The Joys of Binge Reading

Happy New Year and welcome back to Part Two of the Best of Binge Reading 2022, and the seven top shows for the year as selected by you, our listeners.

We ran the first part of the Best of Binge Reading 2022 Part 1 in the first week of January, so if you missed out on that, do check it out.

Hi, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler. The seven authors represented here, like those before them, range across the whole field of popular fiction from romance maestro Jayne Ann Krentz to Kate Quinn and her remarkable spy story – set – it in of all places – in Ukraine – during the Second World War.

We travel from from Patti Callahan’s inspirational revisiting of Narnia and the story of the love affair between CS Lewis and Joy Davidman, to a surprise nonfiction book, our first ever, but such a good story. Kate Langbroek’s Ciao Bella, her heart warming account of taking her family of six to Italy for a year.

As you’ll know if you heard Part One, the selection is based solely on the number of people who listened to the shows that ran between December 1st, 2021 and December 1st, 2022. Taking those dates allows us to compile and edit the show. In time for posting in January 23.

To give you the flavor, we include selected highlights from each show. We hope that you might discover new authors you’ve missed first time round or find books you might want to get into in 2023.

Just as our listeners hailed from all over the world so do the authors represented here so here it is, Part Two of the Best of Binge Reading 2022.

I do hope you do enjoy it, and if you do, leave us a comment or a review so others will find us too

Introducing romantic suspense author Jayne Ann Krentz

Jayne Ann Krentz is an internationally celebrated author who has sold 35 million copies of her books worldwide. But when she started out, she spent six years battering on publisher’s doors trying to find her way in. I asked her about those years.

Jenny Wheeler: And you were writing for yourself and really just for the joy of it, for that whole six years?

Jayne Ann Krentz: I wouldn’t call it the joy of it. I always say that if you’re doomed to write, you don’t have any option.

It really is a kind of an addiction. It’s a compulsion, and if you can quit writing, you will quit writing because there are enough frustrations in the business that you’re not going to fight it. Every writer I know has just kept at it. That’s how it works.

I think it’s because we can’t stop and I say that, but there does come a time for some writers when they do stop, all of a sudden.

I look back in their names that have just gone, and I have no idea where they went. I guess they just walked away. I can’t do that.

Creating a ‘Jayneverse’ for her readers

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. That’s interesting. So now you’ve created what you described at the end of one of your recent books as a Jayneverse, A universe but it’s a Jayneverse. Now that’s an interesting concept. It’s something that almost seems to have stolen up on you?

Can you explain to readers who don’t know what a Jayneverse is?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Well, I have my editor to thank for pointing it out. We were talking one day about the next book, what would the next book be like, what did I want to work with? And with so many of my books, I want to work with similar things.

I love working with the psychic vibe, and with a certain kind of hero and a certain kind of heroine. Certain kinds of plots. I don’t do gore, or serial killer plots. I do more murder mystery type plots.

And I like the romantic vibe in the books. And after a while you create a world of that.

Every writer has a ‘verse,’ I think, a metaverse and I think they spend their entire careers exploring that universe. And it’s endless. It’s as broad as your imagination.

So in some sense, every author has their own personal universe, and that’s what they write out of, that’s what they write from, and that’s what they explore.

The role of popular fiction in setting social values

And I just hadn’t thought of it that way until I had this conversation with my editor and that she’s the one that said, oh, a Jayneverse . And I said, yeah, I think that’s exactly what it is.

Jenny Wheeler: The other aspect of it is the romance. You’ve been a vocal supporter of romantic fiction ever since you began. Although in your stories probably the romance is more of a subplot element, isn’t it? It isn’t the whole focus of the story in a lot of cases.

However, you did contribute to an essay collection which seriously examined, romance writing and I wondered if you’d like to talk about how you’ve seen the romantic fiction side of things develop over the time you’ve been writing.

Jayne Ann Krentz: What I’ve come to feel over the past few years is that it wasn’t just romance that didn’t get any respect.

It was popular fiction in general. Mm-hmm. It has always been the lesser literature, if you will, and whether it be science fiction or mysteries or westerns or glitz novels or romance, the culture doesn’t give it a lot of dignity and respect, as opposed to say literary fiction.

Why does popular fiction survive and indeed thrive?

What I was trying to do in that book Dangerous Men And Adventurous Women was step back and say, this is a category of writing that has been denigrated for decades. Generations.

I mean back into 300 years of criticism. And it’s not just romance. The popular fiction in general, the gothic novels of the 19th century got the same hit.

And I think that the important thing to ask is why hasn’t it gone? Why did it survive?

You know, it’s kind of a Darwinian thing, because something that survives against all odds and against a lot of social pressure, you have to ask what’s driving it. And I think the key is to look at what it provides.

And what it does provide is it transmits a culture’s core values.

We all know what a hero or a heroine is supposed to do when the chips are. They are supposed to do the right thing. We know what a hero is supposed to do and where do we get that? We get it from our popular fiction, and I think that’s its contribution.

That’s what it does, and it transmits those core values and it reaffirms them to the community. I think that’s the real secret of why popular fiction has survived.

