July 21, 2025 • 56 mins
I was thrilled to join The TallMikeWine Podcast for the third time to talk about two of my favourite things: reading and wine! We chatted about perfect summer reads, and I even got a mini wine education—turns out there's more to wine than just red and white. Ever heard of orange wine? Tune in for book recs, wine talk, and lots of laughs.
Wines discussed:
2024 Saintly, The Good Rose , British Columbia
2020 Tolaini Cabernet Sauvignon, "Legit", IGT Toscana
Books discussed:
The Wedding People by Alison Espach
Table for Two by Amor Towles
Real Americans by Rachel Khong
Fortune Favors the Dead by Susan Jane Wright
Podcasts discussed:
Monica Lewinsky - Reclaiming
Fail Better with David Duchovny
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Website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1435309
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Newsletter: https://www.redfernbookreview.com/newsletter
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Amy Tyler (00:03):
Coming up on the tall Mike wine podcast, Hey,
Unknown (00:06):
aren't we cool? Isn't this amazing? Drink our wine?
Yeah, it's cool. Hey, you want ahat? Hey, do you want a shirt?
Hey, drink our wine. Aren't wecool? It's the scrolling. Amy,
it's the scrolling. It's true.
So not only is it delicious, Igot another deal, and I love
that. I love that more thanalmost anything.
Amy Tyler (00:24):
And now the toll like wine podcast,
Unknown (00:30):
the cell phones have been silenced, the wine is
poured, and just like that, thepodcast begins, the Tull Mike
wine podcast, the wine podcast,that's not all about wine. If it
were all about wine, even Iwouldn't listen to it. Say
nothing of hosting it, and I amthe host, the namesake tall guy
(00:54):
who brings you the show, thewine podcast like no other,
heard on six continents, in 89countries, and 48 of these
United States, coast to coast,from Kirkland, Washington to
Leesburg, Virginia, from FortWorth, Texas to Sterling
Heights, Michigan, where, ifyou're sitting in traffic on
(01:14):
mound road, I thank you forjoining us and wherever you are,
many thanks for lending me yourears. I hope you're subscribed
to the podcast so you don't missout when there's a new episode.
Also a five star rating would becool. I know five stars so
limiting, but I don't make therules. And now you can show your
(01:34):
love for the podcast in the formof dollars. Become a sponsor and
help keep the podcast commercialfree. Click the support the show
link in the show notes to findout more, and thank you in
advance for the help. Now it'stime to roll into the podcast
with my guest who's joining usvia zoom. I'm here at my dining
room table in Novato,California, and she is in
(01:57):
Vancouver. BC, yes, she'sCanadian. She's making her third
appearance on the podcast. She'sthe host of the Red Fern book
review podcast, and she's justback from tennis camp. Please
welcome Amy Tyler, and Happybelated Canada Day to you and
welcome back to the podcast.
Amy Tyler (02:18):
Hi Mike. It's good to be here. Well,
Unknown (02:21):
I'm so happy to have you. How was camp? How is your
tennis game?
Amy Tyler (02:26):
Camp was good two hours away in Whistler British
Columbia, and we did somethingcalled live ball. So if anyone's
listening and plays a lot oftennis, they'll know about it.
I'd actually never played itbefore. It's kind of like, I
don't want to say dodge ballwhen you were a kid, but
basically, there's a king of thecourt, so you there's a somewhat
a pro, throws the ball in, andif you miss, then you're out,
(02:51):
and then someone moves up.
Unknown (02:52):
You're not standing on one side of the room with a
tennis racket in your hand, withpeople on the other side of the
room with tennis rackets, andeverybody's pinging balls at
each other. It's
Amy Tyler (03:00):
like one game with people jumping in live ball.
It's called live ball.
Unknown (03:05):
Okay, that's that sounds cool. I'm sure I can find
video on YouTube,
Amy Tyler (03:09):
but because we're not 16, at tennis camp, we did
tennis camp in the morning, andthen we went to the pool and we
went out for dinner. And you
Unknown (03:16):
had some nice dinners, had some good dinners with some
nice wine. Maybe
Amy Tyler (03:21):
had some nice wine, Canadian wine, yes. And I
shouldn't say this at therestaurants, but you can't get,
well, I don't know aboutcurrently, but you can't always
get American wine at the storesnow,
Unknown (03:32):
yeah, yeah, because somebody decided they wanted to
take the economy down into thetoilet where he came from, and
do all this mucking around withwith tariffs, but we don't have
to talk about that. Okay, itsounds like you had a good time.
I did. This might seem a bitlate to the game, but we are
here to make summer bookrecommendations. We had such a
(03:53):
good time last year. We justdidn't get the episode up and
running, and now the summer hasbegun. But if you have yet to
pick a few good reads forvacation. We've got suggestions.
Well, Amy does. I'm just here toride her coattails. We will also
make a wine connection. So stickaround for some wine geekery.
How many books do you have totell us about? We're going to
(04:13):
talk about four books today. Andhow do you go about selecting
the why the books? What's theprocess like? How do you pick
them? I almost said, how do yougo about selecting the wines,
which is what people ask meabout the podcast. How do you
how do you pick the books?
Amy Tyler (04:28):
This time, when I did one thing I thought about is not
to have a hardback because justalso, it's summer, you might
want to get to the beach, right?
It's a little less expensive,actually, though not that much
less expensive, but so I went.
Most of the books have been outfor a year, because, if you may
already know this, but bookscome out in hardback, and
(04:48):
they're in hardback for oneyear. Some come straight to
people. I
Unknown (04:51):
didn't I didn't know that they it was a year. Some
are released in trade paperback,which is a bigger form of the
paperback, right? Some don't goto hardcover. Some
Amy Tyler (04:59):
never. Do. But most of the books I picked had, you
know, I picked a mystery becauseI figured someone wants that. I
picked a family saga becausepeople like that, and it has a
little science stuff in it, so Ithought that would be good for
anyone in the family. And it'ssort of hard to find book that
crossover. So a husband and wifeor two partners could probably
(05:21):
both could like this book thatI'm going to recommend. And then
I did a full on beach read,because I think you always need
to have
Unknown (05:28):
that something a little saucy, yeah.
Amy Tyler (05:31):
Oh, and then another one's just a personal favorite
author. And I pick short storiesbecause I think those are very
digestible in the summer. Sureyou can
Unknown (05:41):
set it down. Come back to it. Set it down because you
got other things. You got otherthings going on. All right,
let's, let's, let's get into thefirst book. I'm going to queue
up some nice bookish music.
Amy Tyler (05:56):
So the first book I'm going to recommend is the full
on beach read, and it's alsocorresponds. Oh, am I allowed to
say that? So the wine I pickedgoes with this book, or does
that matter? Which
Unknown (06:07):
is, like, that's totally fine. That's great,
because you're going to revealthe wine at the end of this
review. Okay, okay, thisparticular book, then we'll talk
about the wine that's in yourglass.
Amy Tyler (06:16):
So this book is called the wedding people. Just
even the name, you know it'sgoing to be a beach read by
Allison s patch. And I'm notsure if that's how you pronounce
your name, but the story is,it's a book about her. Name is
this woman's name, Phoebe, andshe's an English professor, and
(06:39):
she wakes up one morning, andher husband is left her for
another woman, and she's superdespondent and depressed, and
she's living in St Louis, so shedecides to go to Newport, Rhode
Island, to take her life. Andshe goes to this beautiful
hotel, and she thinks she's, Ithink she thinks she's gonna be
(07:01):
the only person there, but itis. There's a bride who's taken
over the whole wedding, and thatbride think she's taken over the
whole hotel, but she's actuallyleft one hotel room, and this
woman takes it. And so they havethis sort of Clash where this
woman figures out what she's upto, and she's like, No, no, no,
that's not happening at mywedding. And
Unknown (07:24):
then off yourself in the midst of my wedding party.
And
Amy Tyler (07:28):
then it becomes a bit of a rom com, and she gets
involved in the wedding, and Ithink gets pulled into the
wedding party. And it's the sortof, I think they are kind of
helping each other, and thewoman who's the bride is a
nightmare, bride. Bridezilla,yeah, Bridezilla. It's just kind
of, I think it's a light, darkcomedy. I was
Unknown (07:50):
gonna say, you said light. It starts out very dark,
because she's right. Myhusband's leaving me. I'm gonna
kill myself.
Amy Tyler (07:57):
But that's not happening, because Bridezilla
has got other plans. Okay, sothey and they form a friendship.
I think it's heartwarming andbut, you know, I have to say I
made a mistake, because thecover of the book shows these
hands coming out of an ocean,but they clearly have champagne.
And I know Champagne is what youthink of with at a wedding, but
(08:20):
I picked rose a because that'swhat I drink if I do go to a
wedding and it's summer. Andalso, I personally picked this
rose because I drink it and Iwant to hear what you have to
say about
Unknown (08:32):
it. Oh, okay, okay.
Well, I don't have it in frontof me, of course, because you're
there and I'm here, and you sentme a picture, and it's Canadian
wine. So the first book, give methe name and the and the author
again,
Amy Tyler (08:44):
real quick. It's the wedding people by Allison s
patch, and it came out July 30,2024
Unknown (08:53):
Okay, so it's a year old because now it's in
paperback, you can carry it inyour beach bag and not weigh
yourself down. All right. Nowreveal to us the wine that you
have in your glass, the winethat you're imagining having at
this wedding reception. I'm
Amy Tyler (09:07):
going to bring the bottle back. I just got out in
the fridge. It's called saintly,and the tagline is the good
rose, a what I wanted to do? Iwanted to pick a BC wine, just
because that's where I'm living.
And then I did ask the person atthe wine store, I said, could
you give me the closest you haveto a French rose, which is,
(09:29):
obviously, it's not a FrenchJose, but, and they said it
would be this one. Okay? And I'mrestraining myself because last
time I was on I asked if I couldput ice in my wine. And you kind
of, I could tell that wasn't I.
You said I could, but youweren't impressed, and so I am
not drinking really ice in mywine, my
Unknown (09:48):
usual, that's not my usual reaction, my usual
reaction. If it makes you likethe wine more than you should
put ice in your wine. Well, what
Amy Tyler (09:55):
you told me was it will not the flavors. It'll
obviously dilute it.
Unknown (09:59):
It'll. Diluted. And if you're drinking wine ice cold,
you're not only diluting it, butyou're also drinking it a lot
colder than your taste buds cancomprehend flavor if you, if you
drink anything really supercold, you won't taste all the
flavors because some of them aremuted by the chill on your
tongue. And that's that's just athat's just a physiological
(10:20):
fact, that's one reason that wedrink beer ice cold in this
country, is because when thewhen the breweries reopened
after Prohibition, prior toprohibition, there'd been a lot
of smaller breweries, like wehave now, micro breweries, and
then they all had to close, andprohibition came because they
didn't have anything else theycould do. But the big breweries,
(10:40):
they could mill grain and doother things, they stayed open.
And when they reopened afterProhibition, there were just a
few breweries, and they gottogether and said, hey, you
know, if we, if we really dumbdown our beer and make it with
cheaper ingredients, we can makea lot more money, and we'll just
convince people that they needto drink it ice cold. Because up
(11:03):
until that point, beer was beerwas served like it is in Europe,
kind of its cellar temperature.
You know, refrigeration is not athing that's been around
forever. That's so interesting.
People would drink beer that wasa little bit cold, but not ice
cold. So this new thing allabout icy cold beer, and all the
frosty mugs and all that stuffthat that came about through
some collusion with the largerbreweries who were trying to
(11:28):
cheapen their product, but notnot have anybody notice. So Hey,
chill the beer. You want a nicecold beer, don't you? It's a hot
day. You want a cold beer. Sothat is why, to this day, they
still market beer as, oh, it'sgot to be ice cold. But if you
go to micro brewery, you knowthey're, they're, they're not so
concerned that it's super,super, super cold, right? Okay,
(11:50):
interesting. Yeah, we just wenton a tangent there, didn't
we? It's the wine podcast that'snot all about wine. Amy, tell me
what's in your glass. Or did youalready say,
Amy Tyler (12:00):
yeah, it's saintly, is the Oh, that's right. And
it's, they're calling it thegood rose
Unknown (12:06):
a, the good rose a. And here it is, okay, I'm gonna take
a picture of you with the glassin your hand. And this is all
for the fine folks on theInstagram feed. Well, here's
what I think of it. I think thewine is probably fine. I just
(12:26):
couldn't find a lot ofinformation about it on the
winery website, because thewinery website was more like,
Hey, aren't we cool? Isn't thisamazing? Drink our wine. Yeah,
it's cool. Hey, you want a hat?
Hey, do you want a shirt? Hey,drink our wine. Aren't we cool?
Now, when I go on winerywebsites, I typically go to the
area, you know, you click on thelittle menu and it says, For the
trade, which means, if you're inthe trade, you sell the wine.
(12:50):
You want to you want quickaccess to something we call a
tech sheet that gives you allthe technical data for the wine
and in rose, what I want to knowis, what grape did you use? Rose
is made from red wine grapes.
There was no such animal on thisparticular website. It was
basically, Hey, isn't this cool?
Isn't this great? We're cool.
