This is a transcription of LoLT: A Special Poem for Valentine’s Day and Two New Books — 14 February 2025
[cheerful music]
Melissa: Coming up, a new rom-com from my reigning queen of rom-coms.
David: A new book from one of our favorite travel authors.
Melissa: Plus, our Distraction of the Week. I’m Mel.
David: I’m Dave. This is The Library of Lost Time.
Melissa: Elinor Lipman has been writing rom-coms with teeth for 35 years. She’s been called the modern-day Jane Austen — but I think of her books as cousins to EM Forster’s ‘A Room with a View.’ Forster’s novel tells the coming-of-age story of Lucy, a young girl who’s almost always in a muddle of her own making. Elinor Lipman’s characters are like that, too. They distrust their instincts and worry way too much about what other people think — until they don’t. Along the way, they often fall imperfectly but perfectly in love.
Melissa: But these books aren’t only about romance. There’s always an ensemble cast of characters to help our heroine explore the bonds of familial love and friendship — and all the rewards and messiness that entails. Elinor Lipman is the queen of setting up unexpected friendships and exploring how those differences play out in hilarious and moving ways. In Isabel’s bed, it’s a scandalous socialite and a mousy writer. In ‘The Inn at Lake Devine,’ it’s a Jewish girl and a family of gentiles.
Melissa: And in her new book, ‘Every Tom, Dick, and Harry,’ it’s a 30-something woman named Emma who, through a series of comic mishaps, finds herself roommates with Frank, her newly widowed, decidedly senior, former math teacher. In addition to sharing a roof, the two end up working together in a business devoted to staging estate sales — which is a delightful excuse for them to poke around other people’s houses and personal lives. While that’s all sparkly fun on the surface, Lipman uses this setup to explore grief, small-town drama, and overlapping romantic entanglements.
Melissa: We’re also watching Season 2 of the show Shrinking. If you’re not familiar, it’s a comedy about grief. All of the characters are wrestling with grief and guilt, trying to love people around them — while saying and doing things that are sometimes so beautiful and sometimes so boneheaded. The show stars Jason Segel and Harrison Ford and a fantastic ensemble cast. Jason Segel writes the show along with Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein. Those last two guys also worked on ‘Ted Lasso’ —so there are moments that make me throw my head back and laugh, and then boom! I’ve got tears bursting out of my eyeballs.
Melissa: The dialogue and rhythm of the book ‘Every Tom, Dick & Harry’ feel very similar to me. Elinor Lipman is so great at making her characters say outrageously candid things to each other. They’re cutting and comforting in equal measure. Emma, the heroine of this book, sees the excellent qualities in her roomie Frank while being utterly blind to her own. I’m eight chapters in, and it’s a joy to spend time with these characters — and I’m excited to see how Elinor Lipman will mess with them.
Melissa: This book is ‘Every Tom, Dick & Harry.’ I’ll also put links in show notes to my other favorite Elinor Lipman books and an essay about why she’s the new EM Forster.
David: I suspect that if you listen to us, you know who Rick Steves is – but just in case. Rick Steves is a travel writer and a TV host. He has a long-running series in the US called ‘Rick Steves’ Europe.’ In that show, he introduces different European countries and explains why you might want to go there. He is the author of a series of guides — Amazon says he’s written almost 600 books. Most of those are annual updates, but still.
David: vHis approach to travel is very thoughtful. He recommends ‘traveling like a local,’ staying in small, family hotels and eating in neighborhood restaurants.
David: Two things about Rick might seem contradictory.
David: First, Rick has strong dad vibes. His blue button-down shirts, his sense of humor, his goofy outtakes-after-the-show, his insistence that travelers see the museums and meet the locals – those all feel like the kind of guy who might wear socks with sandals. Air-drum to Phil Collins. Know his way around a lawnmower. That kind of thing.
David: But also, secondly, Rick is a left-wing hippie. He’s on the board of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He fought hard to get marijuana legalized in his home state of Washington; he won. He donated a $4 million apartment building to his local YMCA as a shelter for homeless women and their children. And he volunteers a million dollars a year in carbon taxes to offset his tours.
David: When I think about authors who have impacted my life, I want it to be someone cool and cutting-edge — Murakami or Vonnegut or maybe some philosopher — but, it’s Rick. Rick Steves has to be in my top five. He’s the author who brought us to Europe. Every time we see a new city, we do one of his walking tours first. – Which means he’s introduced us to dozens of places, including our hometown. In our house, we are all on a first-name basis.
David: Rick has a new book out. This is not his usual guidebook. This book is called, ‘On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer.’ In 1978, when Rick was a 23-year-old piano teacher, he and a buddy toured from Turkey through Iran and Afghanistan and into India and Nepal. Rick kept an extensive journal and took photos. Then he packed all of that up — the journal, the images — and forgot about it for 40 years. He came across it during lockdown, and decided to publish it.
David: This book is that journal. It will give you a strong sense of what that trip was like in the late 70s. The photos alone are worth a flip-through, both to see those countries then, and to see Rick’s hair. If you’re curious, you can see those photos without the book. We’ll put a link in the notes. That will point to Rick’s site where you can also see a complete scan of the original journal.
David: You should know, there’s a line in the preface. Rick writes, ‘… we are determined to share a candid, unvarnished snapshot of our trip, and we’ve been careful not to make me sound older, wiser, or more culturally sensitive than I was at the time.’ Can confirm. There is some writing in the book that made me wince, both for writing and for content. But. If you’re a Rick fan or curious about that trip, this book delivers. It came out last week. It’s ‘On the Hippie Trail’ by Rick Steves.
David: And now our Distraction of the Week.
David: If you’re listening to this on release day, Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you are loving the people you want to love in the way they want to be loved. And you’re being loved back in the way you want to be loved. If none of that is working out for you, we’re less than 24-hours from a chocolate sale. So. Take your wins where you can get them.
David: In celebration of love, I want to read you a poem. This is from Taylor Mali. Taylor Mali is a poet, educator, and spoken-word performer. He was born in 1965 in New York City. He says he’s a 13th-generation resident of New York City, descended from 17th-century Dutch settlers. He came up through the Slam Poetry movement – the performance-oriented wing of poetry. He now makes his living entirely as a spoken-word and voiceover artist. This is a poem from his book ‘What Learning Leaves.’
How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog by Taylor Mali
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.
but you can never be mad at love for long.
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!
until you’re all wound up and you cannot move.
stop and talk to each other on the street.
Melissa: Visit strongsenseofplace.com/library for more on the books we talked about today and links to more Valentine-worthy poems.
David: Thanks for joining us on the library of last time. Remember to visit your local library and your independent bookstore to lose some time yourself.
Melissa: Stay curious. We’ll talk to you soon.
[cheerful music]
Top image courtesy of Virginia Marinova/Unsplash+.
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