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00:00:54.000Hey, y'all. Joe here and you're listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:57.480I think a lot about the stories that we tell, about the ways we build culture and history, and who gets to tell their stories, but even more importantly, who gets to gatekeep those stories.
00:01:13.300I've recently discovered a very cool new company, and I'm doing some fun work with them.
00:01:19.320It's called Quite Literally Books, and it's run by two women.
00:01:24.180They've been best friends since they were 14, which I love because I just love a long-time friendship.
00:01:31.200And the two of them recently decided to start reprinting books by American women that have been out of print for a long time.
00:01:38.440These are books that essentially have been forgotten by history for a lot of different reasons. Many were very successful in their time 100 years ago. But women and other marginalized communities have not been the gatekeepers who decide what stays in print, what goes to bookstores, what you're going to see reviewed, and what you're going to see on your shelves.
00:02:02.440So Lisa Cooper and Bramon McDougall decided that they were going to reprint these forgotten books by American women. And they're so good.
00:02:13.920I chose the book Her Land as my over-the-influence, under-the-influence December book club pick,
00:02:21.640and we're going to be talking about it on the threads on my newsletter. And I got to tell you,
00:02:26.720I really enjoyed it. I did. It's a satire, which I really like, as you all know. And it's about
00:02:33.440three hapless male explorers who, quote, discover a land entirely run by women. And they think that
00:02:41.600it's going to be a hot mess. And of course, it is just the opposite. It's kind of like the Barbie
00:02:47.960movie, but 100 years ago. It's flawed, for sure. It is not perfect. No books are. But it starts
00:02:55.840some awesome conversations. I really love what Quite Literally Books is doing. And I got to spend
00:03:02.080some time this week in New York with their founders. I want to have them on here to talk
00:03:07.240about a couple things. One, why is it important to bring these books back by women authors? Why0.97
00:03:13.040is it important to make these books a part of the conversation? But then I also want to get
00:03:18.080into the nitty gritty of starting a small business at all, which we know is so hard. And sometimes
00:03:23.480you just have to take that leap of faith that you can do it. And also starting a business with your
00:03:28.780best friend, which can sound amazing in theory. And then in practice, you might be like, what the
00:03:36.120hell did we do? So here's Lisa in Vermont. All right. So I want to start out with the big
00:03:49.280question. Why is it important to be reprinting these books, these books that have been mostly
00:03:55.420forgotten by publishing history or haven't been reprinted in a long time that are by female
00:04:01.720authors? I mean, the first thing I would say is that we feel like female authors have been largely
00:04:08.000left out of the continuing conversation about literature, especially American literature.
00:04:15.800The canon has been set by men and the people who are most read are still men. And we just feel like
00:04:24.300the women need their voice. These are women that were bestsellers in their time and were
00:04:29.540well-reviewed and even by male reviewers and were very well thought of, and they're just
00:04:36.040gone. No one knows about them. Yeah, I hadn't heard about any of these authors,
00:04:42.240except for obviously the Herland author, because I knew about Yellow Wallpaper. But I hadn't heard
00:04:50.260about any of these other women. And I love what you said here, because it's not that women haven't
00:04:55.840been writing, but it's that the gatekeepers, the people who make these lists, the people who create
00:05:02.300canons, so to speak, are usually male. And they're usually giving preference to male writers.
00:05:10.780And when you think about how hard it must have been for these women 100 years ago, 70 years ago,0.97
00:05:18.260to write. When men write, that's what they do. That's their job. That's what they do.0.67
00:05:23.380and women make the whole rest of their lives work.1.00
00:05:27.320And these women didn't necessarily have that.1.00
00:05:30.460They were making their lives work.1.00
00:05:47.520But it does amaze me that it remains so difficult.
00:05:50.080I was just reading a profile of Virginia Evans, who wrote The Correspondent, and she talks about how she got up at five in the morning to write before her kids got out of bed.
00:06:01.240And that is such a familiar story for so many women authors, whereas we always hear about male authors who are like, I just write from nine to five every day in my quiet office.
00:06:12.040And so just the similarities between then and now continue to astound me.
00:06:18.960I think that the things that women wrote about, the things that women still write about, tend to be about the home, about relationships, about, you know, the interior lives of other women.