(13:12):
Isn't this rose cool? So Icouldn't get through the whole
marketing thing. It felt to melike they're just trying to make
something really hip and reallycool, and they don't, they don't
want you to nose around toomuch. They don't want you to
know. Maybe, maybe they don'twant you. Maybe they maybe don't
care. And they just don't careif you know what the what the
grapes are, or how it wasfermented. And then you told me
(13:34):
it came from BC. And on the onthe website, the only the good
rose a they had was fromOntario. So what I did was, and
this is two days ago, I emailedthem and said, Hey, I'm going to
feature your rose on my podcastI'm recording tomorrow, and I
would like some technicalinformation on this wine. And I
mentioned the confusion over theBC versus the Ontario, and I
(13:58):
didn't hear back from anybody.
So oh my goodness. I said, Couldyou please send me a text sheet?
And I didn't hear back fromanybody. So I hope it's good. If
it's good, if you like it, it'sgood. Okay, this is what Duke
Ellington said about music. Ifit sounds good, it is good,
Amy Tyler (14:13):
you know. Okay, I have a question for you. Okay,
so the the wine's fine, likeit's drinkable, it's it's nice.
I mean, it's not. It's just niceprice point. But the one thing I
will say about Rose is I don'tlike it when the rose is a deep
red. And is there anything tothat, or is it just, I don't it
(14:35):
doesn't appeal to the way itlooks to me. Is there anything
with the taste there, like Iautomatically feel like it's too
much or too sweet or too heavy,and I base a lot of it when it's
like a deep, orangey color. Iwas just curious if that's like
a kind of a placebo effect in mymind, or if there's, there could
be that, there
Unknown (14:55):
could definitely be that the color is, is a, see,
huge thing with wine. Peoplealways kind. Man on the wines
color. I work at a winery wherethe main red is Pinot Noir, and
Pinot Noir is the lightest colorof the red wine. And a lot of
times people say, Oh, look atthat color, because it's
different. And you can tell somepeople are like, Oh, it's so
late. And I say, you know, theynamed a color after that. And
(15:17):
they're like, What are youtalking about? I said, there's a
little region in France wherePinot Noir is the main thing.
And it's probably the most wellknown region of the world for
growing Pinot Noir. And thatregion is called burgundy.
There's a color, all right, soit's named after the color of
that wine, which is, can I gooff on a tangent? Ask another
(15:37):
question? Of course, let's keepgoing. But let me, let me finish
this one first. Okay, the colorof the rose is going to be
determined by how long they leftthe skins unprocessed, right?
So, Rose is made from red winegrapes. They throw the all the
grapes into a tank, and they letsome of the juice flow and get
in contact with the skin, andthe skin starts to turn pink. If
(15:59):
you just leave it in there andferment it for a few weeks.
You're going to have a red wine.
If you stop just a few hours in,and then you throw everything
into the press, the juice thatcomes out is going to be pink.
And then you will throw thatinto a big stainless steel tank
and ferment it like a whitewine. And your rose a will be
darker if they leave the wine onthe skins for a longer time, and
if they leave it on the skinsfor a longer time, it will begin
(16:20):
to feel more like a red wine,because it's getting more color
and flavor and texture andaroma. Okay, what the juice is
doing to the skin is one of myfavorite wine making terms,
extracting. It's pulling thecolor out of the skins. It's
pulling flavor, texture andaroma out of the skin. So the
longer you leave it in there,the darker your rose is going to
(16:42):
end up being, and the more likea red wine it's going to be. So
if you like a nice pale pink orpale salmon color rose, that
means you like a rose that's alittle more like a white wine
than a red wine. Okay, what'syour next question?
Amy Tyler (17:00):
I'm seeing at some wine bars around here. I went to
one down the street. They haveorange wine. And I'd never heard
of that before. I can't say Iloved it, but I thought it was
kind of cool and different. AndI just was wondering if that's
available where you are. And oh,yeah,
Unknown (17:18):
I've had, I've had a few orange wines. You see them
on the menu at wine bars thatare frequented by people. I
don't know what the Canadianterm for it is, hipsters. Oh,
younger people. The youngerpeople will talk about orange
wine, and the orange wineprocess is basically like that
(17:39):
process we just talked aboutwhere we dump all the grapes
into the tank and we let thingsferment. And that's why that's
the way you make red wine. Now,if you do that same thing with
certain white wines, leave theskins in there, some of them
will turn orange, and your winewill be orange. The next
question is, well, why haven'tthey ever done this before? It's
like, well, they have done itbefore, but it's just not
(18:02):
something that people are reallyinto. We have red wine that's
red. We have white wine that'swhite. We have pink wine made
from red wine grapes. Those arekind of the basic flavors this
orange wine just kind of comesand goes once in a while. It's
like, Hey, this is a thing thatnobody does. I'm like, well,
nobody does it for a reason.
I've had, I've, I've had only afew orange wines, and I haven't,
(18:27):
I can't say that. I can reallyembrace the concept they're not,
they're not terrible. But if I,if I'm given the choice of white
wine or red wine or pink wine ororange wine, orange wine is
going to be the last on thelist. Okay, good to know. Thank
you for asking. Okay, this hasbeen great. We're only like 20
minutes in, and we've alreadybeen venting about things. All
right. We're gonna get to somefun facts about the reading
(18:50):
habits of the general populationin a few minutes, but first, I
want you to tell us what thesecond book is.
Amy Tyler (18:59):
Go into a book that I have. I'm just I haven't read,
and I'm just so dying to readit. It's called, let's pull up
my notes table for two by Amytolls. Oh, and it's short
stories came out last year. He'san exceptional
Unknown (19:18):
novelist. He's somebody. He wrote a big book.
He wrote,
Amy Tyler (19:21):
What are you thinking of Jim and Moscow? Or yes,
that's his big book, right?
Well, there was one before thatthat kind of put him on the map,
called rules for civility. But Iactually think you might be
right. I think German Moscow wasthe one that, yeah, that
Unknown (19:36):
blew him, that blew him up big time.
Amy Tyler (19:38):
But he's unusual, because, as we you shared some
notes, people aren't reading asmuch as they did, or it's hard
to grab people's attention. Andhe is a literary novelist that's
also popular, so kind of likeAnn Patchett, if you know who
that is, and I do, and that kindof level of writing. Thing very
(20:00):
clever. He had a former careerin investment banking, kind of
came to the party a bit a bitlater, and he wrote this book
called Rules of Civility, andit's about kind of a Girl Friday
in, I think, the 30s, who is ina typing pool in New York City
and finding her way and ends upin the upper echelons of New
(20:24):
York society. But what wasamazing about it was the dialog,
and it's very snappy and fun andclever and very much reminiscent
of movies and from the 30s and40s. When
Unknown (20:38):
you said the dialog is snappy, I thought, Well, why
isn't there a movie? I don'tthink
Amy Tyler (20:41):
there is, actually, you'd think there would be, but
it's very good. And then aGentleman in Moscow is just an
exceptional book. It'sinteresting I say this. I mean,
I haven't heard this from otherpeople. So what that story is
about is about a count in the19, I think 1930s in Russia, who
(21:03):
writes a poem that's against thegovernment, so then he gets
locked up in a beautiful hoteljust for writing this poem. And
apparently that kind of thingactually happened. So what's
really unbelievable about it ishe's sort of in denial. He gets
up every morning and reads thepaper and puts on his outfit and
(21:24):
hangs out in this beautifulhotel, but he actually can't
leave. But what was interestingabout it, it did remind me. It
came out, let's say, eight yearsago. I'm not exactly sure. Yeah,
it was, it was pre COVID. I knewthat, but it reminded me of
COVID and,
Unknown (21:40):
Oh yeah, right,
Amy Tyler (21:42):
yeah, house arrest kind of a beautiful problem if
you were lucky enough to be homewith your family and have a nice
place to be, right? But yet,there's, it's there. It's kind
of a prison too. And
Unknown (21:55):
there's an underbelly, a sinister thing that's kind of
lurking, yeah,
Amy Tyler (21:59):
so he's written this book. He is from the New York
area. He lives in Gramercy Parkwith his wife, and it's short
stories. They all take place inNew York City, and they take
place at the turn of the intothe 21st Century. That's kind of
an interesting time to set abook, because it seems dated,
(22:21):
but we've all lived through it.
And it's, you know, fairlycurrent, you know, but it's like
the things that stand out, orthe phones that they're using,
or the way people arecommunicating.
Unknown (22:31):
Well, that was, that was that sort of hazy period
when not everybody had a cellphone. Some people right? Some I
didn't. Did not. I think I gotmine in 1998 but a lot of people
did not have them, and a lot ofpeople still had landlines. You
know, I have a phone at home.
Why do I need a phone in my car?
Amy Tyler (22:50):
The one thing that's interesting is, so it's a bunch
of short stories, but then it'salso a novella embedded in it.
And what he did was he took oneof the characters from that
first book, The Rules ofCivility, and sends them off to
Los Angeles to kind of maketheir way in Hall, I think,
Hollywood, and set at the timeof Gone With the Wind. And so he
(23:11):
plays with all like the thingsthat were going on at that time,
and the famous movie stars andthat whole land. And so I think
it would be a lot of fun forsummer.
Unknown (23:22):
I'm going to admit something, and I hate this,
really, it's the fact that I'mdown to about one book per year
as a reader, I suck. Whathappened to me? I went online a
couple days ago and did somepoking around, and what's
happening to us. Here's somesolace, maybe, if you're not
reading as much as you used toaccording to a 2022 Gallup
(23:43):
survey, Americans are readingfewer books and spending less
time reading in general. There'salso a book called How to read
now by Elaine Castillo, and shesays massive corporations have
basically captured thecapacities in us for reading,
that's social media, which iswhat I always blame for reading
(24:05):
fewer books. It's the scrolling.
Amy, it's the scrolling. It'strue. And 21% of adults in the
US are illiterate. I didn't knowit was that high
Amy Tyler (24:14):
that what is that?
Okay? Is that because maybe theyhave come to the country and
they're learning the language,or these people that have I'm
curious. That's
Unknown (24:24):
a good question. That's a good I just took this as some
raw data that was in a reportthat I read. But
Amy Tyler (24:29):
anyway, that's a high number. Regardless, it's
Unknown (24:31):
a pretty high number.
Considering the other the otherend of that is 79% of the
country can read, which is,well, that sounds great, but
shouldn't be higher than that.
2024 the average reading scoreson The Nation's Report Card
declined by two points for bothfourth and eighth grade students
compared to 2022 this steepensthe three point decline seen in
(24:54):
both grades between 2022 from2019 so we're not. Reading as
much, and the younger people arehaving a harder time reading and
focusing on things I have, well,my wife, she's a teacher, she
says it's hard to get kids toread anything that's printed on
paper.
Amy Tyler (25:12):
Well, you know, it's funny when I don't know if we've
talked about this before, but Ihave two grown sons, and so
what's interesting, when I wasgrowing up, a lot of the books
that I would read to me and Iread were quite old, because
that's just how it was. Like,one of the most popular books
was called a secret garden, andI think that was written in like
1900 but those books just kindof stuck around, and they're
(25:35):
classics. So I tried some ofthose books with my kids, and
they were like, I didn't evensay that they were from my
generation. And they were like,stop with the old timey books.
And so, you know, something likeCharlotte's Web, which is
amazing. Typically, if you goback and look at those books,
they have no problem spendingmany chapters before they get
(25:58):
exciting. And I remembered thateven then, but that doesn't work
anymore.
Unknown (26:04):
To jump off on a tangent, something that somebody
that still is in the radioindustry told me, you know, I
spent 15 years in radio as adisc jogging. There's this part
of most popular songs called theintro, where there's an
instrumental passage. It goes onfor a while, sometimes as long
as 30 seconds, which is justlike data, and then somebody
(26:27):
starts singing. And that's,that's what a lot of disc
jockeys enjoy talking over onlike top 40 radio. You know,
they they start the song, andthey start talking, telling you
what's, what's coming up on theshow. And then they say, Now,
the song by this person, andthen the vocal starts. Now,
songs have much, much shorterintros, or some have no intros
(26:50):
at all, because the intro is atune out. It's like, oh, there's
just music. I'm waiting for thelyrics. So the whole thing is,
it's a little off putting,because it just points to the
attention span of people ingeneral. In case you're
wondering, I read the vasterWilds by Lauren Groff back in
(27:13):
February, while I was onvacation in Washington, it
rained a lot, so I had some goodreading weather. Do you know
Lauren Groff? Do you know thatname? Yes,
Amy Tyler (27:21):
she wrote a big book, like a couple years ago. You're
gonna, do we know what it is?
Well,
Unknown (27:26):
the vaster Wilds was a pretty big book. It was on
Barack Obama's reading list from2023 I think. And I was going on
vacation, and I had read anotherbook by her called Arcadia that
came out a few years before,which was right up my alley,
because it was this sort of1970s story about people who
lived in a commune and then somebad things happened. And I just
(27:47):
love it when bad things happen.
Amy Tyler (27:49):
Well, yeah, it's not very fun if it's just going
along matrix. Matrix is the bookthat I'm aware of. I haven't
read it.
