Summer Reading with Tall Mike

Hi Red Fern Listeners! I was recently lucky enough to be a return guest on The TallMikeWine Podcast and I wanted to share the episode with you.  We discuss summer reading and red wine.  Mike is a self-professed wine geek who creates fun, relatable conversations around wine. And did I mention that he is a former disc jockey?

Books  discussed:

Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand
Long Island by Colm Toibin
The Women by Kristin Hannah

Wine discussed:

2021 Librandi "Segno" Cirò Rosso Classico
2015 Dovecote Syrah, Thompson Vineyard, Alisos Canyon, Santa Barbara

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Website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1435309
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Transcript

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Hello Redfern listeners. It's Amy. I'm back with a bonus episode with my friend Tom Mike who has a podcast by the same name. And his podcast specializes in wine. And of course mine specializes in books. And we met when I was on vacation a couple of years ago in Sonoma, where he also works at a local winery. And we decided to record an episode together because we thought that books and wine pair well together. And we're back again doing the same thing. He recently had me on his podcast and I wanted to share it with you. It includes three summer reads that I'm recommending, and a couple of wines to pair them with. And I learned some new terminology, just like I did last time, I learned that wine can have a gunpowder finish, which I didn't know. So you'll have to listen to find out about that. And I found out the wine that I picked wasn't maybe as good as it could be. But it's interesting. It's from very, the very south of Italy from the heel of the boot. And I learned a little bit more about that region in terms of winemaking. So I hope you enjoy this. And just wanted to also give you a little bit a few updates about me. I don't know if you hear a little bit of traffic in the background. But I've recently moved. I've downsized, I'm in an urban setting, and I'm walking everywhere really have changed up my life. But I'm pretty excited. So just wanted to let you know about that. And anyway, enjoy and I will talk to you later by coming up on the Tom Mike wine podcast on the very first page a man comes to the door and says Your husband was our plumber. And now my wife is having his baby. The official tasting notes are iron ore beef blood and gunpowder lava rock powder. Come on. How does anyone even know what that tastes like? Do you consider listening reading is just one of those is a hot dog a sandwich questions kind of she said I haven't read any Emily St. John Mandel, but she's peripherally friends with her ex husband. Oh, really? That's random. That is a small world. Now, online podcast the cell phones have been silenced. The wine is poured. And just like that. The podcast begins the tall Mike wine podcast, the wine podcast that's not all about wine. It's really about life and all that life entails. And wine. I'm your host Mike stone, a tall guy wine focus for the podcast started in 77 countries on six continents and in 48 of these United States, from Sacramento, California to Kent Washington, from Birmingham, Alabama to North Bergen New Jersey, birthplace of pioneering rapper and actor ice tea. Wherever you are, I thank you for finding the podcast. Now. I'd love a little help from you. Share the podcast with a friend or two on social media. I'll assume you've already subscribed on your favorite podcast app. But have you given me a rating? Well, I'd love it if you did. Also, the podcast goes back over three years now. And if you're new here, there may be an episode or two you'd love. So scroll down and check it out. Another thing you can actually become a sponsor of this podcast, helping with day to day expenses. Look in the show notes and click support the show or go to Tom Mike wine.com. And do it there. Three bucks. Seems like a bargain. Right. Are you ready for episode 53? Jared comes from my studio in Novato, California. My home studio, the studio in my home, a condo amid a plethora of condos. And no the neighbors don't know anything about what I'm up to. Is that weird? We're zooming with my guest who's in Vancouver, BC. Yeah, she's Canadian. And we're welcoming her back for her second visit to the show. She hosts a podcast about books. And we're gonna talk about books and wine. In fact, we met two years ago at Nicholson ranch in Sonoma, where I work and practice my wine storytelling in real life. So she's a wine lover. Here she is host of the Red Fern book review podcast. Amy Mair. Welcome back, Amy. Hi, Mike. It's good to be here and good to see you again. It's good to see you. It's good to be seen on the zoo. Oh, well, we were just discussing, I look a little fuzzy and you have a brand new laptop and you look like you're in high definition. So yes, this is