like that but I just the narrative it just didn't build it didn't resolve it didn't and I know this is gonna sound like her mom and dad like were definitely like major characters throughout the book but they really were side characters like she was the star of that show for the whole book like there wasn't a lot of I feel like others who I've had largely never had to know the siblings more, or the cousins more, or the best friend, or somebody.
And just never really happened in this book. I also think sometimes the reading can be bad. the content is good. For example, we already talked about the Britney Spears memoir. You really could hear her voice in the writing. Was it great? No. Was it full of content we wanted to know more about? Yes. So this was a case where it was like, the setup, the arc as Caitlin said, was not great.
They buried the lead and I think a different editor may have pushed her more to be like, we gotta like reorganize this. And I rarely like to think this about celeb memoirs but when I got to the end of this I was like, god this is just really a case of like a famous person who got a book deal. It just like, it didn't feel like, I don't want to say that she deserved this platform, but it wasn't. I don't know, just as like moving as some other ones.
And I think when we talked about Minka, we were all really impressed with her vulnerability and how much she shared about her life. And there were so many things that must've been just like incredibly hard to relive. This did feel like a star studded version of sharing the hard things that have happened to you. And it didn't. I don't know, it just didn't leave you either feeling inspired or feeling motivated or feeling even feeling sad for her.
It just sort of lands on like a meh, which was disappointing because those podcast interviews were so compelling. And I think she's a great public speaker. For those who don't know, she's a huge activist. She encourages people to register to vote. She's always on the campaign trail. She's a compelling human being. It didn't translate on the page. I think... touched on a bunch of subjects that I just wish she had spent more time with, like the eating disorder.
It felt like a sort of passing comment. I wanted to like know more about her thoughts and like a little bit more on like the healing of like accepting I have this issue and how she's continued forward. says that by the time she goes to India, she's been on like a two year therapy journey of dealing with pre -informed and inaction and other things. And that's like basically all these are really referenced and then it's just like, yeah, I don't know.
And it's like, oh, but that's the part that we want to know about because other people... have those struggles. And you're just passing it over to get to like the next part in your timeline. And it just didn't, nothing got flushed out. It just was really bizarre. and even back to the abuse that was happening in her childhood, like horrible, absolutely horrible, which was why I was thinking, Jesus, I don't know what to do with your housing.
I'm going to think about it as an adult, talking to your parents. about this thing that happened and like coming to terms with it and how that affected the relationship to the other, for not living in it. I just needed to move on, I just wanted a deep understanding. reflection on each of the like tough topics. I have a question for Mara. I'm wondering if her editor was like, who could be helping her out? this or more about this or more about that?
And she was like, no. Like, I wonder if like she pushed back and was like, I can't talk more about like, I'm not there yet, or whatever. But that being said, there's a fewer money for this project. Like, those are the things that really. I think it's helpful to other people, and I guess it should help for this conference to be there. But, like, it just. it didn't... it didn't work. I don't really know how to explain it right now.
And I like her and I wanted to look at her but I just can't... I just can't have any of this hate right now. I don't know if you guys were ready enough. book. Like, I was in a home, I was due, I have to go down to the vet, go 80 pounds of pasta and milk, and I told him, go with the plan. meditate. I'm like, nobody else gets this divorce tour. I just was pissed reading that book. I was like, this book is ridiculous.
There were moments that I had reading this Kerry Washington book where I was like, you're being ridiculous. Like, this just makes me feel like, shoot this power drill. Let's sit with that for like, 30 more days. I'm gonna go and look at that. You know? I think what we're all saying is that this book did not have a good editor is really like what it comes down to. Okay, Steph shows me to like, don't associate that with me face. I'm saying this book didn't have a good editor.
You can quote it to me. As you know, I always read the acknowledgments. The first line of the acknowledgments is thank you to Shonda Rhimes, who told me to write this book 10 years ago. Shonda's always right. If you haven't read her book, you're a VS. What are you doing? For people who don't want to know what the big reveal is in this Kerry Washington book, just seek ahead about 60 seconds because I'm going to recommend a book that actually does this well. So seek ahead right now.
The reveal in this book is that Kerry Washington is a different biological father. If you want to read a book by someone who actually shared all of the thoughts of what unpacking that really is, you should read Inheritance by Donnie Shapiro. which is a memoir. about a Jewish woman who finds out she has a different biological dad who is not Jewish. And it just like unravels her entire existence. It's done beautifully. I will share every resource I have about that book.
If you're interested in it, you can email us, you can DM us on Instagram. There are great podcast interviews with her also. So if you like that as a premise, that's actually what you should read. Is that an astonishing reveal to her because then she's half Jewish or she's not Jewish at all? Then she's Jewish, but the person who raised her, who she thought was her dad, was Orthodox. Okay. Okay. Got it. I don't know that book, but now I'm curious about it. Do you own it, Molly? I think I do.
Okay. All right. Maybe we should pass that one around. Um, what's everybody reading right now? So, I was staying in Molly's house taking care of Scout, I brought two books with me and then in the guest room I perused the TBR pile. Most of those books are actually mine or they're yours, Caitlin, that I then read and then passed along. And on the top was the book, The Cheat Sheet by Sarah Adams. So... Listener, I did not read the two books that I packed.
Instead, I picked up this book and read it over the weekend. this book, I want to say first of all, it's a closed -door romance, so there is no sauce, just as a preface. That being said, it is... on the claim to be on a fancy amount of money and those are the ones that I'll continue to sit on. How old are the people in this book? That's lame then. In my opinion. in my mental state, I just really needed like a nice warm hug. And that's what this book is. It is. term, so I'm sorry.
