WSIRN Episode 218: a WSIRN Marriage Story Hosted by Anne Bogel, with Guest Anna Mitler
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WSIRN Episode 218: A WSIRN Marriage Story Hosted by Anne Bogel, with guest Anna Mitler [00:00:00] ANNA: Their friends were amazed at, like, this four-year-old can read. But then they would look closely, and like the book is upside down. [BOTH LAUGH] [CHEERFUL INTRO MUSIC] ANNE: Hey readers. I’m Anne Bogel, and this is What Should I Read Next? Episode 218. Welcome to the show that’s dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader: What should I read next? We don’t get bossy on this show: What we WILL do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we’ll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest. Readers, it’s always fun to read through the guest applications you all send in at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest. You fill our inbox with stories, goals, hilarity, and so much heart. One particularly memorable application didn’t come from today’s guest Anna Mitler — it came from one of her best friends, Charlotta, asking if we could make What Should I Read Next a part of Anna’s upcoming wedding. I don’t want to spoil the story before Anna has a chance to tell it herself, so I’ll just say that it took a full year to stitch the pieces together and get this episode to your ears, and I hope you love Anna’s story as much as we loved making it happen. Let’s get to it! Anna, welcome to the show. ANNA: Thank you for having me. ANNE: Oh, it is my pleasure. And it's a funny thing because of your history with the podcast that has not been on air, I feel like we've talked before. But we haven't actually talked before. 1 [00:01:29] ANNA: Yeah, it feels like we're old friends, even though I kinda feel like it's one-sided 'cause I feel like I know so much about you than you know about me, but... [LAUGHS] ANNE: It feels like it just happened, but it's actually close to a year ago. Your friend Charlotta sent in the sweetest guest application on your behalf, and it just made everyone here at What Should I Read Next headquarters go "Aww." And actually, we have a clip from Charlotta reading her email. Here it is. CHARLOTTA: Hi, Anne. My good friend Anna is getting married in Helsinki, Finland this summer. Anna is your super fan. She never misses a podcast or an Instagram live feed. She has gotten several members of our book club hooked as well. We're throwing her a surprise bachelorette party weekend in a forest retreat in May. During this bachelorette weekend, we'll have a book club meeting and would like to pick a book that is about marriage as a right of passage. It would mean the world to her to get book recommendations on marriage from you. Could you recommend a book for us to read in this surprise book club in May? ANNE: So, our producer Brenna immediately messaged me when she got this message and said, "Hey, the bachelorette party idea is so cute and, obviously, we have to do it. But what if we did more?" So I recorded a voice message recommending two books for you, one to read before the wedding, and one that would be a great vacation read on your honeymoon, and we sent it over to Charlotta with the promise that after all the wedding hustle and bustle was over, and you were back from your honeymoon, you would come on What Should I Read Next and tell me what you thought about the books. And here you are. I'd love to hear about how all this unfolded from your point of view. ANNA: I don't know where to start because I wasn't aware until, you know, that request [ANNE LAUGHS] until ... Yeah, late, late May. Yeah, I was completely unaware. My … I guess my history with the podcast is I've been a huge fan. I discovered it maybe two years ago now, and I believe I was the first among my friends because I started telling everybody about it. And Charlotta is in a book club, in my book club that I established with some friends. I constantly talked to them about the podcast. And then I feel like because I started listening to your podcast and I signed to your newsletter and then I joined your book club and then I went to book school, and then I started book journaling [LAUGHS] and I felt like I was getting more and more involved in the community and I did tell my friends about every step of the way. So I think that's how Charlotta knew about you. ANNE: It says something about a person if what you want at your bachelorette weekend is book recommendations. We just love that about you and your friends. We thought we'd just like fit right in together. [00:04:09] 2 ANNA: Yeah. [LAUGHS] ANNE: So, of course I want to know more about the book club bachelorette. Tell me what it was like. ANNA: I have to start a little bit before the bachelorette weekend because sometime in the spring, my boyfriend, future-husband at the time suggested that we should read a book together, which when we started dating, we read two books together, and then I told him, okay, you can pick whatever you want. You're more picky with books than I am. And so he picked this book which is a nonfiction by I think she's a psychologist, or at least a couple counselor, Hold Me Tight. ANNE: I don't know this one. ANNA: I was so impressed by him because it's basically, it's about attachment theory in relationships, and the whole book is about her like sharing this theory, but basically how it can help couples overcome conflict. And in each chapter, she talks to couples who are on the verge of breaking up, and she applies the theory and shows how you can use it to overcome conflict and sustain connection in long term. And I was so impressed that, you know, he picked this book. I was like oh my god, you're taking this upcoming marriage so seriously. [ANNE LAUGHS] I did tell my friends about it, too. I was so smug about it. I was like oh, my god, can you imagine? ANNE: What did they say? ANNA: You know, they weren't as impressed as I was hoping they would be. They were just like oh, that's great. [LAUGHS] And then at my bachelorette weekend, which by the way, I don't know if this is a tradition in other countries, but in Finland, the whole weekend is a total surprise to you. You don't know when it happens, and you don't know what you're going to do at all. ANNE: Wait, this isn't you and your friends? This is the standard way it's done? ANNA: Yeah. ANNE: Oh. I wouldn't say that's the norm [ANNA LAUGHS] where I live in the United States. ANNA: Okay. ANNE: But that's really fun. [00:05:58] 3 ANNA: It's also terrified. It makes you not trust your friends. [ANNE LAUGHS] You know, my spring was so filled with all kinds of plans, and I didn't know which ones were fake, and which ones were not. [ANNE LAUGHS] The wedding was not until the end of July, so there was a lot of time for me to think okay, when is it happening? [LAUGHS] And I was so sure that I would just know when it would happen because it's not so easy to trick me, but they successfully tricked me. ANNE: So what did they do? ANNA: They made multiple fake plans. My friends from work, they convinced me that we were having an after work on Friday and another friend convinced me that she celebrated her birthday on Saturday, and she created a Facebook event, and invited friends there, which is why I believed it was a true plan, because it was like no one's going to create a fake Facebook event, and people were attending, and people were messaging her like plans for that Saturday. [ANNE LAUGHS] I made a handmade gift for her because I was so looking forward to see this friend because I don't see her very often. So I was very excited for her birthday, which well, turned out, she just like, she told all of her friends that this is a fake plan, and they just played along. [ANNE LAUGHS] So at the bachelorette weekend, Charlotta actually put together a list of cocktail recipes that had book pairings with them. That book was called Modern Mrs. Middler's Cocktail Book. ANNE: [LAUGHS] I love it. ANNA: Which retrospectively, should have given me some hints, but I was just like oh, you know I like the podcast, so it's a riff from that, that's really nice. So we made some cocktails and we sat down and my friends were like, oh, you know, we're going to have a book club now. I was so surprised. I was like, what do you mean? Did we all read the same book? And they were like yup! Which one? And of course it was Hold Me Tight.