(instrumental music)
- Welcome back y'all I'm hanging out with
Tony Gonzalez and Josh Brolin! Give it up!
(cheering and applause)
Later this week, I turn the big four oh
(Kelly makes air horn noise)
but instead of doing too much celebrating of myself,
I wanna celebrate others
and things that are near and dear to my heart.
One of those things is reading.
Do y'all love reading?
Are y'all big readers?
- [Tony] Love it.
- [Josh] Love
- I do too.
The escapism alone.
So you may remember I started a reading
initiative this year.
This idea is so simple, y'all.
Strangers recommend books to other strangers.
It could be someone at a coffee shop, a park, even online.
We call it Stranger Reads.
(instrumental music)
♪ Stranger Reads ♪
- You better sing!
80's chick, Jessie.
After our first Stranger Reads segment,
thousands of you took to the comments to recommend books.
I was so blown away.
I also matched two people
in my audience who exchanged their favorites.
They're back with us now.
So please welcome
Hailey and Kevin!
(audience cheers and applause)
Just to recap
y'all had never met each other
and you had never read these books, right?
- No.
- Right.
- Okay. So what do you think, what ended up happening?
- Yeah, so Kevin gave me one of his favorite books,
Less by Andrew Sean Greer.
And I normally don't read books like this.
I read a lot of fantasy and female centered stories
but this is about a gay man who travels the world
and goes on this journey of self-discovery.
And I was pleasantly surprised.
I really loved this book.
I really related to the message that not everyone
not anyone in life has a set path
and there's always time to discover yourself
and establish yourself.
And it was just so comforting to be reassured
that I don't need to always know what I want to do
in life and that I don't need to take life so
seriously all the time.
And I feel like I read it at the perfect time.
And Kevin just told me that there's a sequel coming
out and I'm really excited to get to read that soon, so.
- Oh, that's awesome.
(applause)
Kevin, what about you?
- Yeah. So Hailey gave me
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir.
It's a young adult fantasy book.
Young adult, generally isn't a genre I gravitate towards.
So going into this, I didn't really know what to expect
but Hailey said, this book was the first time that
she felt represented.
And to me being gay, finding representation and stuff
like that is so important.
So I knew this, like this was gonna be special
and I ended up loving it
and relating to all these characters.
And it's like set in this world where people are fighting
against oppression and they're trying to understand
what it means to be free.
And I think that's something we can all relate to.
We all have our own, like our own fights
and they're all fighting towards love
which to me is the most important thing.
- [Kelly] The goal. Yeah.
- Yeah. And so I took so many notes
while I was reading it and then it ends on a cliff hanger.
So I was like, well
I have to figure out what the heck happens next.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So there's four books total.
And I just went out and bought all three
because I was like, I'm gonna love it anyway.
And yeah.
Thank you.
(applause)
- What I love about Stranger Reads is
that it's not just about reading, it's about connection
and it just so happens that the author
of An Ember in the Ashes caught our episode and reached out.
So she's actually here, please welcome here.
Please welcome Sabaa Tahir!
(cheering and applause)
- Hi! Nice to see you!
- [Sabaa] Nice to see you too!
- [Kelly] This is so cool
- [Sabaa] Hello, how's it going?
- [Kelly] So it's so great to meet you.
Say hi to everyone.
- [Sabaa] Hello.
Hi. Nice to meet you.
- I love that you caught the episode
and it was so probably random for you to see it.
- Oh my God.
It was crazy.
I saw it and I was like, is she holding
An Ember in the Ashes?
It was like seeing your kid on TV, you know
it's just such a crazy moment.
And I think what hit me about it was, you know
writing is such an isolated job.
You do it alone, you eat lots of chocolate.
You cry a lot into your, into your pages
- Same thing with writing songs, by the way.
- Yeah. So, so you know, and so to know
that the book is out in the world
and people are reading it, it's such a wonderful feeling.
And with what Hailey said, especially Hailey
when you said that you felt seen
by the book and you felt represented by the book
that is why I wrote the book.
- [Kelly] That was the goal.
- That was the goal.
You know, I was a little kid growing
up in the Mojave desert.
I, you know, read tons of fantasy, like, you know
700 page book in one hand,
chocolate bar in the other.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And during that whole time
I didn't really see myself in books.
Right. Like I just, it was, it was the eighties, right.
Eighties and nineties, a fantasy.
So it was big hair biceps.
- Yeah.
- And very Eurocentric, you know, very, very male.
And I, when I knew, when I wrote Ember, I was like
I want a brown girl to be front
and center in this book on the cover in the narrative.
Like, that's what it was all about for me.
- That's so cool.
I love that it ended up like happening
exactly why you wrote it is what affected an individual.
(applause)
Well, Hailey and Kevin loved An Ember in the Ashes
and since this is Stranger Reads
we wanted everyone to have it.
So you're all going home with a copy.
(cheers)
- And you have, you have a new book out
and that's more autobiographical, right?
- Yes. I do have a new book out.
It took me 15 years to write the new book.
It was a book that required like a lot of reflection and
and self-love 'Cause it was more autobiographical.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- It's called All My Rage.
It takes place in the Mojave desert.
- [Kelly] I love the title.
- [Sabaa] Yes.
- [Kelly] Okay.
- [Sabaa] Yes. If you are a nineties rock fan,
you know where that title came from.
- [Kelly] I love it.
- So it takes place in the desert.
It's about two kids growing up in a place that seems to
kind of wanna destroy them.
And one is Noor.
She wants to leave and go to college.
But she, she has a family member who doesn't want her to go.
And the other is Salahudin,
and he is trying to keep afloat
a business that his parents loved.
And so it's about these kids and the choices they make.
- That's pressure.
- They don't have a lot of support they're really alone.
And I felt that as a young person.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And so I wanted to put that in a book and the
the heart of that book and the heart of all of my work,
even though All My Rage is contemporary, it's not fantasy
but the heart of it is hope ultimately,
and hope is sort of what the characters hold onto in Ember.
That's what gets them through four books
of me being an awful evil author and torturing them.
- [Kelly] Yeah. (laughs)
A really good one.
- [Sabaa] Thank you.
And it gets them through, through All My Rage too.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- Because that's what got me
through most of my life, so.
- [Kelly] I think it's what gets us through life in general.
Hope. Yeah.
(applause)
'Cause it, you know, kinda does this
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
This is really special.
So I'm glad that you saw the show
and I'm glad that this happened.
And I'm glad y'all love the books
- Thank you. Thank you guys.