Romance the ‘farthest.. the stepchild..’

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, that’s interesting. I had a feeling myself when I was younger that it was partly because men were the ones that were said to write more literary fiction, and a lot of the popular fiction was written by women.

And the gatekeepers, the people who said what was great and what wasn’t, a lot of them were men as well, but it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Well, certainly I think romance fiction was the farthest, the stepchild you know… but I was in a group of writers one time a few years ago, and there were several successful writers in the group.

We were all from popular fiction. There was a science fiction writer, and a mystery writer and me and a couple of others, in variousgenres and they all whined about the same thing, which was basically, I don’t get any respect.

We all had the same. And that’s what opened my eyes to the fact this isn’t just romance, it’s popular fiction.

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[data-style="minimal"]{padding:20px;width:100%;position:relative;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-header{margin:0 0 27px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-subheader{margin:18px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee{font-size:13px;margin:10px 0 15px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee > p{margin:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-powered-by-convertkit-container{margin-bottom:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-fields{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;margin:25px auto 0 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field{min-width:220px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 0 15px 0;-webkit-flex:1 0 100%;-ms-flex:1 0 100%;flex:1 0 100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Illuminating the human condition – but not offering any solutions

It just isn’t viewed the same as literary fiction. And I think the problem is you have to look at us having two different tasks. I think literary fiction is designed to illuminate the human condition, but it does not take its task as solving the problem.

It just wants to make you see it. And so it tends to focus on things like despair and grief and depression, because those are monumental, dramatic issues for humans.

But it doesn’t try to solve those problems. But in popular fiction, you’re trying to solve them. You’re trying to overcome them long enough to do the right thing.

Where to find Jayne Ann Krentz:

Full Binge Reading Episode: https://thejoysofbingereading.com/jayne-ann-krentz-international-best-selling-mysteries/

Website: www.jayneannkrentz.com

Analysis of Romance Fiction: Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance (New Cultural Studies Series)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/835882.Dangerous_Men_and_Adventurous_Women

Introducing ‘twisty-romance’ author Karen Swan

A publishing disaster led romance author Karen Swan into the dual production schedule that’s made her an international bestseller, with two books a year, a summer one and then a wintry snowbound Christmas one that regularly both make the UK top popular fiction lists.

Right at the last minute, her publisher asked her to totally revise a book she had just handed in on deadline, because of possible conflicts with a book someone else had just published out there in the market

After a lot of tears and personal doubts, Karen says she sat down and did what she’d been asked to do, and it changed her writing life

Karen Swan: So it was incredibly hard, but I set myself a really strict deadline. I looked at the deadline they’d given me and I worked backwards and I worked out I could do it if I wrote 3000 words a day, so 15,000 words a week, which is quite a lot.

Digging herself out of disastrous hole

But I thought if I do that, then I will make the deadline and my book will be out next Christmas. And so I did it. I sat down and it was a way of breaking past the panic and the chaos and the terror and just saying, right, all I’ve got to do is the next 3000 words.

All I’ve got to do is the next 3000 words, rather than sink into the calamity of Oh my God, I have to write an entirely new book in six weeks.

And actually what it made me realize was there was so much faffing around going on in my writing process before. I’d wander around, I’d cuddle the dogs, I’d make a cup of tea, I’d go for a walk, I’d sit down, write a bit, get on the phone to a friend, thinking that the book would somehow just come together.

It doesn’t. The book comes when you stare at the screen and you force yourself to focus and to put your head in that world. Yes. And there’s no shortcuts.

It really made me focus. And I actually had ended up handing the book in a bit early. I was about a week ahead of my deadline in the end because momentum took over. And honestly, it was a much better book than the original one.

Karen Swan – ‘Victory clutched from the jaws of defeat’

It’s actually one of my favorite books now. And they said to me afterwards, You’ve actually done really quite well there.

Would you like to do two books a year going forward and. I thought, yeah, actually, because yes, it’s double the stress, but it’s also double the fun, you know, being a writer.

Writing is largely spending 99% of the time on your own in a room on your own with just the dogs for company, yes.

But you get to publication time and you get to do things like this. You get to talk to people, you get to do book tours. It’s exciting seeing how the book will do. So why wouldn’t you want to do that twice a year?

So, yeah, it was victory snatched from the jaws of defeat and disaster .

Jenny Wheeler: All of your books, whether they’re summer or Christmas, they have evocative locations, but they have complicated love stories and often have a twisting mystery underneath them that is a little bit dark, isn’t it?

Karen’s books are part romance, part mystery

So that’s obviously something that appeals to you, this slightly complicated and involved kind of plotting. They’re part romance and part mystery, aren’t they?

Karen Swan: Yes. That’s how I think of them. It’s funny when people describe me as a romance novelist, because for me the romance is always, obviously it’s secondary.

We have the story within the context of a romance, but actually, because I write two books a year, there’s only so many times I can fall in love, you know?

So for me the interest and I suppose the intellectual stimulation for me is always the plot, the story. And I’m always fairly keen that my main character saves herself in whatever situation she’s in.