Unknown (27:56):
Lauren Groff matrix, I've not heard of that one,
although I'm not aware of herbooks, really, in general, I
just, I know that I likedArcadia, and then when I saw the
vaster wilds, which is a reallyinteresting story, but it's, I
don't want to say it's onedimensional, because, like you
said, literary fiction. This isit's written beautifully. The
prose, the descriptions, allthat stuff is amazing, but it's,
(28:20):
it follows uh, one characterthroughout the whole novel, and
this character is on the run.
And so it's all about what'shappening to them and what
they're thinking about it, andthe memories they're having
about how they ended up on therun. And It delves into
colonialism, and It delves intoall these other things that are
much, much, much, much, muchbigger picture things. So the
(28:41):
novel really touches a lot ofbases, but on its face, it's a
very simple novel about thiswoman who's on the run
interesting. That's the vasterWilds. So I read that in
February. That's my one bookthis year. There might be other
books. Maybe I'll read one ofyour books this summer. I'll try
and break
Amy Tyler (29:00):
away. Maybe, I think maybe you might want to read
table for two, possibly
Unknown (29:03):
awesome. Table for two.
Sounds great. I'll, you knowwhat, I'll go out and buy it
tomorrow, and that will make meread it. Because if I buy a
book, I have to read it, becauseI'm a guy who doesn't like to
waste money on stuff. Amy, doyou still have your official
Tom, like, wine, podcast,coasters? I
Amy Tyler (29:18):
don't, you know. I know you. I know you moved. Amy,
Unknown (29:21):
had a lot of, a lot of stuff happen to her the last
year or so. Had a lot of moved.
She moved, she got divorced, shechanged her name, although
Amy Tyler (29:29):
that's a problem. So I just got divorced, and I went
down to the so I live in adifferent country, and I call
DMV, but it's not that, it's thelicensing bureau. It's a long
story, but I My name is notchanged, but I still call myself
my name,
Unknown (29:44):
so it's official, because that's what I'm calling
you. Yes, that's Amy Tyler,that's right. If you need more
coasters, just send me your newaddress. Okay, mail you some
more coasters. I will do that,and that goes for you too. If
you would like your veryunofficial stack of tall mic
one. Podcast coasters. You cansend me an email. I just need
your address. My email is TomMike wine@gmail.com let's talk
(30:08):
about another book. Are we up tobook number three now? Yes,
okay. What is it?
Amy Tyler (30:14):
Okay? This book is called Real Americans by Rachel
Kong, and there's a couplereasons why I chose this. First,
the one of the reasons I chosethis, though I'm curious, do you
have because you have buzzsprout. Podcast is hosted by
Buzzsprout.
Unknown (30:32):
My podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout. That's the that's
the internet site that sends itout to all the apps. That's what
I upload it to, and that sendsit out to all the apps like
Amy Tyler (30:41):
the hosting site, anyway, they have this newish
thing called fan mail. And
Unknown (30:46):
that actually I did, I got a couple of texts from a
couple of people after one ofthe episodes that I did a few
months back with SpencerChristian the weatherman, they
just said, Hey, that's great.
That was great episode. Andit's, it's right there on my
homepage. If you are looking atthe notes. The first thing says,
hey, send me a text. But nobodysends me texts. So
Amy Tyler (31:05):
I got my first fan mail about this book, and I was
so excited from Lisa from LosAngeles. So Lisa from Los
Angeles, if you're listening,this is one of the reasons why I
recommended it, and she did. Itwas a while ago. It was in the
fall, but she read this book,and really wanted to hear what I
had to say about it. So I haveread it a little while ago. I
(31:26):
read it last year, and I read itbecause of her. The reason why
this is an interesting book,first that I think, is because
it is a family saga, and it isabout a Chinese American family
told over three generations.
It's got a bit of a mystery.
It's eerie, and there's a littlebit of genetic ethics in there,
(31:46):
which is kind of it's kind ofcreepy, and It delves into what
does it be to be American? It'sabout class, striving, race,
inheritance, and it'sinteresting, though, even in
just a year This book takes on.
There's a different vibe to itbased on what's happening
currently in the United States.
(32:08):
It's about so many things, butnow that the US has changed even
within that time, so it kind oftakes on in
Unknown (32:15):
the last couple of weeks. Amy, it's hard to keep
up.
Amy Tyler (32:21):
I can't keep up.
She's young. I mean, I call heryoung. She's 40, the author, and
so I like that she's kind of gota fresh way, a fresh way of
writing. I can't really put itin one specific genre, okay, I
just like the idea of what youdo know for sure is that things
are not exactly as they seem.
(32:41):
And it starts out, there's acharacter named Lily Chin, and
she's doing an internship in NewYork City, and she falls in love
with a very wealthy man namedMatthew Allen. But you just know
there's something kind of off,and you're not really sure why.
You're not told why, but youjust feel it, and it's a bit
eerie. And then she is ChineseAmerican, and then It delves
(33:05):
back into her family, goes back,going back three generations.
And then there's, there ends upbeing a connection between
Matthew and Lily that goes backbeyond before they met. So I
don't want to say too much more,because then I'll
Unknown (33:18):
reveal, right, yeah, don't, don't give us the big
plot twists. But I think thatit's, it's eerie. I love that.
Eerie is great. I think I justbumped Amy tools out of the top
spot. Okay, I'm gonna buy thisbook tomorrow. Okay,
Amy Tyler (33:34):
real
Unknown (33:35):
Americans, that's right. And what's the name of
the author? Again? Rachel Kong,okay, real Americans. I love it.
I love it. It sounds amazing.
Now it's time to reel what is inmy glass. Okay, my glass
tonight. The wine has nothing todo with books. It's a it's a
wine from Italy. I'm sure theyread books in Italy. So, yeah,
(33:55):
it has everything to do withbooks. This is a wine we're
actually checking in with a wineI had on the podcast about two
years ago. I found a wineonline, and it had this amazing
picture on the label. And therewill be a picture on my
Instagram. So if you want to seethe label of this wine, and it's
a cool picture of a guy withsunglasses on, and if you look
(34:17):
in his sunglasses, in thereflection, there is piano, and
he's got his hands on the piano.
And I thought, you know, that'sreally cool. I very rarely buy
wine based just on the label,but it was a Cabernet from
Italy. So I thought that'sinteresting, because there
aren't a lot of straight upCabernets coming out of Italy
there. There are some wines thathave Cabernet blended in. So I
(34:38):
bought a few bottles of thiswine, and I liked it. I liked it
a lot. And then I did someresearch on this wine, which I
often do, and I found out thepicture of the really cool guy
on the label is Thelonious Monk,the jazz guy. And I thought,
well, that's more interesting.
Now, the name of the wine islegit, legit Cabernet Sauvignon,
and it's from Tuscany. It'sactually. The IGT, Toscana Raso,
(34:59):
which means it's, it's not ait's not officially ordained by
the government as one of theirmain wines. It's an IGT, which
means, oh, yes, wine we make,but we don't really have a
classification for it, so wejust call it an IGT. All the
super Testaments are in thatsame category, but this is 100%
Cabernet. So, you know, I Iwondered a little bit about this
(35:21):
wine, like, why do they useThelonious Monk, and how do they
use the picture of TheloniousMonk on the label? So I reached
out to somebody at the importerhere in the United States to
tell me a little bit more. Andthey hooked me up with the woman
who's in Tuscany, whose fatherfounded the winery, and I heard
all about it, and we talked. Wehad a nice conversation via
(35:43):
zoom. She was in Tuscany. Thatis an episode from about two
years ago called all that jazz.
Leah Banville, whose father isthe guy that founded the winery
tolaini, and his story isinteresting too. Do you want to
hear it? Yes. Okay, Leah, whochatted with me on the podcast
couple of years ago. Her fatheris Pier Luigi torlaini, who is a
(36:07):
native of Tuscany, and heimmigrated to Canada. Oh Canada
in 1956 he planned to work for afew years, make some money, then
go back to buy a farm and marryhis high school sweetheart and
make some good wine in Italy. Hedidn't go back to Italy for 45
years. He ended up starting towork in Canada, making some good
money. He made some connections.
He started a whole big businessfor himself, and he did very,
(36:30):
very, very well 45 years later,as he's an older man, he goes
back to Tuscany and does buy afarm and begins to make wine. So
that is why we have a winerycalled tolaini, because of
Pierluigi, who's no longer withus, but his daughter, Leah, runs
the winery now. She wasdelightful to talk to about her
(36:52):
father and the story and thehistory. And if you want to look
back through my podcast, you'llfind it a couple of years ago.
So I had this wine legit. Ithink, I think the wine that I
was having was like from 2013 or2014 or something, and I was
enjoying it. I put a whole bunchof bottles of it and drank it
for a few weeks. And then just afew weeks ago, I was at Costco,
and guess who was staring at mefrom the Costco wine shelf, none
(37:16):
other than Thelonious Monk.
There was the legit Cabernet atCostco. And I thought, Oh,
that's interesting. I wouldnever have imagined that wine
would show up at Costco, but itdid. So I bought a bottle. It
was $20 I thought, I'm going tocheck in with Thelonious Monk.
(37:37):
So this is the wine that I havein my glass. This is the 2020,
edition of the legit cab fromtolaini. And it's it's really
delicious. It's an easy drinkingcab. And I would expect a 2020,
cab to be a lot more tannic thanthis is, but the tannins have
smoothed down, and it's quitenice. It's all about red and
black, fruit on the nose, littlebit of floral. It's probably a
(38:00):
cab for people who say theydon't like cab because it's too
uh, something too tannic, toodry, too harsh, because the
tannins here are all nice andsmoothed down, so it's
delicious. Here's what someother people say about the legit
cab. 2020. From tolaini WineSpectator gave it 93 points.
(38:22):
Keep in mind, I just bought thisCostco for 20 bucks. Not bad.
Another website, Venus gave it93 points. It's 100% cab, by the
way, and Venus says it's brightand nicely focused with plenty
of varietal character, marriedto Tuscan energy. God, I wish
I'd have wrote that RobertParker's wine advocate gave it
(38:44):
91 points. Wine Enthusiast, 91points. James suckling another
guy gave it 91 points. It'spretty delicious, and I'm
impressed that I got it atCostco for 20 bucks. Because if
you go on a wine or a winewebsite that sells wine and find
it, it's like 45 so not only isit delicious, I got it on a
deal, and I love that. I lovethat more than almost anything,
(39:06):
really. Are we ready to move on?
Yes. Go ahead. One question
Amy Tyler (39:09):
about the label.
Okay, so the label is, you see,a lot of these kind of labels
where they're just sort ofhaving fun, have a clever name,
and even the wine I'm drinking,you know, they're calling it
saintly.
Unknown (39:22):
That's kind of the epitome, the epitome of that,
like, hey, a fun label, butlet's sell some wine.
Amy Tyler (39:28):
But when I think of Italy, like, it just seems like
a classic place to sell wine.
Why aren't they selling Italy? Isee why they would do that in
British Columbia, because theydo that all the time, because
it's not known. You're not knownfor wine here. So why? Why have
that kind of bold, fun label andname, when you could really have
something kind of classic andjust sell that whole idea of old
(39:50):
Italy or something I don't know.
I'm just
Unknown (39:55):
curious my opinion on that, and it is an in line with
the whole conversation we hadjust a few minutes ago. About
reading and how people don'thave the attention span, and how
the what we have come to know asthe tradition is really not
something that people in thenext few generations coming up
after us really give two shitsabout. Okay, you know, the wine
(40:16):
industry is shrinking in theUnited States because the baby
boomers are aging out of wine,because they're just getting
older, they can't drink as muchwine as they used to. And the
baby boom generation was ageneration that allowed the wine
industry to grow and grow andunlimited growth, basically, for
many decades, and now they'reaging out. And the generations
(40:37):
after them are like, yeah, wine,whatever. That's grandpa stuff.
So this, this whole traditionthing, it's just not as hip as
something that the youngergeneration, the Instagram
generation, wants something alittle more flashy, a little
more like, tell me what I needto know, not what my dad used to
know. That kind of thing. Theythey found this actually. Leah
(40:59):
told me the synergy story. Shesaid that they made this wine
and they weren't sure what to dowith it, because they had the
idea, let's make a cab from thisparticular part of our vineyard,
because it's going to bedelicious. And it turned out to
be delicious. They they let alot of people taste it, and they
said, that's really legit. It'sa legit cab, you know, that's
where the name came from. Andthen her son said, I think I've
got an idea for this. And he wasthe one that came up with this
(41:21):
picture of Thelonious Monk,which is from a very famous
Concert Poster. And theycontacted the estate of
Thelonious Monk and gotpermission to use it as the
label. So I think it's one ofthose things where the baton is
being passed from generation togeneration, and things are going
to be a little different thanwhat we are used to and we
expect, and what we think aboutwine and tradition and all of
(41:45):
those things. The wine is tasty,by the way. Did I mention that?
You did? I'm loving it. And I'mlike, Oh, look at that. It's
nighttime. I'm drinking thisbottle. All right. When are you
gonna come back to Sonoma again?
Amy,
Amy Tyler (42:00):
well, I am actually coming to Sam. Well, I do come
down to Central Coast fairlyregularly to see my mom, but I
am coming to San Francisco inthe fall for a wedding. Okay, my
niece is getting married. Oh,how lovely. We can meet up,
because I'm gonna be in Sonoma.
We could hopefully make meet up.