a brand new laptop, and I think it is. It's like a Super camera. Because if I get really close to it, you can see the pores of the skin. So I won't do that. Okay. Do your neighbors know you have a podcast? Well, some do. But I thought that was interesting. You asked that. It got me thinking because there are some pictures of me floating around on the internet with a headset on but I thought they might think I worked for a call center. Air traffic control? Yeah, oh, maybe I should clarify that. I don't when I take out the garbage. I don't, you know, maybe I should let people know. I try to mentioned my podcasts to every visitor I encounter at the winery because I'm at the winery. So it's in context, Oh, this guy that works at the winery, has a podcast, hopefully converting these people to listeners. And they asked me all sorts of things about the podcast, like how long I've been doing it? What's it about? Do I have guests where I record it is a common question, at least over half the time I recorded at the winery site. And I point out the vendors room, which is an area in the winery. And that explained that if I have a remote guest, I do zoom calls from my dining room table, which is where I am right now. And this week, someone asked if my neighbors knew about the podcast. And I'm like, honestly, they really don't and I'm outside all the time I walk easy the dog three times a day, I take out the trash, I take out the compost, I take out the recycling, I go back and forth from the car to go grocery shopping. And I see my neighbors regularly. And I know some of their names. But they do not know about the podcast. I guess it might be cool. If I told them they might listen. Or would it be kind of weird? It could be kind of weird. I think it's all in context. But I think you're a people person. So you probably you can pull it off. I guess you need some type of segue. I think I'm not really sure what that would be. But yeah, I mean, one of my neighbors John upstairs. He has a dog Bessie. Bessie and my dog is he get along really? Well. He knows I work at a winery in John works at a golf course. But that's all. That's all I know about him. That's all he knows about. Sometimes that makes for good neighbors, though. Totally. Let's get to the books now. Okay, a books episode on a wine podcast not as odd of a concept as one might think you said to me last time you were here. When you and your book club get together. The main thing isn't necessarily the book. But the wine and the social aspect, the cheese, that charcuterie and just getting together and chatting Do you still meet with the book club? We do we meet all the time. And it is it's the same as it was before. It can be hard for us to finish the book. But we still we've kind of made a rule we still show up anyway. And sometimes we do other things even then we might go to a movie or do something else. And then I think it's funny. I think one of the reasons people join a book club is there many reasons, but one of them is to get hear about new books and get new ideas. But at the end of the day, we often kind of want to read what we want to read. And sometimes when people pick stuff, I'm like, actually, I don't really like that book, I'd rather just read what I always read. But that's not really why we're there. But it's funny because one of the books we're going to talk about today, I'm still gonna recommend it. But my book club did not like it. We barely spoke about it. But we had a great night, drink wine and hung out. The group is really important to us. It's important to me, but I mean, it's really not. That's not why I'm in it. Even though I love reading. It's about community, like wine books are things people enjoy in their spare time to relax and escape from everyday life. Right. Summer is coming up. This is the season, a lot of people are shopping for a good read. And he has some suggestions. We're also going to talk about the wines we're sipping. She's sipping wine there, I'm sipping wine here. And as we mentioned last time, talking about wine talking about books has a few parallels, because they're both very, very, very personal and subjective. You can get a whole roomful of people reading the same book, they're all going to have vastly different opinions. Same thing with one, right? It's true. It's very true. What is the first book you have for us? The first book I'm going to talk about is actually where I got the wine from, because I picked a wine that sort of is featured in the book. But it's called Long Island by calm, Toibin. Now he's Irish, and I'm not even sure if I pronounced his name, right, but you won't know. So that's the reason why I picked it. And often, you know, people like what they know his. He's a well known literary novelist, but he wrote a book called Brooklyn that people loved. And if you haven't read the book, you might have seen the movie. You've seen the movie. The movie is one of my favorite romance movies. It's two years