I know you've been thinking about this a lot, but I just want to say, I'm just like, this is why I go to college. I go to college, and I know I'm going to college. I'm... these songs because I really - so there are two songs. There's Friends to Wothers and You're a Fake David. And this middle fake David is my favorite song. This book is like, I don't know if it's everyone's dream, but it - a girl whose best friend since high school is an NFL quarterback.
He's like the most decent human in the world. He adores her. And she has watched him date like model to model forever and just been the friend of them. And he is starting to get closer to making it into the Super Bowl. And a snap -file happens where Ty basically comes to Madeline and is like, we want J .J. to march home because they think they're dating. She gets on with it. says some things.
Anyways, his PR people are like, we need you to pretend to be dating at least until the Super Bowl when the commercial works. will air. And then it turns out that they've secretly been from one of each other since high school. So the cheat sheet by Sarah Adams, Sarah Adams, okay, that sounds really delightful. That is the word I was going to use. reading the daddy diaries by Andy Cohen who is the head of all things Bravo TV.
I was saying to Steph earlier today, we don't really talk about Bravo that much on this podcast, but he is the most famous part of my life. And Andy has several books. This is the fourth one, actually. And it's a diary style. And... love reading them because you hear about all his famous friends, you hear about his home renovations, you hear about all his hobnobbing. It's just delightful.
But this book is specifically about him going from having a son Ben to having two kids when his daughter Lucy kind of enters the world. And this book is about the CRI girl. And he really talks about shifting his life to make space for these two little people in a much bigger way. Can we ask the question that someone just wanted to ask? Yeah, of course. Is he a single father or is he a mother? He's a single father. Both of these kids came into the world through surrogate.
He was a huge advocate for more open laws around surrogacy in the state of New York. And he talks about everything. He talks about like going to the hospital for the birth, about all the wonderful things he learned about his surrogate and her family. He's very open about all the help he has, which I was very curious about. He has one man for each kid. And he travels a ton, so like, it makes sense that he would have extra help.
It's just mind -blowing, the people that he's very close friends with. Like, in his neighborhood, he almost weekly sees Sarah Jessica Parker, Amy Sedaris, everyone knows he's best friends with Anderson Cooper. He's also friends with the Falons. He's her most buffest. I mean, it's ridiculous. Like, his inner circle is all A -list, with the exception of his roommate from BU, who he calls Straight Dave. That's what he's referred to in all of the books. includes a bunch of pictures.
It's just... it's like a guilty pleasure read and it's 270 pages. It's just like an easy, fun, light thing. It's like a palette cleanser in between other books. And I'll be ready to move on to something more cordial. Thank you guys. I'm reading a YA book called The Golden State and the author is someone I hadn't heard of before, Merit Weisenberg. And it is about a family on the lam. You don't know what they're on the lam from. Four. Two girls, 17 and eight or 10.
And the 17 year old can't remember. not being on the line. They'll list this for a month, three months, all of a sudden her dad is like, we have to go. It's a no questions asked situation. They pack up, they leave, they park somewhere. Her dad goes to a post office and picks up an envelope of money and new IDs and keys to a place that they're going to stay. When he gets out of the van, he says, if I'm not back in 30 minutes, leave without me.
That is their protocol and has been for her entire life. I am only like 100 pages into the book. The 17 year old is very smart. And she is getting to a point where she wants to like go to college and she wants to find out. She doesn't know anything about her parents. Honestly, she like, she's like, they can't anything I asked, they won't tell me they said it's not safe because trusting kids to lie is like, you know, you can't do it.
And they've just landed in California and it seems to her that her mom is acting very unusually. And she's like, I think we're finally in a place that's familiar to her. And she's like crawling out of her skin and doesn't know what to do. And she overhears her parents say something along the lines of, well, Poppy can't go out because she looks too much like you. And so the reader has no idea.
I, the reader, have I have no idea, but also the main character also has no idea and she's trying to figure it out. And anything that she does that makes her seem special or gets her any like positive attention in her life is like a bad thing. And if her parents find out about it, then they just like pick up and leave. So like within the first 10 pages of the book, she's doing this science project, and it's like two great hands in a grade, and they're like, one hand at the one stage.
This is gonna be unbelievable on her parents who are like, gonna die about. And she never gets to see the project like come to fruition. And the younger sister is starting to be a little more rebellious and is like, I don't want to just blindly follow these rules. And the older sister is like, if you don't, we can get separated. And that's a whole game. There's a tagline, everything's fine. If you don't follow through with the rules, we will be separated. Do you want that to happen?
And the answer is no. But now, the conflict of honor is almost over. she's like, I'd like to know who I am. I'd like to know why we're doing this. She's starting to question, like, is it an organization that helps us move? Is it a single person that helps us move? This may be a relative that I don't know about, like. She literally loves housing. And I'm like captivated by this story. I'm so intrigued.
It's, it's well written to the point where like, even if the payoff isn't huge, watching this girl grapple with this is like so well done that I'm like very entertained. I think she's a first time author, I could be wrong. But the Golden State, I'm enjoying it. I think that sounds interesting. It's even interesting. we should do an episode about it. I'll pass it along. If it ends up being a dud, then I won't make you because we just sent Caring Washington happen.
that note, if you want to see everything that we're reading and keep up with all of our fave book memes, reader memes, give us a follow over at PlansAreBooked. We have lots of fun content going on over there every single day. You can also send us a note, plansarebooked at gmail .com. We love to hear from you. next time, our plans are booked.