So we'll see.
Unknown (42:20):
Yeah, if you make some time, we can record another
episode of the podcast, or wecan or we can just go to dinner
and get silly. Okay, either ofthose things would be fine with
me. Amy and I met a few yearsback. It must have been 2021,
the year that I started thepodcast at the winery Nicholson
ranch. Was that a girls trip? Itwas a girls trip. One of my
(42:43):
coworkers came up to me and shesaid, and she pointed across the
courtyard. She said, she has apodcast, and pointing you out
across the courtyard. Very soonyou were on the show. So right,
yeah, it's time to it's time toget you back down here in
person, because we've done a fewof these zoom things, which is
nice, but in person, muchbetter. We'll go out to dinner,
(43:05):
we'll get silly, and I'll talkabout it on the podcast. Okay,
sounds good, all right. Now isthis book number three, book
number four. Book number four.
Look at that. I've drank enoughlegit Cabernet where I've lost
count.
Amy Tyler (43:18):
So this book, you're not gonna have heard of it, and
that's kind of exciting, becauseI love to sort of tell you about
a book you don't know about, andI
Unknown (43:28):
haven't I you know.
Okay, so let's take let's keeptrack here. I haven't heard of
two of the books. Actually, Ihaven't heard of any of the
books you've talked about sofar, but I have heard of the one
author and
Amy Tyler (43:38):
merchant of the one author. What's neat about the
book that I've selected is I amdoing some work with the
Canadian book club awards, andI'm talking to their winners.
And this particular author isone of the winners. She's
written a mystery thriller. Ireally liked it a lot, and so I
wanted to tell you about it,because I think you always need
(43:59):
to have a little mystery in yourbeach bag. And the story here,
it's called Fortune favors thedead. And the author is Susan
Jane Wright. It's a classicmystery. You can tell that the
author has read a lot of them.
There's a heroine that you canget behind. It takes place at
the Banff Springs Hotel. Haveyou ever heard of that
Unknown (44:21):
hotel? I've heard of Banff, but not of the particular
hotel
Amy Tyler (44:25):
to kind of set the scene, the Canadian National
railroad, when it formed,started to throw up these very
gorgeous over the top hotels. Sopeople have places to stay, and
they all kind of look the same.
There's stone there. A lot ofthem look like a chateau. One of
them was the site of an AlfredHitchcock movie. It's in Quebec
(44:49):
City. The Empress is very famousin Victoria. Love the Empress
Hotel, yeah. So there, if youknow that hotel, there. All kind
of like that stately, stately,you know, when you have a murder
mystery, it's always good tohave, um, like a manor home or a
fancy hotel, like an oldfashioned setting, there's lots
(45:12):
of places to hide. So whathappens is, the protagonist is
her name is Evie Valentine. Andthis is the third in a series.
In the series, so she's theheroine, and this is the third
mystery series that this woman'swritten, and she is gone to
celebrate her favorite lawprofessor. His name is Finn
(45:35):
tanberg. Interestingly, on theback of the book, it says the
wine is uncorked. But I didn'tpick it because it didn't say
what wine the food is waiting tobe served. So what happens?
There's this big ballroom andthey're all getting ready to
celebrate him, and he doesn'tshow up. No. So he's been
murdered. And then the storyfollows, like, what's happened?
(46:01):
It's set in Alberta, and itinvolves a visit to Drumheller,
which is a major archeologicalsite where there's dinosaur
bones. It invites, involves therare gem and Jewel trade. And
then, specifically, there is aI've seen it actually it's, I
guess we call it a jewel or astone. It's called ammonite, and
(46:25):
it's from Alberta, and it's madefrom fossils, from, I think,
snails or something. But theresult is very it's like a looks
like a rainbow. It's not reallymy, I wouldn't choose it, but
it's kind of amazing. It's like,Yellow, Green, Blue, all the
stone. Anyway, it's a classicmystery, and this woman has a
(46:46):
background in anthropology andlaw, and it's a page turner, and
there's a little bit of humor.
So I think it's just kind of afun little read. And I love,
like, I don't like horror, but Ido love a murder mystery.
Because for me, I never getcaught up, like when the person
falls off the balcony is happenshere. I don't get caught up in
(47:07):
that. That doesn't bother me. Ijust figure that's like, it's
not even real. It's all thethings that happen.
Unknown (47:13):
Just part of the story, you have to have a murder, and
the murder is going to happen.
Somehow it's going to happen.
It's all about, how do theyfigure out who done it? Yeah.
Oh, and
Amy Tyler (47:22):
then there's also a natural disaster that could
happen. There's there's a floodthat might stop everything. So
they have to figure out what'shappened before the flood
happens. So in the front of thebook, you can see there's rising
water. So liked a lot tell methe name again, Fortune favors
the dead. Okay? By Susan, JaneWright, well,
Unknown (47:41):
thank you so much for your recommendations. Thank you.
There will be another bookthemed episode of the podcast
coming soon. Have you heard ofthis guy? My pal, Adam Roberts,
no. He's a food blogger. He goesby the name of the Amateur
Gourmet. I've been following himsince the early 2000s and I had
him on the I had him on the showbecause once I got the podcast
up and running, I wanted peopleon the show that I thought were
(48:03):
interesting. And he's a foodie.
He's a guy who cooks a lot blogsabout it. He worked for Food
Network for a short time. He's aformer law student who got, you
know, he went to law schoolbecause his, you know, basically
his parents told him to go tolaw school, and then he decided
he hated it and started teachinghimself how to cook. He started
blogging in the early days ofblogging, and then he went to
Juilliard and got a master'sdegree in playwriting, and
(48:25):
eventually he wrote a novel, andhe has his first novel out. It's
called Food person. And I wastrying to get him on the show
before he went on his book tour,but I was unsuccessful. Now he's
back from his book tour. So I'mhoping to have him on the show
sometime soon. But look that up,food person by Adam Roberts.
That might be something for youto check out. It sounds like a
(48:48):
fun, fun book. Okay, all right.
You putting it on your listthere. Okay, good. So your
podcast, the Red Fern bookreview podcast, now has a
sponsor, as you just mentioned.
How did that come about? Whatdoes it mean? Does it mean for
you?
Amy Tyler (49:03):
So they approached me. So in truth be told, I have
been I've had some life eventshappen, so I've been a bit
distracted. Yes, we talked aboutit, and then I've done I've had
to work on more paying work, soI'm doing more editing writing.
But they approached me and wetalked about it, and they
needed, and wanted a Canadianbook podcaster to talk about,
(49:28):
it's Canadian book club awards.
I said, Sure, I've actuallynever done this before. I'm
curious if you have two. I justdid it, and it went really well,
but I was pretty nervous. Ijuggled four authors together.
In fact, there should have beenfive, but he didn't, oh, that
was the, that was the episodeyou just put out. Yeah, three.
Sorry, three authors supposed tohave been four, but it was, you
know what? It went really well.
(49:49):
And you know why it went wellwas because they were all so
excited, because they've justpublished their books, and they
were kind of all exchanginginformation. It was
Unknown (49:58):
kind of self perpetuating, kind. Conversation
among the three of them, that'sright?
Amy Tyler (50:02):
And at one point, which I cut this out, they kind
of forgot I was there, right?
And I didn't mind that. Ithought, Well, that's good,
because they're all, you'redoing
Unknown (50:11):
a great job if you facilitated the conversation to
the point where the guests, Ican't imagine having multiple
guests. You know, when you seeit on TV, when there's all these
boxes, yeah, all these people,and they're like, let's talk
about this person. Let's talk toyou. Now, what do you think
that's not what I want to do.
But no, the episode was great. Ilike the way they were all
talking to each other and kindof bouncing off each other, and
congratulations to you for forputting something like that
(50:33):
together.
Amy Tyler (50:35):
Thanks. It was fun. I mean, I really enjoyed it, but I
was surprised because I wasn'treally looking forward to
juggling multiple people.
Someone gave me some advice,because initially what I was
doing was just kind of askingeach person, trying to spotlight
each person, and someone said tome, why don't you figure out
some commonality? Each questionshould apply to more than one of
them, and then
Unknown (50:57):
that sure they're all authors, so there's questions
that will apply to all of them,sure,
Amy Tyler (51:02):
but find something that they had in common, and it
kind of went from there.
Unknown (51:07):
That was a fun listen.
Thank you. That's the latestepisode, right? Yeah, Amy's
podcast is the Red Fern bookreview podcast. It's available
wherever you find podcasts. Thatwas a great selection of books,
potential summer reads. Arethere some podcasts you're
looking forward to catching upon this summer? Are there
podcasts you hear about andthink, oh, I should check that
out and then just don't getaround to it, because who has
(51:28):
that much time, right?
Amy Tyler (51:30):
Well, what I wanted to do, I wanted to recommend two
that I've just gotten into thatI don't think everyone's
listening to that. Maybe youmight like one is Monica
Lewinsky has a podcast. Oh, I itis really good. What's it
called? It's, in fact, it makesme cry. It's amazing. It's
called reclaiming, okay, it'sactually really good. She just
(51:53):
has a variety of people on whathappened to her comes up, but
it's more what I find veryinteresting is everybody on that
automatically comes on and issuper vulnerable with her
because of what
Unknown (52:07):
she's been through, right, right? What she is famous
for, she doesn't come
Amy Tyler (52:11):
across as bitter, you know, she's moved on with her
life, but, but that's, you know,it's just a fascinating thing,
because she is known everywhereshe goes, and she struggled to
get jobs. She hasn't, yeah, I'msure, I'm sure, her term
relationship, but she's, she's,hasn't had a lot of things
happen that probably would havehappened for her, but she's a
(52:32):
very good interviewer. And thenthe other one that I really like
is David Duchovny has podcast,and it's really good. He went to
Yale. He's kind of got this. Hedoes not have an energetic
personality, but he's
Unknown (52:47):
very low, low energy.
Is that what you're saying?
Amy Tyler (52:51):
Kind of low energy, but has really cool people on,
has really cool discussions.
Okay? It's called fail better.
And the idea is to fail, Ithink, quickly and often. So one
he just had on, James fry. Doyou know who that is? So that's
really interesting. So James fryhas on a new has a new book out,
and they had a reallyinteresting conversation. I
Unknown (53:13):
had heard about that because there was some, you
know, headline somewhere aboutJames fry and what he was, what
he's also very infamous for,
Amy Tyler (53:21):
for people that don't know you probably do know. It
depends, I guess maybe on yourage. He wrote a book. It was
picked by Oprah, and he wroteabout his drug addiction. But it
turns out that it he majorly
Unknown (53:34):
embellished, certain Yeah, it was, it was, it was, to
a certain extent, a phony story.
Amy Tyler (53:40):
Well, it's interesting, though, because he
talks about, now there's a termfor it, called Auto fiction, and
he says, I kind of coined that.
But it is interesting. It isinteresting. He did lie, but it
is a little bit about theindustry itself, and it's a
whole bunch of things. You know,he's had a lot happen, but it
was a really good
Unknown (54:01):
conversation. What's the David Duchovny podcast?
Called, again, called failbetter. I was hoping it was
called, The truth is out there,Scully.
Amy Tyler (54:10):
And you know, of course, where that? You know, of
course, where the X Files wasfilmed? Was it in
Unknown (54:15):
Vancouver? Yes, I didn't know that. Truth be told,
I never watched The X Files.
Amy Tyler (54:19):
Well, people got mad at him because he used someone
asked him, How do you likeVancouver? And he says, It rains
too much. Oh, yeah. And theneveryone got mad at him here,
but, I mean, it does rain a lothere. I mean,
Unknown (54:30):
rains a lot there. I you know, I'm from Seattle. It's
the same kind of thing.
Amy Tyler (54:34):
It's a true thing.
Unknown (54:37):
I don't know. He's just telling you the truth.
Amy Tyler (54:40):
It rains all the time. Well, that's true.
Unknown (54:42):
Thanks for coming back on the show. Well, thanks for
having me, even though ourpresident is an idiot who thinks
Canada should be the 51st state.
What do they think up thereabout that?
Amy Tyler (54:50):
Well, I'm gonna try to stay out of the politics. But
what I will say, I do like ourthe new prime minister. Oh,
yeah. And there's a I will say.
There are a couple of funny ifpeople want to Google it.
There's a funny little videowhere he's in a lineup. It was
at the g7 conference, and he'sstanding next to Macron and
Trump is talking, and he turnsover and does a very, very
(55:12):
subtle wink at I just also sawanother video of him dancing. He
enjoys live music, and so Ithought that was kind of fun,
that he's a person.
Unknown (55:24):
And what I say a lot of the times is it's a good thing
there is wine.
Amy Tyler (55:30):
Yes, it's true.
Unknown (55:33):
The tall Mike wine podcast was conceived and is
written, produced, edited andmaintained by yours truly, to
see behind the scenes picturesof all the wine and my
continuing mastery of reels.
