Hi everybody. Welcome to the librarian is in the New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next. I'm Gwen.

And I'm Frank. And I thought I would start off this episode with a book

confession. Are you ready? Um, what do you say? No, I'm not ready. You're not ready. Okay.

It's very serious. It's very serious. And the serious thing that I have to say is that I can't get

into the new Margaret Atwood book. Oh, okay. Did you think that's where I was going? No. I thought it was going to be very general. No, it's very specific. I don't know what's wrong with me. I love Margaret Atwood. I loved The Handmaid's Tale. Her new book, The Testaments, is about, it's like a sequel to The Handmaid handmade's tale how far into it have you got i've gotten

like 50 pages 60 pages i've read like four books in between my reading of that book i don't know

what's wrong i think it's a great book i think that it you know it for the National Book Award. It's really doing very well. I'm totally interested in it. Every time I pick it up, I'm like, okay, okay, I'm here, I'm here. And then I just like never pick it up. I don't know. I feel like I'm ill or something. Or the time before, because last time was the overdue guys. But I said about Harry Potter. Like, I'm into it. I'm fine. That I put it down, but I just don't go back. Right. I love Margaret Atwood. We're basically slamming two major institutions of the literary world. I don't get it. I don't know what's going on. I want to know what happened. I found

myself thinking like, I want to read the Wikipedia entry so that I know what happens, but I don't want to read the book.

And I did, I did review. I was just reading, I was looking at the physical copy of Kirkus recently, which was very satisfying.

And it called the book overstuffed. And that adjective

kind of stuck with me because it is overstuffed. There's too much stuff in it. But I don't know.

I don't know if it's just not grabbing me or if I should keep going. What should I do? You just edged

closer to probably why. But you know what?

You know why.

You know why you don't want to read it in your brain, but you're not saying it.

Really? Or you're not allowing it to surface because you feel guilty or you feel like you said it.

You just broach this as a confession.

So you know, you just thought about it for a couple of minutes. I think you know why. I mean, you just broached this as a confession so you know i just thought about it for a couple

of minutes i think you know why i mean you just sort of edged into maybe why if it's over stuff

something's bothering you about it and what you know why though what is it come on come on frank as

therapist uh i don't know.

It's switching perspectives a lot, but I like that.

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