00:06:34.140And I think that even today, that particular subject matter is not always considered to be serious or literary.
00:06:42.200absolutely every time when a woman is writing about her relationships and her emotions
00:06:49.100and i can say this as a woman who writes about these subjects they immediately give us a pink
00:06:55.020cover dismiss us as a beach read i personally love a beach read but we get dismissed and a man
00:07:02.060writes it and it's high art i can't i can't say how many times i read a book by some whiny man
00:07:08.980talking about his emotions and they're like this is literary gold well that's true right because
00:07:15.680when a man shares his emotions i think he has a big audience because i think that it can kind of
00:07:21.400be groundbreaking to other men and and i don't think women i don't think in general we gatekeep
00:07:28.240what we read um or what's the better way of saying it we are open to pretty much anything like i'll
00:07:35.040read a book than a man wrote. I don't think twice about whether a man wrote it or not. Whereas I
00:07:39.900think a lot of men do think twice about whether a woman wrote it or not. And you're right. Like0.97
00:07:45.100as soon as you put a certain color on the cover, you know, it's sort of like dressing your baby
00:07:50.100in pink or blue. Like there's this sort of, you know, immediate signaling about who the book is
00:07:55.760for. And that is one of the things that we are really pushing back on. Like we think that men
00:08:01.660should be reading books by women. I know a lot of men do, but unfortunately, I think most men
00:08:07.260don't. And I think that there is a lot for them to learn there.
00:08:13.160I think there is so much, so much for men to be learning there. And I want to get into
00:08:19.680another question that I've been dying to ask the two of you. Do you think that books by women are0.92
00:08:24.560judged differently, not just by men, but also by other women? Do you think we're harder on women
00:08:30.420authors. I think we are. I think that has been a problem throughout time. I think actually women0.99
00:08:37.080tend to be in a lot of ways harder on other women. I definitely think that women's fiction0.99
00:08:43.880is judged differently. And I think women judge each other, yes, differently. It's just not as1.00
00:08:49.120serious maybe, or it's not art in the same way that it is perhaps when a man writes it.
00:08:56.280Yeah. And I think we're susceptible in the same way. You know, the same reasons why maybe men feel that certain subject matters aren't serious literature. I think we're steeped in that same sort of like societal you that makes us decide that like we we do the same thing to ourselves.
00:09:14.500I think if a man writes something, it is automatically almost more, has more gravitas. It sort of is weighted a little bit more than if a woman, you know, approached the same subject.
00:09:31.660So right now, Quite Literally Books has six books that you've republished by forgotten female authors. There's so many of these books out there. How do you even begin to narrow it down?
00:09:44.500Well, it's very scientific, we always say. It's actually really not. A lot of our research takes place by going to the library and looking at New York Times book reviews from the 20s and 30s. A lot of it also takes place to scouring shelves at used bookstores and thrift stores.
00:10:06.320and strangely enough quite a few have sort of almost literally jumped off the shelves at us
00:10:12.740um i know that sounds really strange um and paranormal but it's not like we we do well
00:10:19.720neilia gardner white that's um ample we did not know about her had not researched her had no idea
00:10:26.980and we i guess happened to be in the w's um in fiction at the new york society library looking
00:10:33.580for something else and there was a shelf of books by the same author oh she was a woman great oh
00:10:41.040wow she's American okay and then we read a couple of the books and we're like wow these were really
00:10:46.280good but that was just a that was just a happy accident that we saw all of her books on the
00:10:54.220shelf and thought well who in the world is this and it's not that accidental because we do that
00:11:00.000is part of our little research regimen is we walk the shelves of the New York Society Library
00:11:05.020fiction you know floors and we look for authors that sound like they could be women and it's
00:11:12.040amazing how many times we have found authors this way because there were a lot of people
00:11:16.820that were quite prolific um those books are still at the New York Society Library because I don't
00:11:22.940think they throw anything away and nor should they nor nor should they nor should they no
00:11:28.840i don't either you bookshelves are teeming with books those are the best kind of bookshelves
00:11:37.400those are the best kind of bookshelves bookshelves should just be be filled filled
00:11:41.140to the brim with books um and i and i love that there's kind of like a mystical magical
00:11:48.420sense to this because i also think the only thing i'm woo woo in life about at all is
00:11:57.200that books have this magical quality. I think the right authors tend to write the right books
00:12:04.220at the right time, that stories come to us when they need to. And I also truly believe that the
00:12:11.200right books sometimes find readers at the right time. So maybe these books are just in there
00:12:16.420being like, hello, we are waiting for you to read it.