ago, right? Yeah. And it was in Brooklyn, like back in the day old timey. That's right. Yeah. And so this is the sequel to that. Oh, Oh, it's called Long Island, because that's where the couple in the book ends up moving to Long Island. So I'm going to just give a little brief summary of the last book. So you understand, basically, it's about an Irish immigrants alias. It's a woman and she moves from Ireland to New York in the 1950s, and goes through all these dramatic changes on her own, lives it a woman's boarding house works at a at a department store, and she falls in love with this very charismatic Italian plumber named Tony, she secretly marries him. And then she, for a variety of reasons, goes back to Ireland doesn't tell anybody and falls in love with somebody else. So it's very romantic. Ends up long story short back in New York picks the American. So the sequel is really it's a interesting concept. It's 20 years later, she's now in her 40s, living in Long Island, surrounded by Tony and his loud, boisterous Italian family on Long Island, big Italian family. Yeah. And she's kind of isolated. And on the very first page, a man comes to the door and says, Your husband was our plumber. And he's now my wife is having his baby that was on like the second sentence. And so what the book is about each one, what the book is about is what she decides to do and doesn't decide to do with that information. And one of the things that she does decide to do is go back and visit Ireland, and you can guess who she's going to meet up with. That's all I'll say. So it's okay. It's quite lovely. It's very well written. It's nuanced, kind of quiet. I think it would appeal to lots of different types of readers. And I would recommend if you haven't read Brooklyn, Brooklyn's a bit of a bigger book, but I would, if you don't feel like reading it, just watch the movie, and then read the book. It's a good read. So now that segues nicely into and how, what is it? You're glad? Oh, yeah. Okay. So what is the connection here explaining that connection is every Sunday alias is expected to go to a big family lunch at one o'clock. Grandmother's and it goes all afternoon and they have Italian food, they have pasta, they have lamb, and they have wine. So I went to my local wine store and I said, I'm serving pasta and lamb and I'm having Italian food, what would you recommend? And I would like something from Southern Italy because the family is from there. Okay, and so then they came up, she came up with this wine called Love brandy LeBron, do you know, do you know how to pronounce that Chiro doc. Shiro is the region TOC means it's a classified region. Okay. And the DRC is just what they would say this is a DRC. In a little while we're going to talk about in a VA. In this country, the wine that I am drinking is from a new Aava which is an American viticultural area. D OC means it qualifies for one of the Italian wine classifications, which is a D OC. So it was a kind of like, I mean, everyone's kind of familiar with Qian tea, and I know they have they have some designations, there's like that, like, it's like that certain things have to be done. Exactly. Okay, got it. Exactly. So Chiro is the region, you can just say that very simply, it's very simple. Chiro is the region. And it's down there in the very southern end of Italy, which is in Calabria. And I have a picture of the map of Italy here, and it's down here, in what would be basically the ball of the foot of Italy the boot. Okay, can you see that? Yeah, my new camera. Yeah, I can see it. So then that's the right. That's where they're from. Okay. I just said, what would you recommend? And they recommended this now what you sent me a picture of it, and I said, Oh, I've never heard of this wine. Let me do a little research. And I love it because a few things. First of all, most people in the United States that drink wine, even if they drink a lot of Italian wine that drinking mostly wine from northern Italy. That's where Tuscany is, right? That's where Kiante is. This is way down south, y'all. We don't know a lot about these wines. This is Chiro I'd never heard of that before. The wine is made from a grape I've never heard before the grape is called Ganga, yo, Bo, gangly. Oh, that again, ball. Okay, apparently, when there's two T's at the end of the word, you're supposed to pause a little bit, you say giggly ball, okay. It's also a red wine that doesn't get this particular one anyway, that is not aged in oak barrels. It goes into stainless steel for fermentation and gets locked into a stainless steel tank and ages a little while and then gets bottled without any oak aging, which kind of freaks me out because I've tasted a lot of red wine right out of the fermentation tank. And it's hard to drink. So tell me what you think of it. Well, the first thing I wanted to comment on is the color. I think the color is really pretty Ready? It's almost got pickin sound can't really see from