--- title: Kate Christensen on Summer Reading | TIME description: Katherine Lanpher interviews Kate Christensen -- author of the novel 'Trouble' -- on her pick for a good summer read canonical: https://time.com/video/CkipIUo3/ og:title: Kate Christensen on Summer Reading og:description: Katherine Lanpher interviews Kate Christensen -- author of the novel 'Trouble' -- on her pick for a good summer read og:url: https://time.com/video/CkipIUo3/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/CkipIUo3/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Kate Christensen on Summer Reading twitter:description: Katherine Lanpher interviews Kate Christensen -- author of the novel 'Trouble' -- on her pick for a good summer read twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/CkipIUo3/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Kate Christensen on Summer Reading > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Kate Christensen on Summer Reading [Watch (HLS stream): Kate Christensen on Summer Reading](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/CkipIUo3.m3u8) (5:28)  _Published 2009-07-02. Katherine Lanpher interviews Kate Christensen -- author of the novel 'Trouble' -- on her pick for a good summer read_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:11 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Lee Child on Summer Reading](/video/tq3JacXd/) ### Lee Child on Summer Reading [Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading](/video/6l4aWhpr/) ### Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading [Ruth Reichl on Summer Reading](/video/atKURLZr/) ### Ruth Reichl on Summer Reading --- ## Transcript >> Kate Christensen is the author of five novels including The Great Man, which won last year's PEN / Faulkner Award. Her latest novel Trouble, has been described as a literally beach book, a novel that goes down easy until you realize there's something bigger afoot. It's also a novel about two college friends who pick up in midlife and go on vacation. You can tell from the title that not everything goes as planned. Christensen is wide- ranging in her reading. She's admitted to public radio to a Jones for the popular Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, and her website's list to recommended reading includes E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. So, what is her summer reading? She's going back to English writer G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, a 1908 metaphysical thriller. It's in a typical summer read but then this is an author who's written a novel about an A Typical Vacation. Now, it is said that right before he died, G. K. Chesterton described The Man Who Was Thursday as a melodramatic sort of moonshine. How [ unk ] is that description? >> I think it's funny. I find it funny in view of the book, which is melodramatic and moonshine. But he also describes it as a nightmare and which says, which perhaps gives a little more depth in terms of the effect of the book. >> You know, before we even go any further with the book. Maybe you should remind us who G. K. is in the field of English letters. >> He's a poet. He's a poet who-- a Catholic poet who believed in rhyme, meter and rhyme. And this is the first by him I've ever read. It was just recommended to me and I know very little about him. So, if you want me to be erudite about G. K. Chesterton, I'm completely gonna let you down. >> I don't want you to be erudite about G. K ., but I want you to tell me what drove you to this book. >> A friend of mine was reading it and was laughing out loud saying this book is amazing, you've got to read it. This is a week and a half ago. And so I basically stole it from him. I found it in my bag. He sort of said, " Can I put it in your bag ?" >> Wait a minute. I found it in my bag? I know how to tap into the book lovers. >> Find its way into my bag. >> Uh- huh. >> It snuck into my bag and I took it on the subway trip and started reading it and it's my stop and, but we almost miss my stop. I looked up at the last minute, got out and then reopened it and was walking along thumbing pages as I was reading it because it's so compelling, I couldn't put it down. >> I think that is a very New York or transit specific way of telling that a book is good if you forget your stop. >> There should be a phrase for it like a subway stop misser or something like a page turner. >> Yes. >> A stop misser. A stop misser. >> So, it's a stop misser. What makes it a stop misser? >> It-- the poem is so propulsive, because he's a poet he writes so economically and the descriptions, it's a nightmare. The descriptions are so dreamlike and the characters are so vivid and so everything jumps out of you. It's like it's going by you with a sort of internal logic of a dream. >> What sort of plot synopsis would you give? >> Well, here's the premise. This is what drew me to it. >> Okay. >> I love detective novels and I love poetry and I love anything sort of metaphysical that's told in amazing language and this is all-- this is everything. It's about a poet turned detective to fight the forces of pessimism and chaos and so he's working undercover for the Scotland yard and he gets in an argument with a poet and goes off into the night with him to an anarchist meeting and they're looking for someone to replace Thursday and each they have seven people on the council for anarchy and he's under covered the fight anarchy and here he is and they're voting for the next Thursday, it's all the days of the week they got. >> Because each-- well, I was gonna say each anarchist has given a codename-- >> Right. >> of the day of the week, right? >> Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and they need the Thursday. And he gets photo of the new Thursday and then that's when the book began. So, he goes under covering the anarchist society, risking his life. Kingsley Amis said it was the most thrilling book he'd ever read. That's not a hyperbole, it's absolutely thrilling all the way through which makes it good beach read. >> I was just gonna say, now, what criteria if any do you apply to your summer read or your beach reads? >> Well, let's see. Stephanie Plum, G. K. Chesterton, let's see. How do we reconcile? I would say, something's so-- I'd say Stephanie Plum is equally compelling reading and equally a page turner and equally impossible to put down and funny. >> It sounds like what you want in your summer reading is propulsion. >> Yeah. Yes. >> To be transported. >> On a muggy day I don't wanna wallow. I wanna be, you know, jetted forth with muscular pros into some story. >> When you're done with Chesterton, what's next? >> Blake. My next novel is about a 57- year- old male poet wandering around Greenpoint and I have to read Blake and I have to read Don Quixote. Neither-- I haven't read much of either. I started on Quixote, I read some Blake but I have to know these things for this next novel. So, that's what I'm reading next. >> All right. So, what is your propulsive summer reading this summer? >> I'm gonna re- read The House of Mirth. >> By Edith Wharton. >> Yes. >> All right. >> That's a cheerful novel. >> I was just gonna say I'm only laughing because no, this is-- you said your criteria were propulsion, light. What's going on here? >> The House of Mirth is a great, great, great propulsive novel. Once I started reading it it's like being sucked into a flume in an amusement park. I can't put it down until it's done. >> We're gonna end there. 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