00:12:20.420maybe yeah no i i mean that does sound woo-woo but we actually can get behind that particular
00:12:28.920woo-woo um that has happened it really has quite literally quite literally okay let's take a quick
00:12:37.560break and when we get back i want to dive into particular books that you've chosen um you know
00:12:44.340i'm not going to ask you to name a favorite because it's like naming your favorite child
00:12:48.320But we're just going to talk about a couple of them because I know that some of them have really hit me in a particular way.
00:13:18.320Okay, we're back. I chose Herland as my December reading club pick for my newsletter. Talk to me
00:13:29.560a little bit about how you chose Herland and what it's about. I don't remember how we, I think we
00:13:37.720started looking, we remembered the yellow wallpaper and we thought, hmm, I wonder what else Charlotte
00:13:42.980Perkins Gilman might have written. That's exactly what we did. I even remember I was sitting in my
00:13:48.880kitchen and I could see my bookshelf and I had a copy of the yellow wallpaper over there. And you
00:13:53.580were doing the same. We were going through our shelves, picking out writers that we liked or
00:13:58.240remembered. And we're like, what else did she write? And we found Herland because it is out of
00:14:05.480copyright. It's in the public domain. We found a copy of it, I think, on HathiTrust
00:14:11.180and read it. And I think Vermont, I loved it. She just immediately was like, oh, my goodness.
00:14:19.180Loved it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I loved it. I loved it, too. And I will say, I think that there is a lot
00:14:24.640to not like in the book. But I'm not the kind of person that reads a book and is like, you have to
00:14:30.240give me all the warm and fuzzies. I'm like, you have to give me something to gnaw on. You've got
00:14:34.480give me something to think about. And I think Herland does exactly that. Absolutely. We're
00:14:41.640still thinking about it. Well, and honestly, that's sort of true of all of our books. You know,
00:14:46.820we're not, I can't say that like every single book that we've chosen has been, I mean, actually,
00:14:54.220most of them haven't been like warm, fuzzy books, right? They're ones that just won't let you go.
00:15:00.920They are unputdownable. Sometimes they're unputdownable for, you know, not reasons that make you feel good inside. They're unputdownable because they are compelling stories or they give a compelling viewpoint. And it makes you want to talk to someone about it immediately.
00:15:16.480exactly yeah i clearly wanted to talk to everyone about her land which is why i've made it
00:15:22.880my book club pick tell our audience a little bit about what it's about i want this to be
00:15:28.800made into a television series by the way yeah sort of the antidote to the handmaid's tale
00:15:35.480exactly exactly i will think about the difference in the um the clothing you know the red
00:15:43.000the handmaid's tale they wear the the red robes and and the the women in her land would be in0.99
00:15:48.600these really comfortable wonderful tunics with pockets and they're just they're just comfortable0.99
00:15:54.380in their bodies and in their clothes i i i would love if some designer read that and then did their
00:16:02.200version of what you know her land clothing would be like stella mccartney could do that she really
00:16:07.760could let's put let's just put out a call to stella mccartney stella so her land is i think
00:16:15.560in its most basic it is a theme it's about a female utopia um a society that has been
00:16:21.400in existence for 2 000 years without men it's it's strictly women they are peaceful they are
00:16:28.960prosperous um they are pretty idealized and pretty ideal um and from time to time men have tried to
00:16:37.740to broach the ramparts and get into the society and have failed. And this Herland is about
00:16:46.980the three men who actually are allowed into Herland and get to see the society and then start
00:16:57.160it within themselves to think about how this ideal society that these women have created,
00:17:04.300but how it sort of matches up against the society that they came from which is our society and which
00:17:11.200is less than ideal less than ideal and one of the things that i love about it is kind of the framing
00:17:20.020of these bumbling male explorers that are just such classic like early 20th century late 19th
00:17:27.680century men who their goal was to go out and chart new things and explore. Actually, their
00:17:36.520goal was to go, quote unquote, discover things. And we all know who these men are. We've read
00:17:43.460their histories. And it is so fun to watch this world through their lens because they have so
00:17:53.860many ideas about what a female society should be and should look like. And they're proven1.00
00:18:00.180completely wrong. It sort of it turns Handmaid's Tale on its head. It also sort of turns a book
00:18:08.020like Heart of Darkness on its head a little bit, too. It's it's very it's a very different
00:18:15.400perspective, that female centric and the idea that these men were not discovering anything.
