LA: Also, imagine the money that you are spending on the experience is going to the right people. Back in North America, Emily Henry, author of books like Beach Read, People on Vacation, she has sold millions of copies for her romance novels that people are obsessed with.
MS: If you’ve walked through a Hudson News and not seen everyone holding one, I don’t know where you’ve been.
LA: It’s a Hudson News, it’s the Sun Lounges, she’s making so much money off writing beach reads, but she does it with a wink-wink because, again, that first book that really bought her into prominence was called Beach Read. She’s writing a genre that doesn’t always get taken particularly seriously, and often women are pigeonholed into writing, but she’s doing it really well because I think it gets dismissed a lot.
MS: I just think it’s so common that women do something and then it’s some art form and it’s seen as lean stream or somehow not as deserving of praise. And it’s like, if she is selling more books at every single airport and every single bookstore and on everywhere online selling so many more books about people on vacation than anyone else, she’s doing something right and something else none of the men are doing.
LA: She sold 6 million copies last year alone, in a publishing industry in 2023, 2024, that’s quite rare.
MS: She’s speaking to an experience I have as a woman falling in love with people on vacation or flings and she knows how to do it in a way that people really enjoy, she’s very good at it, and people have fun, they enjoy her work.
LA: The world’s particularly heavy right now, and sometimes you do just want to escape, just immerse yourself in it, and I think it’s fine to have fun and be silly in that often, for whatever reason, we don’t grant ourselves or others that joy sometimes.
MS: Definitely.
LA: After the break, how the power list is inspiring mine and Megan’s travels for the year. Regardless of where you are listening right now, all of Conde Nast Travelers markets are sharing this list. So Conde Nast Traveler India, Conde Nast Traveler Spain, UK, Conde Nast Traveler Middle East, all of the markets are publishing this list on their websites, and I think that really speaks to how much of the world we’ve attempted to bring into this. And also it just makes me want to travel, it makes me want to go and experience a bunch of the stuff that these women are talking about or are creating. Where do you want to go and for whose work?
MS: I also interviewed Laila Gohar and I want to go see-
LA: Wait, who’s Laila Gohar for the uninitiated?
MS: … She’s an artist, she does these very surreal food installations. She made these gigantic cakes that were in a garden in a hotel in Paris and it just looks almost a little Alice Wonderland-y, but gorgeous, just really, it’s like I want to go see a hotel that has one of her installations. I also think about Aditi Dugar, who’s a chef in India, she has a restaurant called Masque that just sounds incredible and they’re doing these different pop-up experiences around the country.