here. See, it's a bit. It's a bit lighter and almost has a orangey hue. Oh, and it seems almost like a garnet. Like when I first took a sip of it. I'll be honest, I didn't love it. But then I took another couple of sips sounds like it's not bad. It does taste different. I think I'm gonna use I think it tastes kind of earthy to me. Okay, that's about all that I can say it's different tasting. I mean, I prefer Kiante for sure. I think the one thing about this one that really struck me reading the the technical information was that it doesn't go into barrel. So this is going to be really interesting because you're getting it because pretty much all red wine goes into a French oak or an oak barrel of some type, mostly French American Hungarian, and that mellows the wine out the flavors integrate a lot more it smooths it out. Is it pretty in your face as far as the flavors go? Yeah, yeah. I kind of look on your face right there was we know what it sort of tasted like is communion. communion wine, like cheap wine? Like a little bit? Yeah. Let me read the official tasting notes from the Lebron D website. The official name of this one is LeBron D, Sanyo, LeBron D Russell classico 2021. The tasting notes and like I said, it's made from 100% gag Leo ball, which is a native indigenous grape to the very southern end of Italy tasting notes. Don't let the pale color fool you. This is a substantial line. Aromas of red fruits and spice, complement undertones of cranberries, wild berries and plums. On the palate, ripe tannins and substantial body make for an incredibly rich yet easy going red wine. What do you think? Wow. It's always fun to read those tastings a spin on it. I mean, it's good. It's the marketing department, you know, you know, I don't actually think it's bad. I think part of it I have to get used to. It's different. But I don't think it's great either. It says pair this wine with sausage, spicy curry sauces, hot soppressata and tandoori chicken. I think the thinking here is that it's very fruit based. And fruity. Your wines tend to go with spice here. I don't feel it's that. When you say fruity that also means sweet wine. Is that because it doesn't taste sweet to me? Oh, you're your brain kind of does that math. It says oh, this is fruity. It's sweet. But there's there's no sugar left. I mean, looking at the technical data here. There's no okay. Yeah, residual sugar, sweet wine. But it's very fruity. And that's mainly because again, it didn't aged in oak barrel. And sounds like you're an oak barrel fan. Like I said, being a guy who's been drinking wine seriously and studying it for almost 30 years. And my experience with red wine is that they go into barrel. There's no question. It goes into a barrel for a while. There are very few red wines made don't go into a barrel. So when I saw this was like, aging, stainless steel tank, that was all set. That's like binding more. Okay, because I've tasted like I said, I've tasted red wine out of the fermentation tank. And it smacks you in the face. And it's almost impossible to sip. You can taste it just to see what it tastes like. But you wouldn't want to click a whole glass of it. Maybe a nice adjective or rustic kind of say rustic wine. Rustic is a great word. And it is one of those words you can use if you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. It's very rustic. What are you drinking? What's happening? All right, okay, that that's later. All right, let's spread it out. I like to spread it out. He's jumping the gun there view both wines at the beginning then people like Oh, right. They talked about the wine. Let's get out of here. Okay. Okay. What I do want to ask you is if you have any of the official Tom, like one podcast coasters, I know like, probably give you a coaster when we met two years ago. But you probably don't have any more. You know what's funny? I just found it two days ago, because I'm actually packing up and I'm moving. And you found the coaster? I did. And it's clever. So he has this like, it's thick. And it's basically like a business car. But instead it's a coaster. Yeah. And I think you have it. It's your face. Yeah. But isn't it also looks like there's like a wine stain on it. Is that a wine stain on the back of the coaster? My friend Amanda. Yeah. Design The back of the coaster. She's one of those genius people. And the picture of me is of me putting my nose in glass with my eyes. Yeah. It's clever. It's like it. I like it. I recently sent a stack out to a fellow Vancouver, right, Michelle, who lives in Renfrew heights. Do you know that neighborhood? I do know where that is. Yeah. Her address on the envelope you want to look at? See? You know where that is. He's about 15 minutes away from me. Well, Michelle, you're gonna get a stack of coasters. She sent me an email said Hey, thanks for the pot. cuz I think it's great. I'm up here in Vancouver. Appreciate a stack of coasters. I'm like, I'll get them out to you and Michelle, and