00:18:22.540it was there it was not um they didn't make it up it was it was there the whole time as was
00:18:30.280everything that these men quote unquote discovered over 500 years yes i think one of the interesting
00:18:38.700things about this book because i've now read it i think i can't remember three or four times
00:18:43.580and and my feelings about her land not the book but the place have changed over time and i think
00:18:51.840at first I did feel like it was utopian I mean it is fresh and especially right now in this day
00:18:58.040and age and all the stuff that's happening um around women's you know choice and and what it's0.87
00:19:04.980starting to look like you know in terms of like our home lives or what's expected of us in the home
00:19:10.220um by certain groups of people um it did feel like a utopia but as I read it this last time0.83
00:19:20.840I was struck by, okay, if it's a utopia, then why are these women allowing these guys into it? And why are they so curious about the role of women in the rest of the world?
00:19:34.980You know, there is a homogeneity that has allowed them to kind of do great things as a society because they're kind of all on the same page and everything's done for the greater good.
00:19:48.060And that same thing has created a restlessness and, you know, the lack of diversity seems to have swelched some creativity, maybe.
00:19:59.120I don't know of any female explorers. All the explorers that are talked about and wrote books and, you know, sailed the seas and went to new lands were all men. And there is that drive to find new things. And maybe, you know, these women have that too.
00:20:22.420absolutely and and they're interested in exploring just as much as as men are um but they get they
00:20:31.040could be the explorers yeah i love right right i love that take and i think it's important to talk
00:20:36.640about why women couldn't explore because so often we're just saddled with so many other unrecognized
00:20:46.200unpaid duties in labor, that it wasn't possible for a woman to go off and explore distant lands
00:20:53.820for years at a time. Many of these, in fact, most of these male explorers had wives and children
00:20:59.760that they just left behind. Yeah, well, it's what we were talking about earlier, right? There are a
00:21:05.880lot of women behind the scenes allowing for men to be successful in a lot of different ways. And0.97
00:21:10.700that's probably also very true of exploration. I think one of the things that comes out in the
00:21:17.160book, and this is a bit of a spoiler alert maybe, is, you know, they talk about the fact that this
00:21:23.400whole society is really behind the idea of motherhood. Motherhood is sacred, but it's not
00:21:31.540for everyone. And you get to choose if you're going to be a mother. And in fact, just the act
00:21:39.480of longing for a child is enough to have one. They have figured out a way of asexual reproduction0.97
00:21:47.980that doesn't involve anything more than this absolute, you know, sureness in the person,
00:21:55.300in the woman. And that is enough to have a baby. And likewise, you can also choose not to have a0.96
00:22:01.080baby. And that's just as legitimate. And it's 100% effective birth control because you don't
00:22:06.980have a baby unless you want a baby right but they also i like what you were saying at the first
00:22:12.980it's not so much about having a baby it's being a mother can i don't yes and they talk about that
00:22:19.500right and those are kind of different things yes so the whole setup of this society is that
00:22:26.760everybody takes part in the motherhood whether you are the actual birth mother or not the entire
00:22:34.160society is there to support you. And I think it's really interesting because, you know, the writer
00:22:39.180Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the whole reason she wrote The Yellow Wallpapers, because she had,
00:22:45.860I guess we would now call it postpartum depression, probably, and found herself not supported so much
00:22:52.360by anyone, I think. And so I think this was written sort of in response to that, right?
00:22:57.440This was written in 1915, and she published it first as a serialized novel in her own magazine.
