It felt like a full circle moment to be like, oh my God, these are the conversations I was always trying to, like, ear hustle on.

And now they are not quite the same as the conversations that I have with my friends, but some aspects of them still feel true in ways.

You're listening to Books We've Load from NPR.

The Book Show where we reread old favorites and tell you why they still matter today.

I'm Andrew Limbaugh. And I'm B.A. Parker. Parker, we did it. We did it. We did it. We did it, Joe.

We've arrived. We arrived at the end. We lead it to the end of the season. Can you stand it?

I haven't read this much since like college. I'm like, it's like, oh, well,

let me, we did a full course load. Yeah. This has been so fun, Andrew. Yeah, yeah. And in, in a lot of

ways, the book we're about to talk about today is a culmination of a lot of the stuff we've been

talking about, which I mean, yeah, which we'll get to in a bit.

But first, I want to introduce our guest with us. We've got it's been a minute host, Brittany, Lou. Brittany, what's up? How you doing? I'm happy to be here today. I'm excited about this conversation. All right, we won't tease it anymore. the book we are going to be talking about today

is that Terry McMillan's

waiting to exhale.

Woo!

I'm starting doing the applause.

Okay. anymore. The book we are going to be talking about today is that Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale. I'm doing the applause. Sheep, sheep, sheep, they do. It's a pretty big book. It's a pretty, it's a pretty icon. I don't want to overuse the word iconic, but I think it's fair here. Totally fair. In my house, it's iconic. Yeah, I was like, all right, before we get

to that, I'm just going to do a quick synopsis for anybody who hasn't read it. This book follows

four friends. We got Savannah, Bernardine, Robin, Gloria. They're all in their mid-30s. They're all

a mess in some way, and they're all, like, looking for love. Each of them have their ups and downs with men, which, for listeners out there, just a heads-out, we will be talking about sex in this conversation. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that what's at the core of this book is the friendship between the four of them. I think that's a fair enough to start. That's a fair enough place to start.

Parker, you said you grew up with this book?

Yes, it was the cover that you have, the old school paperback with the highlighter

business suits with the fancy hats.

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