thanks for tuning in to the podcast. And of course, I'll send you a stack. If you email me at Tom, Mike wine@gmail.com. What is the next book on your list? So the next book is the women by Kristin Hannah. My book club read this. So this is a big crowd pleaser type of book. Kristin Hannah Hill is one of the biggest novelists right now. And she typically writes large books like thick books, thick book, 500 pages can be but average sized book is like 300 is kind of top end. She's more than that, usually. But they're easy to read. And their historical fiction, we usually with a strong female protagonist, someone who's kind of maybe overlooked in history in her mind, her biggest book you may have heard of is called the nightingale. And it was set in World War Two. And it involved the French Resistance era books are super well researched, there's always a romance, they appeal to a broad group of people. And so she's written a book called The women. And it's about women who served in the Vietnam War. Not everybody knows that we kind of made a joke and this author can be has a flair for the dramatic, and she kind of every few chapters brought up that women were not recognized in the Vietnam War. And so we kind of thought she may be said that too often. But But basically, but it's true. I mean, I think of any image I've ever seen or heard or thoughts about the Vietnam War, it's always about the men who went and thought, and many of them died, which said, and the books, I mean, it's funny, my book club kind of trashed it, but I think we can sometimes be a bit high maintenance. And I actually think, if all describe it, and I think it might be, it's definitely worth looking at what it is, it's told from the story of a young woman who's 20 named Frankie McGrath, and she was raised in an idyllic little island called Coronado island off San Diego. And if you've been there or heard of it, I've heard of it, for sure. I've actually recently been there for a weird reason. It's very cute. It's like Nantucket, kind of the Nantucket of California. And so what's kind of interesting, what I like, is when you think of the late 60s, we think of you know, the Vietnam War and all the protests, but many parts of the country or of the world were still quite conservative. And so it's that kind of changing of the guard. And this place, Coronado was quite conservative. It was, you know, country clubs and dresses and sweater sets and her brother ships off to Vietnam. And so then she decides to do it. And the way she can do it, is join the Army Nurse Corps. And when she goes, she's quite innocent, hasn't seen much. And she gets there and she's not super well trained. And she gets thrown into just chaos, as a trauma nurse, and sees things and also rises to the occasion. At first, she's not very good. But then like, you know, sometimes there's no doctor available. So she's basically sort of doing surgery. She just does what she can. It's really interesting to see her develop the best part of the book is while she's in Vietnam, because it's very dramatic and interesting. She has several romances, she makes these amazing friends. Then she returns home. And that's where she's still got this conservative family. And she is not not only do people not appreciate a lot of the Vietnam that's but she's almost like a ghost. It's like she wasn't there because she's a woman. So it's a lot about, it puts a lot of the things that we know about into kind of high relief, you know, Agent Orange, or like a protest you've heard of Kristen Hanna has a great way of sort of flushing out these events. And you learn a lot while she's creating a compelling story. And the first half of the book has kind of mashed vibes. I know mash was set in Korea, technically, but as that kind of feeling, but it is a bit on the dramatic side. So that's kind of where we, as a book club were like, oh, no, no, if you're interested in those topics, or you like a lot of people are big Kristin Hannah fans. I think this will be a big book for summer, often in summer, people might pick a longer book that you know, they're going away on vacation and they've got the time. Yeah, and this was an hour plane ride or something you want to kind of fit. Yeah, kind of fits in there. Okay. Do you have the book there? I don't because I listen to it. Oh, you listen to it. And so you can send me a picture of the fare right. Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna put all the stuff on the Instagram that covers the books the why And if you're not following him on Instagram, you're missing out. You can follow me on Instagram at tal Mike wine. And now I'm going to reveal to you what's in my glass glass that I've been swirling and sipping since we started talking and this wine is this Why is one really good to making me think a little differently about my palate? I think there may be a shift happening. Okay, if you go through my Instagram and look at all the wines that I drink and the wines that I talked lovingly about, they tend to be if you want to just lump them all into one category, big reds, Cabernets, Marlowe's Bordeaux wines from France, Australian shreds from the Barossa Valley all darker colored wines and you sit them in your mouth and just go wow as big and it starts to turn your teeth, blue and black. And the wines are just big and bold. Okay, and Sara from California would tend to fit that description. But I opened a bottle of this couple of weeks ago, this wine that I'm sipping right now it's from a winery called dovecote. That's a D of E. CO T, and it's a Seraph from California. It's from the 2015 Vintage it's from their estate vineyard and I sold it and scrolled and scrolled and I snipped it. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting. It just kind of smells like strawberries, like beautifully ripe strawberries, but it wasn't what I expected. Now, if you went back two, three years ago, I'd be like, Oh, it's one of those. It's one of those lightweight suras because Surah definitely is considered to be one of the biggies the grapes have darker, thicker skins, and they produce wines that really make a statement. Right? They're big ones. So I sipped this wine a few weeks ago is like an it's a lighter bodied syrup. But you know what? I kind of am grooving on it. In the last few weeks, I've been thinking wow, I think you know, I think I might be not over. But I might be ready to move away a little bit from the big reds, to the Reds that are a little more subtle, a little more nuanced, and not as big because this is a beautiful and it's very, very floral smells like roses and strawberries. It's a pretty dark color, as Syrah is supposed to be. But it just doesn't wait you down doesn't grab your tongue and pull it out of your mouth and throw it on the ground and stomp on it. Like a lot of the big reds do and people that like to just drink those wines. They're all about how big is it? Let it slap me around. And this, and this is actually it would be more akin to saying, Oh, this is like if you love Pinot Noir, which is a type of wine that is all about subtlety and elegance and finesse and artistry, like the ballet. This wine is more along the lines of that. What would you serve it with? Oh, you could serve it with a lot of different things. I'd say I really want some barbecue with this because it's very fruit based, but it also has a little bit of spice to it. Yeah, I think I want some barbecue with this one, maybe some pulled pork, maybe maybe some ribs and kind of a sweet tangy sauce. I think that we'll go with this one really nicely. The winery is called dovecote, like I said this is their 2015 est syrup. The wine is made from grapes grown in a vineyard that the winery just purchased. So this is a fairly new winery. The family that owns the winery, the rolls family. No a rolls is the winemaker and the owner and he established a winery and purchased this vineyard called the Thompson vineyard. And now dovecote has that as their estate vineyard 2015 It sits in barrel for two years 33% brand new French oak barrel so all the wine goes into barrel for two years, and it's quite nice. The official tasting notes on the tech sheet are iron ore beef blood, gunpowder lava rock, are you getting all these? Non powder? Gunpowder Come on. How does anyone even know what that tastes like? Cheese meat, stewed plums, pipe tobacco. Anis I don't know if I get all those things but gunpowder is a thing you get from the reaction of the wine when hits that oak barrel that's been toasted on the inside of the barrel. You get a little smoky smell. I don't know about with wine but I do love that smell like I love candles and I love candles that have smoky wood. woodsy scents are when you light the candle with a real match and the bowl the match out and you get that smell. Oh yeah, that's that's a nice smell. It's true. I will put the official name of this wine in the show notes. You can look it up 2015 dovecote state Sarah Thompson vineyard delicious. It's funny, I went back and listened to last year's visit. And I had read station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel. That's right. And currently on my nightstand is her big book, Sea of Tranquility. And that's another thing that's happening to me. I'm backing away from the big reds. I'm also having a hard time reading books. So many distractions in the world. Mm. So I bought Sea of Tranquility months ago and I started it. And then I dropped it for a while just because I can't get into that right now. Still sitting there, and I'm hoping I'm going to be on a plane in a few weeks to a faraway land. And I'm hoping at that moment, I pick up sea of tranquility and power through because I really want to read it. I like the writing of Emily St. John Mandel. Do you still mainly read actual books? Or are you into mixing up with audio books or ebooks? Well, before I answer that, I want to ask you a question. Do you consider listening