00:23:08.340So clearly she had a lot of herself in this.
00:25:39.440strength. Visit oikos.ca for more details. Okay, we are back. Talk to me a little bit,
00:25:49.480a little bit about Homemaker. Homemaker is a novel that was written in 1924. And it is,
00:26:00.820it's about a woman who is living, living with her family, raising her three children,
00:26:07.080doing everything that a housewife and mother did in 1924 and likely still did in 2024.
00:26:14.860Still doing today. Still going strong.
00:26:18.420And she is utterly miserable and making her whole family miserable and even physically ill.0.95
00:26:23.160Her husband, on the other hand, goes out to work every day and he is miserable and making himself0.97
00:26:29.920ill. They're just completely mismatched to the roles that society has assigned to them. And
00:26:38.120through an accident of fate, they switch roles. And Eva, the wife and mother, goes out to work
00:26:46.520and thrives. And Lester, the hapless businessman husband, stays home and takes care of the house
00:26:56.480and the children and it works and everyone is happy and the children you know the eczema goes
00:27:03.400away and the and the tantrums go away and and they and there's harmony um and it's really
00:27:11.560it's kind of beautiful it is beautiful i again things that still resonate i'm thinking about
00:27:20.120the movie mr mom that that classic 80s comedy which i have not launched recently i'm sure it
00:27:25.340doesn't hold up in so many ways. But also, I love me some Terry Garr, and I love me some Michael
00:27:30.040Keaton, so maybe I should revisit. But we're talking about it so much in this day and age
00:27:36.140as we're trying to define what do gender roles mean? What is masculine? What is feminine?
00:27:43.240So many of my girlfriends are the breadwinners in their families these days, and that makes them0.53
00:27:48.800happier than if they were at home with their kids. They love their children. I love my children. I
00:27:54.080would not be my full self I would not you know be the person that I can show up as in the world
00:28:00.180if I were a full-time caregiver it is not for me but it is also because I also know how much
00:28:05.860labor and how much work it is I think that my actual job is less work but the fact that this
00:28:10.640was being explored so long ago and yet we're still talking about it right now shows why these books
00:28:18.720should be on lists of classics, should be read in schools, perhaps more than a lot of the books by
00:28:26.440male authors that we see in the canon that is typically read in high schools. I think that
00:28:32.980it's important to read those books that have, you know, traditionally been a part of our canon.
00:28:38.380I've read a lot of them. I love male authors. I think what's missing when you leave women out
00:28:46.060of the canon is just a whole other perspective you're not getting the full American story and
00:28:53.980there's always the question of who gets to tell that story if you're only listening to white men
00:29:00.580you're getting only one story and that's really at the you know heart of why we want to bring
00:29:09.740in a lot of cases we're not bringing these people back they've been here in fact you know like you
00:29:14.840said, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a well-known author, but her work doesn't necessarily get a0.68
00:29:19.960lot of attention outside of an English class, maybe. And so our hope is that, you know, we only
00:29:26.940publish three books a year. The three that we put out there are going to get a certain amount of
00:29:32.500attention. Who do we want to put in front of a new, you know, group of readers? And who do we
00:29:38.560want to be talking about? It's all about sort of rounding out the canon, I think. It is about
00:29:44.320rounding out the canon. And I love what you said about we're trying to show a fuller picture
00:29:49.380of the American story. And we cannot do that if we're excluding or forgetting
00:29:56.400marginalized authors of all types. And I think that that's why these books just really resonate
00:30:03.960with me, because they show us a fuller picture of the story of the past 150 years of our country,
00:30:11.020and one that we have we cannot forget about if we want to figure out how to move forward
00:30:15.360you're preaching to the choir I know I am I know I am well no I want I want to switch to
00:30:23.600a little bit of a lighter topic but one that I love and I know my audience loves too
00:30:28.080it's how to launch a business together as best friends who have grown up together both of you
00:30:34.940are voracious readers. And that's where, where quite literally books came from. But how did you
00:30:41.300decide as friends to just take this leap and just get it done? I think there was a moment during the
00:30:49.680pandemic. I mean, we all probably had these moments. I had just turned 50. Vermont was about
00:30:54.540to turn 50. And we really were thinking about how do we want to spend, you know, the next big
00:31:01.580chapter in our lives. And we've been friends since we were 12, but there have been large
00:31:09.140chunks of our adult lives when we were doing kind of the same things, but in very different places.