Follow me on Instagram at talmlike wine. How about some
official tall Mike wine podcastcoasters? Send me an email, and
I'll get some out to you. Theemail is tall Mike
(55:56):
wine@gmail.com now I'd like youto seriously consider becoming a
paid sponsor of the show, just afew bucks a month, three, 510,
well, 10, if you're someone inthat tax bracket, it will help
out a lot. You know? What elsewould help you? Sharing this
podcast with a friend. If youlike this episode, share it with
(56:17):
your bookish friends, or yourWino friends, ideally, you have
friends who are both, and besure you're subscribed, because
there'll be a new episode comingsoon. For now, thanks to Amy
Tyler for hanging out and thankyou for hanging out. I'm Mike
stone. Keep swirling. Keepsniffing, keep sipping. Cheers.
(56:39):
You.
Coming up on the tall Mike wine podcast, Hey,
Unknown (00:06):
aren't we cool? Isn't this amazing? Drink our wine?
Yeah, it's cool. Hey, you want ahat? Hey, do you want a shirt?
Hey, drink our wine. Aren't wecool? It's the scrolling. Amy,
it's the scrolling. It's true.
So not only is it delicious, Igot another deal, and I love
that. I love that more thanalmost anything.
Amy Tyler (00:24):
And now the toll like wine podcast,
Unknown (00:30):
the cell phones have been silenced, the wine is
poured, and just like that, thepodcast begins, the Tull Mike
wine podcast, the wine podcast,that's not all about wine. If it
were all about wine, even Iwouldn't listen to it. Say
nothing of hosting it, and I amthe host, the namesake tall guy
(00:54):
who brings you the show, thewine podcast like no other,
heard on six continents, in 89countries, and 48 of these
United States, coast to coast,from Kirkland, Washington to
Leesburg, Virginia, from FortWorth, Texas to Sterling
Heights, Michigan, where, ifyou're sitting in traffic on
(01:14):
mound road, I thank you forjoining us and wherever you are,
many thanks for lending me yourears. I hope you're subscribed
to the podcast so you don't missout when there's a new episode.
Also a five star rating would becool. I know five stars so
limiting, but I don't make therules. And now you can show your
(01:34):
love for the podcast in the formof dollars. Become a sponsor and
help keep the podcast commercialfree. Click the support the show
link in the show notes to findout more, and thank you in
advance for the help. Now it'stime to roll into the podcast
with my guest who's joining usvia zoom. I'm here at my dining
room table in Novato,California, and she is in
(01:57):
Vancouver. BC, yes, she'sCanadian. She's making her third
appearance on the podcast. She'sthe host of the Red Fern book
review podcast, and she's justback from tennis camp. Please
welcome Amy Tyler, and Happybelated Canada Day to you and
welcome back to the podcast.
Amy Tyler (02:18):
Hi Mike. It's good to be here. Well,
Unknown (02:21):
I'm so happy to have you. How was camp? How is your
tennis game?
Amy Tyler (02:26):
Camp was good two hours away in Whistler British
Columbia, and we did somethingcalled live ball. So if anyone's
listening and plays a lot oftennis, they'll know about it.
I'd actually never played itbefore. It's kind of like, I
don't want to say dodge ballwhen you were a kid, but
basically, there's a king of thecourt, so you there's a somewhat
a pro, throws the ball in, andif you miss, then you're out,
(02:51):
and then someone moves up.
Unknown (02:52):
You're not standing on one side of the room with a
tennis racket in your hand, withpeople on the other side of the
room with tennis rackets, andeverybody's pinging balls at
each other. It's
Amy Tyler (03:00):
like one game with people jumping in live ball.
It's called live ball.
Unknown (03:05):
Okay, that's that sounds cool. I'm sure I can find
video on YouTube,
Amy Tyler (03:09):
but because we're not 16, at tennis camp, we did
tennis camp in the morning, andthen we went to the pool and we
went out for dinner. And you
Unknown (03:16):
had some nice dinners, had some good dinners with some
nice wine. Maybe
Amy Tyler (03:21):
had some nice wine, Canadian wine, yes. And I
shouldn't say this at therestaurants, but you can't get,
well, I don't know aboutcurrently, but you can't always
get American wine at the storesnow,
Unknown (03:32):
yeah, yeah, because somebody decided they wanted to
take the economy down into thetoilet where he came from, and
do all this mucking around withwith tariffs, but we don't have
to talk about that. Okay, itsounds like you had a good time.
I did. This might seem a bitlate to the game, but we are
here to make summer bookrecommendations. We had such a
(03:53):
good time last year. We justdidn't get the episode up and
running, and now the summer hasbegun. But if you have yet to
pick a few good reads forvacation. We've got suggestions.
Well, Amy does. I'm just here toride her coattails. We will also
make a wine connection. So stickaround for some wine geekery.
How many books do you have totell us about? We're going to
(04:13):
talk about four books today. Andhow do you go about selecting
the why the books? What's theprocess like? How do you pick
them? I almost said, how do yougo about selecting the wines,
which is what people ask meabout the podcast. How do you
how do you pick the books?
Amy Tyler (04:28):
This time, when I did one thing I thought about is not
to have a hardback because justalso, it's summer, you might
want to get to the beach, right?
It's a little less expensive,actually, though not that much
less expensive, but so I went.
Most of the books have been outfor a year, because, if you may
already know this, but bookscome out in hardback, and
(04:48):
they're in hardback for oneyear. Some come straight to
people. I
Unknown (04:51):
didn't I didn't know that they it was a year. Some
are released in trade paperback,which is a bigger form of the
paperback, right? Some don't goto hardcover. Some
Amy Tyler (04:59):
never. Do. But most of the books I picked had, you
know, I picked a mystery becauseI figured someone wants that. I
picked a family saga becausepeople like that, and it has a
little science stuff in it, so Ithought that would be good for
anyone in the family. And it'ssort of hard to find book that
crossover. So a husband and wifeor two partners could probably
(05:21):
both could like this book thatI'm going to recommend. And then
I did a full on beach read,because I think you always need
to have
Unknown (05:28):
that something a little saucy, yeah.
Amy Tyler (05:31):
Oh, and then another one's just a personal favorite
author. And I pick short storiesbecause I think those are very
digestible in the summer. Sureyou can
Unknown (05:41):
set it down. Come back to it. Set it down because you
got other things. You got otherthings going on. All right,
let's, let's, let's get into thefirst book. I'm going to queue
up some nice bookish music.
Amy Tyler (05:56):
So the first book I'm going to recommend is the full
on beach read, and it's alsocorresponds. Oh, am I allowed to
say that? So the wine I pickedgoes with this book, or does
that matter? Which
Unknown (06:07):
is, like, that's totally fine. That's great,
because you're going to revealthe wine at the end of this
review. Okay, okay, thisparticular book, then we'll talk
about the wine that's in yourglass.
Amy Tyler (06:16):
So this book is called the wedding people. Just
even the name, you know it'sgoing to be a beach read by
Allison s patch. And I'm notsure if that's how you pronounce
your name, but the story is,it's a book about her. Name is
this woman's name, Phoebe, andshe's an English professor, and
(06:39):
she wakes up one morning, andher husband is left her for
another woman, and she's superdespondent and depressed, and
she's living in St Louis, so shedecides to go to Newport, Rhode
Island, to take her life. Andshe goes to this beautiful
hotel, and she thinks she's, Ithink she thinks she's gonna be
(07:01):
the only person there, but itis. There's a bride who's taken
over the whole wedding, and thatbride think she's taken over the
whole hotel, but she's actuallyleft one hotel room, and this
woman takes it. And so they havethis sort of Clash where this
woman figures out what she's upto, and she's like, No, no, no,
that's not happening at mywedding. And
Unknown (07:24):
then off yourself in the midst of my wedding party.
And
Amy Tyler (07:28):
then it becomes a bit of a rom com, and she gets
involved in the wedding, and Ithink gets pulled into the
wedding party. And it's the sortof, I think they are kind of
helping each other, and thewoman who's the bride is a
nightmare, bride. Bridezilla,yeah, Bridezilla. It's just kind
of, I think it's a light, darkcomedy. I was
Unknown (07:50):
gonna say, you said light. It starts out very dark,
because she's right. Myhusband's leaving me. I'm gonna
kill myself.
Amy Tyler (07:57):
But that's not happening, because Bridezilla
has got other plans. Okay, sothey and they form a friendship.
I think it's heartwarming andbut, you know, I have to say I
made a mistake, because thecover of the book shows these
hands coming out of an ocean,but they clearly have champagne.
And I know Champagne is what youthink of with at a wedding, but
(08:20):
I picked rose a because that'swhat I drink if I do go to a
wedding and it's summer. Andalso, I personally picked this
rose because I drink it and Iwant to hear what you have to
say about
Unknown (08:32):
it. Oh, okay, okay.
Well, I don't have it in frontof me, of course, because you're
there and I'm here, and you sentme a picture, and it's Canadian
wine. So the first book, give methe name and the and the author
again,
Amy Tyler (08:44):
real quick. It's the wedding people by Allison s
patch, and it came out July 30,2024
Unknown (08:53):
Okay, so it's a year old because now it's in
paperback, you can carry it inyour beach bag and not weigh
yourself down. All right. Nowreveal to us the wine that you
have in your glass, the winethat you're imagining having at
this wedding reception. I'm
Amy Tyler (09:07):
going to bring the bottle back. I just got out in
the fridge. It's called saintly,and the tagline is the good
rose, a what I wanted to do? Iwanted to pick a BC wine, just
because that's where I'm living.
And then I did ask the person atthe wine store, I said, could
you give me the closest you haveto a French rose, which is,
(09:29):
obviously, it's not a FrenchJose, but, and they said it
would be this one. Okay? And I'mrestraining myself because last
time I was on I asked if I couldput ice in my wine. And you kind
of, I could tell that wasn't I.
You said I could, but youweren't impressed, and so I am
not drinking really ice in mywine, my
Unknown (09:48):
usual, that's not my usual reaction, my usual
reaction. If it makes you likethe wine more than you should
put ice in your wine. Well, what
Amy Tyler (09:55):
you told me was it will not the flavors. It'll
obviously dilute it.
Unknown (09:59):
It'll. Diluted. And if you're drinking wine ice cold,
you're not only diluting it, butyou're also drinking it a lot
colder than your taste buds cancomprehend flavor if you, if you
drink anything really supercold, you won't taste all the
flavors because some of them aremuted by the chill on your
tongue. And that's that's just athat's just a physiological
(10:20):
fact, that's one reason that wedrink beer ice cold in this
country, is because when thewhen the breweries reopened
after Prohibition, prior toprohibition, there'd been a lot
of smaller breweries, like wehave now, micro breweries, and
then they all had to close, andprohibition came because they
didn't have anything else theycould do. But the big breweries,
(10:40):
they could mill grain and doother things, they stayed open.
And when they reopened afterProhibition, there were just a
few breweries, and they gottogether and said, hey, you
know, if we, if we really dumbdown our beer and make it with
cheaper ingredients, we can makea lot more money, and we'll just
convince people that they needto drink it ice cold. Because up
(11:03):
until that point, beer was beerwas served like it is in Europe,
kind of its cellar temperature.
You know, refrigeration is not athing that's been around
forever. That's so interesting.
People would drink beer that wasa little bit cold, but not ice
cold. So this new thing allabout icy cold beer, and all the
frosty mugs and all that stuffthat that came about through
some collusion with the largerbreweries who were trying to
(11:28):
cheapen their product, but notnot have anybody notice. So Hey,
chill the beer. You want a nicecold beer, don't you? It's a hot
day. You want a cold beer. Sothat is why, to this day, they
still market beer as, oh, it'sgot to be ice cold. But if you
go to micro brewery, you knowthey're, they're, they're not so
concerned that it's super,super, super cold, right? Okay,
(11:50):
interesting. Yeah, we just wenton a tangent there, didn't
we? It's the wine podcast that'snot all about wine. Amy, tell me
what's in your glass. Or did youalready say,
Amy Tyler (12:00):
yeah, it's saintly, is the Oh, that's right. And
it's, they're calling it thegood rose
Unknown (12:06):
a, the good rose a. And here it is, okay, I'm gonna take
a picture of you with the glassin your hand. And this is all
for the fine folks on theInstagram feed. Well, here's
what I think of it. I think thewine is probably fine. I just
(12:26):
couldn't find a lot ofinformation about it on the
winery website, because thewinery website was more like,
Hey, aren't we cool? Isn't thisamazing? Drink our wine. Yeah,
it's cool. Hey, you want a hat?
Hey, do you want a shirt? Hey,drink our wine. Aren't we cool?
Now, when I go on winerywebsites, I typically go to the
area, you know, you click on thelittle menu and it says, For the
trade, which means, if you're inthe trade, you sell the wine.
(12:50):
You want to you want quickaccess to something we call a
tech sheet that gives you allthe technical data for the wine
and in rose, what I want to knowis, what grape did you use? Rose
is made from red wine grapes.
There was no such animal on thisparticular website. It was
basically, Hey, isn't this cool?
Isn't this great? We're cool.
(13:12):
Isn't this rose cool? So Icouldn't get through the whole
marketing thing. It felt to melike they're just trying to make
something really hip and reallycool, and they don't, they don't
want you to nose around toomuch. They don't want you to
know. Maybe, maybe they don'twant you. Maybe they maybe don't
care. And they just don't careif you know what the what the
grapes are, or how it wasfermented. And then you told me
(13:34):
it came from BC. And on the onthe website, the only the good
rose a they had was fromOntario. So what I did was, and
this is two days ago, I emailedthem and said, Hey, I'm going to
feature your rose on my podcastI'm recording tomorrow, and I
would like some technicalinformation on this wine. And I
mentioned the confusion over theBC versus the Ontario, and I
(13:58):
didn't hear back from anybody.