reading? Well, no, I don't I don't consider reading. I consider listening. It's still ingesting the book. And I guess you could say I read this book, it took me a while I have a really good friend that she only listens. I do consider reading. But I have some further opinions on that. But it's just one of those is a hot dog a sandwich questions. Kind of? I do consider it reading. So further to your point. Yes, right now. So I'm, I'm going through a divorce, I'm moving. I'm kind of gone back to school, I'm doing a bunch of things, and I'm quite distracted. And so I have been listening to audiobooks way more than I have been reading a physical book, and I sort of felt bad about it, actually. But then I just sort of said, You know what, whatever. And I think however you do it, I mean, I have opinions on it. Like I think the audiobooks are great for kind of crowd pleaser, books or thrillers. If something's quite literary, like the sea of tranquillity, I probably would prefer reading it. The other big thing about the audiobooks is it can be you have to train yourself because if you first start lifting, listening to audiobooks, you usually don't retain things at the same level. And there's many reasons for that. It's partly because it's auditory. But also, when you're listening to an audiobook, you're almost always doing something else. So you're driving, you're folding laundry or cooking. Or I was gonna say, when I listen to podcasts, and it's a lot like listening to an audio book, I'm driving, and I'll get distracted. I'll be like, Oh, look at those cars over there. I wonder what this council what is that over there? I never thought about what's over there. What's down that road? I wonder what's down that road? And then two, three minutes go by and I I get back to the podcasts. I'm like, Oh, what did I miss? They were talking about something here. I gotta, I gotta click Back, back, back back back to come back. So yeah, yeah, distracted reading an audiobook, you can get distracted. I do think they're really excellent with memoirs. I think that I prefer them that way. But yes, I am. I'm actually listening currently more than I'm reading. Let's say that listening is reading. Okay. I'm going to proclaim it. But you know, because it sounds like if you say, Do you Would you consider listening to the book, reading it? And it sounds like you're saying, is it not as good to listen to it? Is it considered lesser, it's still no, you still get the story. You still get the story. I listened to the women. And I read Long Island's. The key about the other thing about listening, you gotta like the narrator, because you're spending a lot of time with them. Right? And if you don't, you probably shouldn't do it. And the narrator of the women because she's such a big author. In the niche. It's super niche. But in the audiobook world, there's a couple of rock stars and one of them is named her name is Julia Whelan. She narrates this book. She's a voice. She's like one of the people. It's a skill. You know, it's an acting skill voice acting. You can be somebody who voices, you know, animation shorts or video games, but audiobooks. Same thing? Yeah. It's intense. My pal Laura, who lives in Warren, Michigan. She lives here in the Bay Area. We were pals a million years ago, we still keep in touch. She recently sold me she's been listening to a lot of audiobooks. And there's a book app from the library called Libby. Yeah, which gives you access to ebooks, audio books and magazines for it says on the website for the reasonable price of a free, yes. And we were texting a while back. And this is going to come around now. We're going to loop it back around and she asked for a recommendation and I recommended Emily St. John Mandel. Okay, now this is my friend Laura, who's in Warren, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, which is right up next to Toronto. And yes, she said, I haven't read any Emily St. John Mandel, but she's peripherally friends with her ex husband. Oh, really? Yeah. That's random. That is a small world. I want to know more about that. Well, maybe we need to get Laura on the podcast to talk about it. She's Canadian. She's based in Toronto, which is right next to Detroit. Well, she's a fabulous, fabulous talent. Her books are great. And she doesn't want to. She does a little sci fi which is not my jam and she doesn't Well, no She makes it accessible because it's not my jam either, although she mixed it in with dystopia, which is my jam. Okay. All right, we have time for one more book. Are you ready? Yes. So I'm going to do a little preview about a book that is going to be in a lot of people's beach beds the summer. It is called swan song. And it's by Ellen Hildebrand, who is probably the number one author of beach reads around. Interestingly, she's been doing this for a long time, a couple decades. And this book, it's called swan song, and it's a double entendre. And it's her last book in this mini book