00:31:14.240I was in San Francisco and she was in New York and Austin. And it was that moment where you
00:31:21.880started thinking about what's important to me. And books felt like a great thing to double down on.
00:31:28.820And our friendship felt like a great thing to double down on. And we had sort of this wild, crazy idea. Like, what if we started publishing books? We've long read old stuff, love old stuff, talk about old stuff, gravitate to it, share it with one another.
00:31:49.020What if we try to be a part of putting that back into other people's hands?
00:32:16.660Like, when are we going to do this wild, crazy thing? You know, it's like you're only going to get one shot at it. And like, yeah, now, now, now, now.
00:32:28.720I think that all the time I was I mean, I think that with our bookstore, when we launched the bookcase, which by launching, I mean, we just bought this trailer and just asked some places if we could show up with books, because I would, you know, you could ruminate forever. You can be like, well, it has to be this perfect time. It has to be this perfect space. Or you could just say it's now or never and just get started and do it. And I love that that's what the two of you did together. You just you jumped, you took the leap. And and I think that that is such a gorgeous thing.
00:33:53.500now we know probably a number of reasons but i think that's kind of the beauty of it isn't it
00:33:58.980is that sort of like i mean honestly i don't feel like there are a lot of things that i feel super
00:34:03.940confident about but in that moment that delusion served us well you know it made us go for something
00:34:11.720that maybe we wouldn't have otherwise and i for one am glad that we did no matter how this ends
00:34:17.340up and we are hopeful that it's going to be a smashing success but I I think even just the
00:34:23.400experience that we've had to date has really um made me understand so many things about myself
00:34:31.500and I can honestly say I know Vermont better now today than I think probably at any other point
00:34:39.540except maybe when we're like 14 yeah you know I mean back then I feel like we kind of told each
00:34:44.620other, almost everything. Everything. Well, honestly, but we still do. We kind of still
00:34:49.280need it. I think I know it's like a lot telling you on this, but a lot of sentences do start
00:34:55.140that way. Yeah. Well, and you made a lot of decisions when it came to these books about
00:35:02.960how they should look and how they should feel. They should feel great in your hands. They should
00:35:07.800look beautiful on your shelves. And as a person who integrates books into every corner of my house,
00:35:14.620I appreciate that. And the art on the cover is all original artwork. You guys are working with
00:35:21.400incredible designers and illustrators. Talk to me a little bit about the design aspects of the books.
00:35:27.980I think the design was one of the most fun things that we did. We both really loved that.
00:35:36.120And we started thinking that we would have sort of very plain covers that would be uniform except
00:35:43.420for a different title. And, and then we started thinking about it more. We fell in love with
00:35:49.680Louise Feely's artwork, her, her design work. And, and that was one of those things that we thought,
00:35:57.100well, why couldn't we ask Louise Feely to help us, to, to, to help us design these books? And then,
00:36:04.280and we sort of went to her and, um, as if she were interviewing us, we were so scared that0.81
00:36:10.540she was going to say, yeah, no, that sounds like a dumb idea and I'm not going to do this.
00:36:14.240But she didn't. And so she helped us with things like the colors and the font. And she introduced
00:36:21.600us to Anthony Russo, who is the artist who did the first three covers, who we love. And that was
00:36:27.400just, that was a really wonderful thing. The things like the paper and the paper was all Lisa,
00:36:34.080because she knew, well, you're the one who knew about Munkin paper. I didn't know about it.
00:36:38.440So I was being super nerdy in that moment. But yes, we're both really nerdy when we find something that interests us. We nerded out on all aspects of this book. And then we because we've held so many books in our hands and because we're both like bathtub readers and subway readers and whatnot. We had a very strong sense of like what the feel of the book should be. Right.
00:37:02.360And we looked at a zillion different books that are out there, different sizes, different, all of that, and different paper.
00:37:14.360The cover, doing the French flaps, having it be soft cover.
00:37:20.140Those, you know, those were all decisions.