So oh my goodness. I said, Couldyou please send me a text sheet?
And I didn't hear back fromanybody. So I hope it's good. If
it's good, if you like it, it'sgood. Okay, this is what Duke
Ellington said about music. Ifit sounds good, it is good,
Amy Tyler (14:13):
you know. Okay, I have a question for you. Okay,
so the the wine's fine, likeit's drinkable, it's it's nice.
I mean, it's not. It's just niceprice point. But the one thing I
will say about Rose is I don'tlike it when the rose is a deep
red. And is there anything tothat, or is it just, I don't it
(14:35):
doesn't appeal to the way itlooks to me. Is there anything
with the taste there, like Iautomatically feel like it's too
much or too sweet or too heavy,and I base a lot of it when it's
like a deep, orangey color. Iwas just curious if that's like
a kind of a placebo effect in mymind, or if there's, there could
be that, there
Unknown (14:55):
could definitely be that the color is, is a, see,
huge thing with wine. Peoplealways kind. Man on the wines
color. I work at a winery wherethe main red is Pinot Noir, and
Pinot Noir is the lightest colorof the red wine. And a lot of
times people say, Oh, look atthat color, because it's
different. And you can tell somepeople are like, Oh, it's so
late. And I say, you know, theynamed a color after that. And
(15:17):
they're like, What are youtalking about? I said, there's a
little region in France wherePinot Noir is the main thing.
And it's probably the most wellknown region of the world for
growing Pinot Noir. And thatregion is called burgundy.
There's a color, all right, soit's named after the color of
that wine, which is, can I gooff on a tangent? Ask another
(15:37):
question? Of course, let's keepgoing. But let me, let me finish
this one first. Okay, the colorof the rose is going to be
determined by how long they leftthe skins unprocessed, right?
So, Rose is made from red winegrapes. They throw the all the
grapes into a tank, and they letsome of the juice flow and get
in contact with the skin, andthe skin starts to turn pink. If
(15:59):
you just leave it in there andferment it for a few weeks.
You're going to have a red wine.
If you stop just a few hours in,and then you throw everything
into the press, the juice thatcomes out is going to be pink.
And then you will throw thatinto a big stainless steel tank
and ferment it like a whitewine. And your rose a will be
darker if they leave the wine onthe skins for a longer time, and
if they leave it on the skinsfor a longer time, it will begin
(16:20):
to feel more like a red wine,because it's getting more color
and flavor and texture andaroma. Okay, what the juice is
doing to the skin is one of myfavorite wine making terms,
extracting. It's pulling thecolor out of the skins. It's
pulling flavor, texture andaroma out of the skin. So the
longer you leave it in there,the darker your rose is going to
(16:42):
end up being, and the more likea red wine it's going to be. So
if you like a nice pale pink orpale salmon color rose, that
means you like a rose that's alittle more like a white wine
than a red wine. Okay, what'syour next question?
Amy Tyler (17:00):
I'm seeing at some wine bars around here. I went to
one down the street. They haveorange wine. And I'd never heard
of that before. I can't say Iloved it, but I thought it was
kind of cool and different. AndI just was wondering if that's
available where you are. And oh,yeah,
Unknown (17:18):
I've had, I've had a few orange wines. You see them
on the menu at wine bars thatare frequented by people. I
don't know what the Canadianterm for it is, hipsters. Oh,
younger people. The youngerpeople will talk about orange
wine, and the orange wineprocess is basically like that
(17:39):
process we just talked aboutwhere we dump all the grapes
into the tank and we let thingsferment. And that's why that's
the way you make red wine. Now,if you do that same thing with
certain white wines, leave theskins in there, some of them
will turn orange, and your winewill be orange. The next
question is, well, why haven'tthey ever done this before? It's
like, well, they have done itbefore, but it's just not
(18:02):
something that people are reallyinto. We have red wine that's
red. We have white wine that'swhite. We have pink wine made
from red wine grapes. Those arekind of the basic flavors this
orange wine just kind of comesand goes once in a while. It's
like, Hey, this is a thing thatnobody does. I'm like, well,
nobody does it for a reason.
I've had, I've, I've had only afew orange wines, and I haven't,
(18:27):
I can't say that. I can reallyembrace the concept they're not,
they're not terrible. But if I,if I'm given the choice of white
wine or red wine or pink wine ororange wine, orange wine is
going to be the last on thelist. Okay, good to know. Thank
you for asking. Okay, this hasbeen great. We're only like 20
minutes in, and we've alreadybeen venting about things. All
right. We're gonna get to somefun facts about the reading
(18:50):
habits of the general populationin a few minutes, but first, I
want you to tell us what thesecond book is.
Amy Tyler (18:59):
Go into a book that I have. I'm just I haven't read,
and I'm just so dying to readit. It's called, let's pull up
my notes table for two by Amytolls. Oh, and it's short
stories came out last year. He'san exceptional
Unknown (19:18):
novelist. He's somebody. He wrote a big book.
He wrote,
Amy Tyler (19:21):
What are you thinking of Jim and Moscow? Or yes,
that's his big book, right?
Well, there was one before thatthat kind of put him on the map,
called rules for civility. But Iactually think you might be
right. I think German Moscow wasthe one that, yeah, that
Unknown (19:36):
blew him, that blew him up big time.
Amy Tyler (19:38):
But he's unusual, because, as we you shared some
notes, people aren't reading asmuch as they did, or it's hard
to grab people's attention. Andhe is a literary novelist that's
also popular, so kind of likeAnn Patchett, if you know who
that is, and I do, and that kindof level of writing. Thing very
(20:00):
clever. He had a former careerin investment banking, kind of
came to the party a bit a bitlater, and he wrote this book
called Rules of Civility, andit's about kind of a Girl Friday
in, I think, the 30s, who is ina typing pool in New York City
and finding her way and ends upin the upper echelons of New
(20:24):
York society. But what wasamazing about it was the dialog,
and it's very snappy and fun andclever and very much reminiscent
of movies and from the 30s and40s. When
Unknown (20:38):
you said the dialog is snappy, I thought, Well, why
isn't there a movie? I don'tthink
Amy Tyler (20:41):
there is, actually, you'd think there would be, but
it's very good. And then aGentleman in Moscow is just an
exceptional book. It'sinteresting I say this. I mean,
I haven't heard this from otherpeople. So what that story is
about is about a count in the19, I think 1930s in Russia, who
(21:03):
writes a poem that's against thegovernment, so then he gets
locked up in a beautiful hoteljust for writing this poem. And
apparently that kind of thingactually happened. So what's
really unbelievable about it ishe's sort of in denial. He gets
up every morning and reads thepaper and puts on his outfit and
(21:24):
hangs out in this beautifulhotel, but he actually can't
leave. But what was interestingabout it, it did remind me. It
came out, let's say, eight yearsago. I'm not exactly sure. Yeah,
it was, it was pre COVID. I knewthat, but it reminded me of
COVID and,
Unknown (21:40):
Oh yeah, right,
Amy Tyler (21:42):
yeah, house arrest kind of a beautiful problem if
you were lucky enough to be homewith your family and have a nice
place to be, right? But yet,there's, it's there. It's kind
of a prison too. And
Unknown (21:55):
there's an underbelly, a sinister thing that's kind of
lurking, yeah,
Amy Tyler (21:59):
so he's written this book. He is from the New York
area. He lives in Gramercy Parkwith his wife, and it's short
stories. They all take place inNew York City, and they take
place at the turn of the intothe 21st Century. That's kind of
an interesting time to set abook, because it seems dated,
(22:21):
but we've all lived through it.
And it's, you know, fairlycurrent, you know, but it's like
the things that stand out, orthe phones that they're using,
or the way people arecommunicating.
Unknown (22:31):
Well, that was, that was that sort of hazy period
when not everybody had a cellphone. Some people right? Some I
didn't. Did not. I think I gotmine in 1998 but a lot of people
did not have them, and a lot ofpeople still had landlines. You
know, I have a phone at home.
Why do I need a phone in my car?
Amy Tyler (22:50):
The one thing that's interesting is, so it's a bunch
of short stories, but then it'salso a novella embedded in it.
And what he did was he took oneof the characters from that
first book, The Rules ofCivility, and sends them off to
Los Angeles to kind of maketheir way in Hall, I think,
Hollywood, and set at the timeof Gone With the Wind. And so he
(23:11):
plays with all like the thingsthat were going on at that time,
and the famous movie stars andthat whole land. And so I think
it would be a lot of fun forsummer.
Unknown (23:22):
I'm going to admit something, and I hate this,
really, it's the fact that I'mdown to about one book per year
as a reader, I suck. Whathappened to me? I went online a
couple days ago and did somepoking around, and what's
happening to us. Here's somesolace, maybe, if you're not
reading as much as you used toaccording to a 2022 Gallup
(23:43):
survey, Americans are readingfewer books and spending less
time reading in general. There'salso a book called How to read
now by Elaine Castillo, and shesays massive corporations have
basically captured thecapacities in us for reading,
that's social media, which iswhat I always blame for reading
(24:05):
fewer books. It's the scrolling.
Amy, it's the scrolling. It'strue. And 21% of adults in the
US are illiterate. I didn't knowit was that high
Amy Tyler (24:14):
that what is that?
Okay? Is that because maybe theyhave come to the country and
they're learning the language,or these people that have I'm
curious. That's
Unknown (24:24):
a good question. That's a good I just took this as some
raw data that was in a reportthat I read. But
Amy Tyler (24:29):
anyway, that's a high number. Regardless, it's
Unknown (24:31):
a pretty high number.
Considering the other the otherend of that is 79% of the
country can read, which is,well, that sounds great, but
shouldn't be higher than that.
2024 the average reading scoreson The Nation's Report Card
declined by two points for bothfourth and eighth grade students
compared to 2022 this steepensthe three point decline seen in
(24:54):
both grades between 2022 from2019 so we're not. Reading as
much, and the younger people arehaving a harder time reading and
focusing on things I have, well,my wife, she's a teacher, she
says it's hard to get kids toread anything that's printed on
paper.
Amy Tyler (25:12):
Well, you know, it's funny when I don't know if we've
talked about this before, but Ihave two grown sons, and so
what's interesting, when I wasgrowing up, a lot of the books
that I would read to me and Iread were quite old, because
that's just how it was. Like,one of the most popular books
was called a secret garden, andI think that was written in like
1900 but those books just kindof stuck around, and they're
(25:35):
classics. So I tried some ofthose books with my kids, and
they were like, I didn't evensay that they were from my
generation. And they were like,stop with the old timey books.
And so, you know, something likeCharlotte's Web, which is
amazing. Typically, if you goback and look at those books,
they have no problem spendingmany chapters before they get
(25:58):
exciting. And I remembered thateven then, but that doesn't work
anymore.
Unknown (26:04):
To jump off on a tangent, something that somebody
that still is in the radioindustry told me, you know, I
spent 15 years in radio as adisc jogging. There's this part
of most popular songs called theintro, where there's an
instrumental passage. It goes onfor a while, sometimes as long
as 30 seconds, which is justlike data, and then somebody
(26:27):
starts singing. And that's,that's what a lot of disc
jockeys enjoy talking over onlike top 40 radio. You know,
they they start the song, andthey start talking, telling you
what's, what's coming up on theshow. And then they say, Now,
the song by this person, andthen the vocal starts. Now,
songs have much, much shorterintros, or some have no intros
(26:50):
at all, because the intro is atune out. It's like, oh, there's
just music. I'm waiting for thelyrics. So the whole thing is,
it's a little off putting,because it just points to the
attention span of people ingeneral. In case you're
wondering, I read the vasterWilds by Lauren Groff back in
(27:13):
February, while I was onvacation in Washington, it
rained a lot, so I had some goodreading weather. Do you know
Lauren Groff? Do you know thatname? Yes,
Amy Tyler (27:21):
she wrote a big book, like a couple years ago. You're
gonna, do we know what it is?
Well,
Unknown (27:26):
the vaster Wilds was a pretty big book. It was on
Barack Obama's reading list from2023 I think. And I was going on
vacation, and I had read anotherbook by her called Arcadia that
came out a few years before,which was right up my alley,
because it was this sort of1970s story about people who
lived in a commune and then somebad things happened. And I just
(27:47):
love it when bad things happen.
Amy Tyler (27:49):
Well, yeah, it's not very fun if it's just going
along matrix. Matrix is the bookthat I'm aware of. I haven't
read it.
Unknown (27:56):
Lauren Groff matrix, I've not heard of that one,
although I'm not aware of herbooks, really, in general, I
just, I know that I likedArcadia, and then when I saw the
vaster wilds, which is a reallyinteresting story, but it's, I
don't want to say it's onedimensional, because, like you
said, literary fiction. This isit's written beautifully. The
prose, the descriptions, allthat stuff is amazing, but it's,
(28:20):
it follows uh, one characterthroughout the whole novel, and
this character is on the run.
