Before we get started on this week's episode, I wanted to give two small disclaimers.

The first is that Chris is still out of town, which means you won't hear him on this week's episode,

but never fear. He will be back next week, which means not only will you once again hear his beautiful voice,

but these episodes will finally be properly edited. So we are all looking forward

to Chris's return. The second disclaimer is that this week's episode is a love it or loathed episode,

where we kind of chat in a book club style format about one particular book. I wanted to just give a little note, which is that

we discovered while recording this episode, literary fiction does not necessarily lend itself

to the love it or loathe it format. It was really difficult. The first half of this discussion

in particular was really difficult. But if you will be patient with us, the second half of the episode where we were able to talk

including spoilers, the spoiler-filled discussion, I think was a lot better.

So if you'll just bear with us through that first kind of first 10, 15 minutes of the

episode where we're kind of getting our footing.

And we're also

going to be trying to do more, our next love it or loat that book is going to be a memoir.

And so our hope is that we can have more strong feelings about that book one way or the other. I think this particular title,

because it's literary fiction, was just hard to really have these strong feelings about one way

or the other. So you may notice some of that in the episode, but I just wanted to let you know that

A, we're going to be choosing kind of a different genre for our next love it or loat

and B, if you'll bear with us during that spoiler-free discussion, this book was really

hard to discuss without spoilers.

So once you enter the spoiler-filled discussion, I think you'll kind of understand more

where we were coming from on how we loved or loathed this particular book.

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