series, and she's going to take a little break, cuz I think she's gonna read a couple books with her daughter and then just kind of do some other things. But basically what she does, all of her books are essentially the same. They are set on Nantucket, they're all love letter to Nantucket, this author spent all her summers there. So it's got, you know, the see beautiful people. It's going to be geared men like it, but it's really a woman's book, and it's women's friendship, it's romance. It's great musical references, people watching clothing, but what makes her sets her apart from everybody else, is that she actually went to the Iowa writers workshop, which is like going to Harvard. So she while she's in this beach read genre, she does it very well. So there's a great plot and the characters are well developed, and it's just a lot of fun. I've only read one of her books, and it was her last one called Five Star Weekend. And I can't wait for this one and it comes out June 11. It's just fun and the little preview that I have it says swan song swansong is a propulsive medley of glittering gathering sense of drama, wisdom and heart. And it's a mystery. That sounds like when you would say something like iron ore beef blood, gunpowder, lava rock, cured meat stewed plums, pipe tobacco anus. Yeah. It's a tasting note from the book comes out June 11. But you've already read it. No, I haven't read it. Oh, but I'm previewing it. And I just think people are gonna want to know about it if they don't. And if you want a beachy book, the way I pick my books, I tend to alternate and I tend to do like an intense, difficult read. And then I want to have fun. Like, I think it's just a great fun book with character development, which some some of these books, it stays with you about. Sometimes they're paper thin. Yeah, so real people. And that's what I like about books. I like books that have character development, and plot and dialogue. Yeah, I don't need smash them up. And crazy, you know, I action. Well, thank you for the recommendations. Again, this is Amy. And she hosts the Red Fern book review podcast. And you can find it wherever you find podcasts. Do you listen to other book podcasts? Can you recommend one? I do. I mean, the number of I mean, the best one really is is a New York Times Book Review. I really liked that. Who hosts that? Well, it's that book editor. And that's changed. His last name is Cruz I think. But there's ones that are are lighter, but I do I do like that one because it's in fact, they just did one. They have all the best authors on so they just did an interview with the author of Long Island. And while I'm working on getting well known, I'm probably not going to get that author on. So it's kind of fun for me to like, tune in and hear what he has to say. Because he's very excited to talk to New York Times. And I like to compare, you know, I actually have my own opinion on this book. And then I was fun to hear kind of his motivation. And one of the things he said when I listened to this recent podcasts, he said the whole premise of Brooklyn came from he overheard a story like in his village where it was from that this actually happens, some version of that it's kind of fun to hear the little, where things come from and what inspires somebody to read a whole book. You just heard a story. Like oh, yeah, I just heard a little, little story and thought that was kind of stayed with them a little snippet of conversation. And you just extrapolate I guess, then you turn it into a book. Okay, there you go. That's how to write a best selling novel. I hope you have a lovely summer. I hope that you sell your house so things calm down in your world. Thank you. Thank you for hanging out with me. What are you up to this summer? What are you going to do? I'm going to Holland. You are What do you are? I'm going to ride bikes in Holland. I'm going to Amsterdam. A couple days in Amsterdam gonna make a trip to Brussels to eat some brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts. I would I want to know where brussels sprouts are from I'm surely not from Brussels, Belgium. The saw Mike wind podcast was conceived and is produced, engineered, edited and maintained by yours truly, to see behind the scenes, all the wines I drink and food I cook, and all of the kitty cat who's laying on the floor right down there in your kitty bed. Follow me on Instagram at tall Mike wine for feedback, questions, suggestions just to say hi and get your very own set of digital coasters. Email me at Tom Mike wine@gmail.com. Do you have a spare three, five or 10 bucks a month to contribute to the care and feeding of the podcast? Click on the link to support in the show notes. Or go to Tom like wine.com I'd appreciate it. Thanks to Amy and Vancouver for hanging out her podcast again the Red Fern book review podcast and worth your time. Until next time, I'm Mike stone, aka tall Mike one wine keep swirling. Keep sniffing. keep sipping cheers