And so it's all about what'shappening to them and what
they're thinking about it, andthe memories they're having
about how they ended up on therun. And It delves into
colonialism, and It delves intoall these other things that are
much, much, much, much, muchbigger picture things. So the
(28:41):
novel really touches a lot ofbases, but on its face, it's a
very simple novel about thiswoman who's on the run
interesting. That's the vasterWilds. So I read that in
February. That's my one bookthis year. There might be other
books. Maybe I'll read one ofyour books this summer. I'll try
and break
Amy Tyler (29:00):
away. Maybe, I think maybe you might want to read
table for two, possibly
Unknown (29:03):
awesome. Table for two.
Sounds great. I'll, you knowwhat, I'll go out and buy it
tomorrow, and that will make meread it. Because if I buy a
book, I have to read it, becauseI'm a guy who doesn't like to
waste money on stuff. Amy, doyou still have your official
Tom, like, wine, podcast,coasters? I
Amy Tyler (29:18):
don't, you know. I know you. I know you moved. Amy,
Unknown (29:21):
had a lot of, a lot of stuff happen to her the last
year or so. Had a lot of moved.
She moved, she got divorced, shechanged her name, although
Amy Tyler (29:29):
that's a problem. So I just got divorced, and I went
down to the so I live in adifferent country, and I call
DMV, but it's not that, it's thelicensing bureau. It's a long
story, but I My name is notchanged, but I still call myself
my name,
Unknown (29:44):
so it's official, because that's what I'm calling
you. Yes, that's Amy Tyler,that's right. If you need more
coasters, just send me your newaddress. Okay, mail you some
more coasters. I will do that,and that goes for you too. If
you would like your veryunofficial stack of tall mic
one. Podcast coasters. You cansend me an email. I just need
your address. My email is TomMike wine@gmail.com let's talk
(30:08):
about another book. Are we up tobook number three now? Yes,
okay. What is it?
Amy Tyler (30:14):
Okay? This book is called Real Americans by Rachel
Kong, and there's a couplereasons why I chose this. First,
the one of the reasons I chosethis, though I'm curious, do you
have because you have buzzsprout. Podcast is hosted by
Buzzsprout.
Unknown (30:32):
My podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout. That's the that's
the internet site that sends itout to all the apps. That's what
I upload it to, and that sendsit out to all the apps like
Amy Tyler (30:41):
the hosting site, anyway, they have this newish
thing called fan mail. And
Unknown (30:46):
that actually I did, I got a couple of texts from a
couple of people after one ofthe episodes that I did a few
months back with SpencerChristian the weatherman, they
just said, Hey, that's great.
That was great episode. Andit's, it's right there on my
homepage. If you are looking atthe notes. The first thing says,
hey, send me a text. But nobodysends me texts. So
Amy Tyler (31:05):
I got my first fan mail about this book, and I was
so excited from Lisa from LosAngeles. So Lisa from Los
Angeles, if you're listening,this is one of the reasons why I
recommended it, and she did. Itwas a while ago. It was in the
fall, but she read this book,and really wanted to hear what I
had to say about it. So I haveread it a little while ago. I
(31:26):
read it last year, and I read itbecause of her. The reason why
this is an interesting book,first that I think, is because
it is a family saga, and it isabout a Chinese American family
told over three generations.
It's got a bit of a mystery.
It's eerie, and there's a littlebit of genetic ethics in there,
(31:46):
which is kind of it's kind ofcreepy, and It delves into what
does it be to be American? It'sabout class, striving, race,
inheritance, and it'sinteresting, though, even in
just a year This book takes on.
There's a different vibe to itbased on what's happening
currently in the United States.
(32:08):
It's about so many things, butnow that the US has changed even
within that time, so it kind oftakes on in
Unknown (32:15):
the last couple of weeks. Amy, it's hard to keep
up.
Amy Tyler (32:21):
I can't keep up.
She's young. I mean, I call heryoung. She's 40, the author, and
so I like that she's kind of gota fresh way, a fresh way of
writing. I can't really put itin one specific genre, okay, I
just like the idea of what youdo know for sure is that things
are not exactly as they seem.
(32:41):
And it starts out, there's acharacter named Lily Chin, and
she's doing an internship in NewYork City, and she falls in love
with a very wealthy man namedMatthew Allen. But you just know
there's something kind of off,and you're not really sure why.
You're not told why, but youjust feel it, and it's a bit
eerie. And then she is ChineseAmerican, and then It delves
(33:05):
back into her family, goes back,going back three generations.
And then there's, there ends upbeing a connection between
Matthew and Lily that goes backbeyond before they met. So I
don't want to say too much more,because then I'll
Unknown (33:18):
reveal, right, yeah, don't, don't give us the big
plot twists. But I think thatit's, it's eerie. I love that.
Eerie is great. I think I justbumped Amy tools out of the top
spot. Okay, I'm gonna buy thisbook tomorrow. Okay,
Amy Tyler (33:34):
real
Unknown (33:35):
Americans, that's right. And what's the name of
the author? Again? Rachel Kong,okay, real Americans. I love it.
I love it. It sounds amazing.
Now it's time to reel what is inmy glass. Okay, my glass
tonight. The wine has nothing todo with books. It's a it's a
wine from Italy. I'm sure theyread books in Italy. So, yeah,
(33:55):
it has everything to do withbooks. This is a wine we're
actually checking in with a wineI had on the podcast about two
years ago. I found a wineonline, and it had this amazing
picture on the label. And therewill be a picture on my
Instagram. So if you want to seethe label of this wine, and it's
a cool picture of a guy withsunglasses on, and if you look
(34:17):
in his sunglasses, in thereflection, there is piano, and
he's got his hands on the piano.
And I thought, you know, that'sreally cool. I very rarely buy
wine based just on the label,but it was a Cabernet from
Italy. So I thought that'sinteresting, because there
aren't a lot of straight upCabernets coming out of Italy
there. There are some wines thathave Cabernet blended in. So I
(34:38):
bought a few bottles of thiswine, and I liked it. I liked it
a lot. And then I did someresearch on this wine, which I
often do, and I found out thepicture of the really cool guy
on the label is Thelonious Monk,the jazz guy. And I thought,
well, that's more interesting.
Now, the name of the wine islegit, legit Cabernet Sauvignon,
and it's from Tuscany. It'sactually. The IGT, Toscana Raso,
(34:59):
which means it's, it's not ait's not officially ordained by
the government as one of theirmain wines. It's an IGT, which
means, oh, yes, wine we make,but we don't really have a
classification for it, so wejust call it an IGT. All the
super Testaments are in thatsame category, but this is 100%
Cabernet. So, you know, I Iwondered a little bit about this
(35:21):
wine, like, why do they useThelonious Monk, and how do they
use the picture of TheloniousMonk on the label? So I reached
out to somebody at the importerhere in the United States to
tell me a little bit more. Andthey hooked me up with the woman
who's in Tuscany, whose fatherfounded the winery, and I heard
all about it, and we talked. Wehad a nice conversation via
(35:43):
zoom. She was in Tuscany. Thatis an episode from about two
years ago called all that jazz.
Leah Banville, whose father isthe guy that founded the winery
tolaini, and his story isinteresting too. Do you want to
hear it? Yes. Okay, Leah, whochatted with me on the podcast
couple of years ago. Her fatheris Pier Luigi torlaini, who is a
(36:07):
native of Tuscany, and heimmigrated to Canada. Oh Canada
in 1956 he planned to work for afew years, make some money, then
go back to buy a farm and marryhis high school sweetheart and
make some good wine in Italy. Hedidn't go back to Italy for 45
years. He ended up starting towork in Canada, making some good
money. He made some connections.
He started a whole big businessfor himself, and he did very,
(36:30):
very, very well 45 years later,as he's an older man, he goes
back to Tuscany and does buy afarm and begins to make wine. So
that is why we have a winerycalled tolaini, because of
Pierluigi, who's no longer withus, but his daughter, Leah, runs
the winery now. She wasdelightful to talk to about her
(36:52):
father and the story and thehistory. And if you want to look
back through my podcast, you'llfind it a couple of years ago.
So I had this wine legit. Ithink, I think the wine that I
was having was like from 2013 or2014 or something, and I was
enjoying it. I put a whole bunchof bottles of it and drank it
for a few weeks. And then just afew weeks ago, I was at Costco,
and guess who was staring at mefrom the Costco wine shelf, none
(37:16):
other than Thelonious Monk.
There was the legit Cabernet atCostco. And I thought, Oh,
that's interesting. I wouldnever have imagined that wine
would show up at Costco, but itdid. So I bought a bottle. It
was $20 I thought, I'm going tocheck in with Thelonious Monk.
(37:37):
So this is the wine that I havein my glass. This is the 2020,
edition of the legit cab fromtolaini. And it's it's really
delicious. It's an easy drinkingcab. And I would expect a 2020,
cab to be a lot more tannic thanthis is, but the tannins have
smoothed down, and it's quitenice. It's all about red and
black, fruit on the nose, littlebit of floral. It's probably a
(38:00):
cab for people who say theydon't like cab because it's too
uh, something too tannic, toodry, too harsh, because the
tannins here are all nice andsmoothed down, so it's
delicious. Here's what someother people say about the legit
cab. 2020. From tolaini WineSpectator gave it 93 points.
(38:22):
Keep in mind, I just bought thisCostco for 20 bucks. Not bad.
Another website, Venus gave it93 points. It's 100% cab, by the
way, and Venus says it's brightand nicely focused with plenty
of varietal character, marriedto Tuscan energy. God, I wish
I'd have wrote that RobertParker's wine advocate gave it
(38:44):
91 points. Wine Enthusiast, 91points. James suckling another
guy gave it 91 points. It'spretty delicious, and I'm
impressed that I got it atCostco for 20 bucks. Because if
you go on a wine or a winewebsite that sells wine and find
it, it's like 45 so not only isit delicious, I got it on a
deal, and I love that. I lovethat more than almost anything,
(39:06):
really. Are we ready to move on?
Yes. Go ahead. One question
Amy Tyler (39:09):
about the label.
Okay, so the label is, you see,a lot of these kind of labels
where they're just sort ofhaving fun, have a clever name,
and even the wine I'm drinking,you know, they're calling it
saintly.
Unknown (39:22):
That's kind of the epitome, the epitome of that,
like, hey, a fun label, butlet's sell some wine.
Amy Tyler (39:28):
But when I think of Italy, like, it just seems like
a classic place to sell wine.
Why aren't they selling Italy? Isee why they would do that in
British Columbia, because theydo that all the time, because
it's not known. You're not knownfor wine here. So why? Why have
that kind of bold, fun label andname, when you could really have
something kind of classic andjust sell that whole idea of old
(39:50):
Italy or something I don't know.
I'm just
Unknown (39:55):
curious my opinion on that, and it is an in line with
the whole conversation we hadjust a few minutes ago. About
reading and how people don'thave the attention span, and how
the what we have come to know asthe tradition is really not
something that people in thenext few generations coming up
after us really give two shitsabout. Okay, you know, the wine
(40:16):
industry is shrinking in theUnited States because the baby
boomers are aging out of wine,because they're just getting
older, they can't drink as muchwine as they used to. And the
baby boom generation was ageneration that allowed the wine
industry to grow and grow andunlimited growth, basically, for
many decades, and now they'reaging out. And the generations
(40:37):
after them are like, yeah, wine,whatever. That's grandpa stuff.
So this, this whole traditionthing, it's just not as hip as
something that the youngergeneration, the Instagram
generation, wants something alittle more flashy, a little
more like, tell me what I needto know, not what my dad used to
know. That kind of thing. Theythey found this actually. Leah
(40:59):
told me the synergy story. Shesaid that they made this wine
and they weren't sure what to dowith it, because they had the
idea, let's make a cab from thisparticular part of our vineyard,
because it's going to bedelicious. And it turned out to
be delicious. They they let alot of people taste it, and they
said, that's really legit. It'sa legit cab, you know, that's
where the name came from. Andthen her son said, I think I've
got an idea for this. And he wasthe one that came up with this
(41:21):
picture of Thelonious Monk,which is from a very famous
Concert Poster. And theycontacted the estate of
Thelonious Monk and gotpermission to use it as the
label. So I think it's one ofthose things where the baton is
being passed from generation togeneration, and things are going
to be a little different thanwhat we are used to and we
expect, and what we think aboutwine and tradition and all of
(41:45):
those things. The wine is tasty,by the way. Did I mention that?
You did? I'm loving it. And I'mlike, Oh, look at that. It's
nighttime. I'm drinking thisbottle. All right. When are you
gonna come back to Sonoma again?
Amy,
Amy Tyler (42:00):
well, I am actually coming to Sam. Well, I do come
down to Central Coast fairlyregularly to see my mom, but I
am coming to San Francisco inthe fall for a wedding. Okay, my
niece is getting married. Oh,how lovely. We can meet up,
because I'm gonna be in Sonoma.
We could hopefully make meet up.
So we'll see.