She’s not a damsel in distress. She’s not waiting for love to rescue her. We love our leading man, whoever he is in any book, but the focus for me is always my leading lady resolving her own issues and finding love along the way incidentally.

I think that for me keeps it really interesting because otherwise I think you’d fall into tropes of boy meets girl and when you are writing as much as I am and I do write quite long books, my books are quite big.

So, I, need to keep the interest level up. That has to be more than just their eyes met across a crowded room.

Where to find Karen Swan

Binge Reading Episode Twisty Holiday Romance: https://thejoysofbingereading.com/karen-swan-twisty-holiday-romance

Website: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/karen-swan/6006

Introducing Kate Langbroek, author of a joyous family memoir

Kate Langbroek’s joyous, brave book Ciao Bella, about taking her family of six to Italy for the year, offered a perfect start to 2021 because it’s such an optimistic can-do tale of overcoming challenge, including ending up home schooling a family of students and belonging, in Bologna during lockdown.

It was a departure for Binge Reading, because it was the first nonfiction book we’ve ever had on the podcast. The fact that it’s made the Best of the Year shows listeners loved Kate’s story

Jenny Wheeler: So before we even get into the book, because quite a few of our listeners won’t be aware of your work in Australia, you are a national star in your own land in Melbourne, but for those who aren’t quite so familiar about your background and where you were actually placed when you started thinking about doing this adventure tell us a bit about your work.

Kate Langbroek: So I’ve worked broadly in showbiz for over 20 years. A little bit of television, a little bit of writing, you know, columns for newspapers and panel shows or improv shows and comedically based stuff mainly.

But the main bulk of my work has been on the radio. I did 12 years of radio, Melbourne breakfast radio on Nova here in Melbourne, and then had a year off.

Moving to Italy with the family – and keeping up the radio show

I regrouped with my on-air partner Hughesy and then we went to do Drive which is in the afternoon, 4 till 6.

I was doing that show, which is a national show, it’s right around Australia, it was a great show and I very much enjoyed it and when I decided I was going to Italy, of course one of my first conversations was with Hughesy who I’ve been on air with for 18 years, to say, I’m going to do this thing. He was my first person I had to talk to, and it wasn’t happy, Jenny.

Because he’s also a workaholic, he’s like, What! Why would you? What! Of course, I wanted to stop working, but his idea then, and my boss’s, was that I do the show from Italy for the first six months we were there, which was unheard of in 2019. We didn’t even have Zoom then.

That’s what I ended up doing, and it ended up being brilliant. Obviously I so focused on what I was trying to do with my family, four children and my husband, six of us, that I didn’t really think about the impact it would have on the broader world and people we knew and listeners to my show and people who had followed my career.

That it would also be of interest to them had not occurred to me. I hadn’t had time to think about that because when I decided to stop working, I was like, I’m happy to turn my back on that. I have to be prepared to walk away. I said to Hughsey, I’m not going to prison. I’m not asking you to wait for me.

Italian adventure a springboard to the book

And yet it ended up being another avenue for communicating with our listeners. The adventure I got to share with them was the springboard for Ciao Bella: Six Take Italy the book – realizing when I was telling Hughsey and our listeners what was happening with me every day, how interesting that was on a broader scale beyond me.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. That was interesting because as somebody who’s been a journalist pretty well all my life, I was impressed by the detail you got in. Some of those meals, it was wonderful the meals you described, but you had to have been making notes in the restaurant at the time that you were eating the food, I thought.

I wondered if you’d known you were going to be doing a book right from the beginning, because it came across as if you’d been very conscientious about taking notes.

Kate Langbroek: My husband asked me about that the other day. I explained to him that it was actually the other way round. The stories I wrote in my book, I wrote because I had such vivid recall of them because they were so significant. It was more that I felt so connected to those stories.

Jenny Wheeler: You didn’t choose an obvious draw card place to stay, none of the ones that first come to mind. You decided to go to Bologna. That became a perfect fit for you as the book progresses but tell us how you decided on that.

Searching for the perfect place for a family GAP year

Kate Langbroek: We knew we wanted to be in the north of the country. Bear in mind, Jenny, that we had only been in Italy twice before and on holidays. The first time we went was in 2015, maybe it was 2014, but it wasn’t a lifetime love affair with Italy. We didn’t know the country well.

We didn’t speak the language. We didn’t know anybody, we just loved what we’d seen on those holidays and who doesn’t love what they see on holidays.

In 2018 we went to have a recce. We knew we wanted to live in the north of the country. Down southeast, Sicily or Calabria or whatever, it’s a bit more gnarly, so we wanted to be up north. We knew we needed an international school for the kids so we were led by that.

We did go to Florence, but too touristy. Not at the moment, obviously. Now is the perfect time to go to Florence, by the way. I said to Peter, they’re sick of us and we haven’t even arrived, because they had this onslaught of visitors.

We crossed Florence off the list, then we went to Verona, which a BuzzFeed quiz told us was our perfect Italian city. BuzzFeed was wrong because at the international school they were was so breathtakingly rude. Astoundingly rude. Very un-Italian, to us.

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Best of Binge Reading 2022 Part II