00:37:21.840Lay flat binding so that the spines won't break if you hold it, you know, open, splayed in your hand while you're in the bathtub, for example.
00:37:29.660And the font that Louise helped us with is easily readable for middle-aged eyes, which is really nice.
00:37:38.720It's not large print, but it's not that teensy little small print that we see.
00:37:43.700We wanted it to be a holistic, pleasing, delightful experience.
00:37:49.740And we designed a book that we hope allows that.
00:37:53.140You know, the smell of the paper is divine.
00:37:56.460And the fact that you can hold it easily in your hand.
00:37:58.820it's not too big the trim size is not one that you find in the united states very often we swiped
00:38:05.320this particular size from dark books we copied them because we just love the way those books
00:38:10.240feel on our hands um and and yeah like putting the thinking off through all that and and then
00:38:17.380handing it off to louise to like make it beautiful was i mean truly a thrill it was a thrill
00:38:24.800yeah well and I think a lot about reading and about books as an experience because as we so
00:38:33.520many of us the collective we tend to live so much of our lives online I think a lot of us are very
00:38:39.380desperate to be offline to experience real life and for me reading is one of the best ways to do
00:38:47.840that. So to think about each book as an opportunity to use all of your senses, the smell of the book,
00:38:55.500the touch of the book, the sight of the book, I think is just such a beautiful thing.
00:39:01.380We agree. It's not as good an experience to read a book that has paper that's kind of gray and
00:39:10.940grainy and little print. And it is hard to read. It's hard to see. And it's, you know,
00:39:15.940like my ancient copy of Lonesome Dove. I would not read that copy again. It's, you know, four
00:39:21.220inches thick and three inches wide. And I don't think I could do that. And so, you know, those
00:39:28.420things were definitely in our minds. I had this really great moment about maybe two months ago
00:39:34.360when we got our hands on our copies of Who Would Have Thought It. Now, that is a book that is,
00:39:41.000I guess it's technically out of print, but you can still find old paperback versions that I think
00:39:46.740was put out as a penguin. Yeah. But when we were able to get those copies and I think that's what
00:39:52.820we read and deciding that that was the one we wanted to, one of the books we wanted to reprint.
00:39:58.080But I remember as much as I love the story, it was a bit of a slog for me because it's a big book
00:40:04.460and it was tiny print and I had to like really focused and be able to stay engaged in the book
00:40:11.020and then a couple few months ago when we got our new books I was like okay I'm gonna read this one
00:40:18.040again and it was a completely different experience I cannot stress that enough it's the same story
00:40:25.360but having it given to you in a way that just feels good like physically feels good to engage
00:40:32.460with it it changes everything and I think that's what we forget is that like reading is a whole
00:40:39.020body experience whether you're reading on a tablet or whether you're you're you know swiping
00:40:44.460something or turning pages it's a whole body experience and you gotta think what is the
00:40:49.480experience I want my body to be engaging in you know do I want to spend hours and hours and hours
00:40:53.700looking at a screen some of us have to do you want to like in your spare time is that really
00:40:59.720where you want to be? And the answer may be yes. I'm just saying we offer maybe another alternative
00:41:04.940to that and in some ways sort of an antidote to that. I love all of this so much. Ladies,
00:41:11.100will you tell everyone where they can find Quite Literally Books? You can find us at
00:41:15.960quiteliterallybooks.com where we have all of our books for sale. You can also find us at your
00:41:22.500local independent bookstore. Either we might already be on the shelves if we're not. You can
00:41:29.000ask your bookstore to order our books, either from Asterism, which is our distributor, or
00:41:33.620we can wholesale straight to them. They can call us or contact us directly.
00:41:39.040Yes. And if they don't have our books on the shelf, please, please ask them to put our books
00:41:44.180on the shelf. We love our independent bookstores. And that's just, that's another thing that Vermont
00:41:49.500and I do for fun. We decide, we just pick a place, a bookstore or a library, and we just go hang out
00:41:56.340there for honestly, like hours at a time, if we can. You're also on Instagram. You can find us
00:42:01.900at quite literally books. I love it so much. Thank you so much for being here, ladies. Thank you, Joe.