Unknown (42:20):
Yeah, if you make some time, we can record another
episode of the podcast, or wecan or we can just go to dinner
and get silly. Okay, either ofthose things would be fine with
me. Amy and I met a few yearsback. It must have been 2021,
the year that I started thepodcast at the winery Nicholson
ranch. Was that a girls trip? Itwas a girls trip. One of my
(42:43):
coworkers came up to me and shesaid, and she pointed across the
courtyard. She said, she has apodcast, and pointing you out
across the courtyard. Very soonyou were on the show. So right,
yeah, it's time to it's time toget you back down here in
person, because we've done a fewof these zoom things, which is
nice, but in person, muchbetter. We'll go out to dinner,
(43:05):
we'll get silly, and I'll talkabout it on the podcast. Okay,
sounds good, all right. Now isthis book number three, book
number four. Book number four.
Look at that. I've drank enoughlegit Cabernet where I've lost
count.
Amy Tyler (43:18):
So this book, you're not gonna have heard of it, and
that's kind of exciting, becauseI love to sort of tell you about
a book you don't know about, andI
Unknown (43:28):
haven't I you know.
Okay, so let's take let's keeptrack here. I haven't heard of
two of the books. Actually, Ihaven't heard of any of the
books you've talked about sofar, but I have heard of the one
author and
Amy Tyler (43:38):
merchant of the one author. What's neat about the
book that I've selected is I amdoing some work with the
Canadian book club awards, andI'm talking to their winners.
And this particular author isone of the winners. She's
written a mystery thriller. Ireally liked it a lot, and so I
wanted to tell you about it,because I think you always need
(43:59):
to have a little mystery in yourbeach bag. And the story here,
it's called Fortune favors thedead. And the author is Susan
Jane Wright. It's a classicmystery. You can tell that the
author has read a lot of them.
There's a heroine that you canget behind. It takes place at
the Banff Springs Hotel. Haveyou ever heard of that
Unknown (44:21):
hotel? I've heard of Banff, but not of the particular
hotel
Amy Tyler (44:25):
to kind of set the scene, the Canadian National
railroad, when it formed,started to throw up these very
gorgeous over the top hotels. Sopeople have places to stay, and
they all kind of look the same.
There's stone there. A lot ofthem look like a chateau. One of
them was the site of an AlfredHitchcock movie. It's in Quebec
(44:49):
City. The Empress is very famousin Victoria. Love the Empress
Hotel, yeah. So there, if youknow that hotel, there. All kind
of like that stately, stately,you know, when you have a murder
mystery, it's always good tohave, um, like a manor home or a
fancy hotel, like an oldfashioned setting, there's lots
(45:12):
of places to hide. So whathappens is, the protagonist is
her name is Evie Valentine. Andthis is the third in a series.
In the series, so she's theheroine, and this is the third
mystery series that this woman'swritten, and she is gone to
celebrate her favorite lawprofessor. His name is Finn
(45:35):
tanberg. Interestingly, on theback of the book, it says the
wine is uncorked. But I didn'tpick it because it didn't say
what wine the food is waiting tobe served. So what happens?
There's this big ballroom andthey're all getting ready to
celebrate him, and he doesn'tshow up. No. So he's been
murdered. And then the storyfollows, like, what's happened?
(46:01):
It's set in Alberta, and itinvolves a visit to Drumheller,
which is a major archeologicalsite where there's dinosaur
bones. It invites, involves therare gem and Jewel trade. And
then, specifically, there is aI've seen it actually it's, I
guess we call it a jewel or astone. It's called ammonite, and
(46:25):
it's from Alberta, and it's madefrom fossils, from, I think,
snails or something. But theresult is very it's like a looks
like a rainbow. It's not reallymy, I wouldn't choose it, but
it's kind of amazing. It's like,Yellow, Green, Blue, all the
stone. Anyway, it's a classicmystery, and this woman has a
(46:46):
background in anthropology andlaw, and it's a page turner, and
there's a little bit of humor.
So I think it's just kind of afun little read. And I love,
like, I don't like horror, but Ido love a murder mystery.
Because for me, I never getcaught up, like when the person
falls off the balcony is happenshere. I don't get caught up in
(47:07):
that. That doesn't bother me. Ijust figure that's like, it's
not even real. It's all thethings that happen.
Unknown (47:13):
Just part of the story, you have to have a murder, and
the murder is going to happen.
Somehow it's going to happen.
It's all about, how do theyfigure out who done it? Yeah.
Oh, and
Amy Tyler (47:22):
then there's also a natural disaster that could
happen. There's there's a floodthat might stop everything. So
they have to figure out what'shappened before the flood
happens. So in the front of thebook, you can see there's rising
water. So liked a lot tell methe name again, Fortune favors
the dead. Okay? By Susan, JaneWright, well,
Unknown (47:41):
thank you so much for your recommendations. Thank you.
There will be another bookthemed episode of the podcast
coming soon. Have you heard ofthis guy? My pal, Adam Roberts,
no. He's a food blogger. He goesby the name of the Amateur
Gourmet. I've been following himsince the early 2000s and I had
him on the I had him on the showbecause once I got the podcast
up and running, I wanted peopleon the show that I thought were
(48:03):
interesting. And he's a foodie.
He's a guy who cooks a lot blogsabout it. He worked for Food
Network for a short time. He's aformer law student who got, you
know, he went to law schoolbecause his, you know, basically
his parents told him to go tolaw school, and then he decided
he hated it and started teachinghimself how to cook. He started
blogging in the early days ofblogging, and then he went to
Juilliard and got a master'sdegree in playwriting, and
(48:25):
eventually he wrote a novel, andhe has his first novel out. It's
called Food person. And I wastrying to get him on the show
before he went on his book tour,but I was unsuccessful. Now he's
back from his book tour. So I'mhoping to have him on the show
sometime soon. But look that up,food person by Adam Roberts.
That might be something for youto check out. It sounds like a
(48:48):
fun, fun book. Okay, all right.
You putting it on your listthere. Okay, good. So your
podcast, the Red Fern bookreview podcast, now has a
sponsor, as you just mentioned.
How did that come about? Whatdoes it mean? Does it mean for
you?
Amy Tyler (49:03):
So they approached me. So in truth be told, I have
been I've had some life eventshappen, so I've been a bit
distracted. Yes, we talked aboutit, and then I've done I've had
to work on more paying work, soI'm doing more editing writing.
But they approached me and wetalked about it, and they
needed, and wanted a Canadianbook podcaster to talk about,
(49:28):
it's Canadian book club awards.
I said, Sure, I've actuallynever done this before. I'm
curious if you have two. I justdid it, and it went really well,
but I was pretty nervous. Ijuggled four authors together.
In fact, there should have beenfive, but he didn't, oh, that
was the, that was the episodeyou just put out. Yeah, three.
Sorry, three authors supposed tohave been four, but it was, you
know what? It went really well.
(49:49):
And you know why it went wellwas because they were all so
excited, because they've justpublished their books, and they
were kind of all exchanginginformation. It was
Unknown (49:58):
kind of self perpetuating, kind. Conversation
among the three of them, that'sright?
Amy Tyler (50:02):
And at one point, which I cut this out, they kind
of forgot I was there, right?
And I didn't mind that. Ithought, Well, that's good,
because they're all, you'redoing
Unknown (50:11):
a great job if you facilitated the conversation to
the point where the guests, Ican't imagine having multiple
guests. You know, when you seeit on TV, when there's all these
boxes, yeah, all these people,and they're like, let's talk
about this person. Let's talk toyou. Now, what do you think
that's not what I want to do.
But no, the episode was great. Ilike the way they were all
talking to each other and kindof bouncing off each other, and
congratulations to you for forputting something like that
(50:33):
together.
Amy Tyler (50:35):
Thanks. It was fun. I mean, I really enjoyed it, but I
was surprised because I wasn'treally looking forward to
juggling multiple people.
Someone gave me some advice,because initially what I was
doing was just kind of askingeach person, trying to spotlight
each person, and someone said tome, why don't you figure out
some commonality? Each questionshould apply to more than one of
them, and then
Unknown (50:57):
that sure they're all authors, so there's questions
that will apply to all of them,sure,
Amy Tyler (51:02):
but find something that they had in common, and it
kind of went from there.
Unknown (51:07):
That was a fun listen.
Thank you. That's the latestepisode, right? Yeah, Amy's
podcast is the Red Fern bookreview podcast. It's available
wherever you find podcasts. Thatwas a great selection of books,
potential summer reads. Arethere some podcasts you're
looking forward to catching upon this summer? Are there
podcasts you hear about andthink, oh, I should check that
out and then just don't getaround to it, because who has
(51:28):
that much time, right?
Amy Tyler (51:30):
Well, what I wanted to do, I wanted to recommend two
that I've just gotten into thatI don't think everyone's
listening to that. Maybe youmight like one is Monica
Lewinsky has a podcast. Oh, I itis really good. What's it
called? It's, in fact, it makesme cry. It's amazing. It's
called reclaiming, okay, it'sactually really good. She just
(51:53):
has a variety of people on whathappened to her comes up, but
it's more what I find veryinteresting is everybody on that
automatically comes on and issuper vulnerable with her
because of what
Unknown (52:07):
she's been through, right, right? What she is famous
for, she doesn't come
Amy Tyler (52:11):
across as bitter, you know, she's moved on with her
life, but, but that's, you know,it's just a fascinating thing,
because she is known everywhereshe goes, and she struggled to
get jobs. She hasn't, yeah, I'msure, I'm sure, her term
relationship, but she's, she's,hasn't had a lot of things
happen that probably would havehappened for her, but she's a
(52:32):
very good interviewer. And thenthe other one that I really like
is David Duchovny has podcast,and it's really good. He went to
Yale. He's kind of got this. Hedoes not have an energetic
personality, but he's
Unknown (52:47):
very low, low energy.
Is that what you're saying?
Amy Tyler (52:51):
Kind of low energy, but has really cool people on,
has really cool discussions.
Okay? It's called fail better.
And the idea is to fail, Ithink, quickly and often. So one
he just had on, James fry. Doyou know who that is? So that's
really interesting. So James fryhas on a new has a new book out,
and they had a reallyinteresting conversation. I
Unknown (53:13):
had heard about that because there was some, you
know, headline somewhere aboutJames fry and what he was, what
he's also very infamous for,
Amy Tyler (53:21):
for people that don't know you probably do know. It
depends, I guess maybe on yourage. He wrote a book. It was
picked by Oprah, and he wroteabout his drug addiction. But it
turns out that it he majorly
Unknown (53:34):
embellished, certain Yeah, it was, it was, it was, to
a certain extent, a phony story.
Amy Tyler (53:40):
Well, it's interesting, though, because he
talks about, now there's a termfor it, called Auto fiction, and
he says, I kind of coined that.
But it is interesting. It isinteresting. He did lie, but it
is a little bit about theindustry itself, and it's a
whole bunch of things. You know,he's had a lot happen, but it
was a really good
Unknown (54:01):
conversation. What's the David Duchovny podcast?
Called, again, called failbetter. I was hoping it was
called, The truth is out there,Scully.
Amy Tyler (54:10):
And you know, of course, where that? You know, of
course, where the X Files wasfilmed? Was it in
Unknown (54:15):
Vancouver? Yes, I didn't know that. Truth be told,
I never watched The X Files.
Amy Tyler (54:19):
Well, people got mad at him because he used someone
asked him, How do you likeVancouver? And he says, It rains
too much. Oh, yeah. And theneveryone got mad at him here,
but, I mean, it does rain a lothere. I mean,
Unknown (54:30):
rains a lot there. I you know, I'm from Seattle. It's
the same kind of thing.
Amy Tyler (54:34):
It's a true thing.
Unknown (54:37):
I don't know. He's just telling you the truth.
Amy Tyler (54:40):
It rains all the time. Well, that's true.
Unknown (54:42):
Thanks for coming back on the show. Well, thanks for
having me, even though ourpresident is an idiot who thinks
Canada should be the 51st state.
What do they think up thereabout that?
Amy Tyler (54:50):
Well, I'm gonna try to stay out of the politics. But
what I will say, I do like ourthe new prime minister. Oh,
yeah. And there's a I will say.
There are a couple of funny ifpeople want to Google it.
There's a funny little videowhere he's in a lineup. It was
at the g7 conference, and he'sstanding next to Macron and
Trump is talking, and he turnsover and does a very, very
(55:12):
subtle wink at I just also sawanother video of him dancing. He
enjoys live music, and so Ithought that was kind of fun,
that he's a person.
Unknown (55:24):
And what I say a lot of the times is it's a good thing
there is wine.
Amy Tyler (55:30):
Yes, it's true.
Unknown (55:33):
The tall Mike wine podcast was conceived and is
written, produced, edited andmaintained by yours truly, to
see behind the scenes picturesof all the wine and my
continuing mastery of reels.
Follow me on Instagram at talmlike wine. How about some
official tall Mike wine podcastcoasters? Send me an email, and
I'll get some out to you. Theemail is tall Mike
(55:56):
wine@gmail.com now I'd like youto seriously consider becoming a
paid sponsor of the show, just afew bucks a month, three, 510,
well, 10, if you're someone inthat tax bracket, it will help
out a lot. You know? What elsewould help you? Sharing this
podcast with a friend. If youlike this episode, share it with
(56:17):
your bookish friends, or yourWino friends, ideally, you have
friends who are both, and besure you're subscribed, because
there'll be a new episode comingsoon. For now, thanks to Amy
Tyler for hanging out and thankyou for hanging out. I'm Mike
stone. Keep swirling. Keepsniffing, keep sipping. Cheers.
(56:39):
You.
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