You can find Alyson Richman at www.alysonrichman.com or on IG @alysonrichman.

If you’re a historical fiction lover, you’ve probably read something by Alyson Richman. She’s the author of 11 novels, including The Missing Pages, which was published last fall. We were delighted that she agreed to come on the show and speak to us about this book, although we did sneak in a question about The Velvet Hours published in 2016, which our book club read many years ago. It is about a real Paris courtesan in the Belle Epoque who in her later years as World War II approaches shares her life story with her granddaughter.

The Missing Pages is a historical fiction novel that is about a man’s love of books, but it is also a ghost tale, a romance, and a story of the Titanic all rolled into one. Richman is known for making the reader feel the sumptuous details of the world she is writing about, and she does it again in this book.

Our book rec segment of the show is all about musicians, but we’re not talking solely about musician memoirs, although we do have one of those. We’ve got a children’s nonfiction book about a Ukrainian pianist who performed for Nazsis, a National Book Award winner, a mystery about a stolen violin, a story about a wedding singer whose own relationship is on the rocks, and a coming of age story set in the 1970s that includes a rock star. 

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- The Missing Pages by Alyson Richman 

2- The Velvet Hours by Alyson Richman 

3- The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray 

4- All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley 

5- Buckeye by Patrick Ryan 

6- The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 

7- Underlake by Erin L. McCoy 

8- The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower 

9- A Five Star Read from fellow Book Lover Anima D. @autopsyofbooks - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie 

10- The Encore by Juliet Izon 

11- Songs For Other People's Weddings by David Levithan and Jens Lekman 

12- Alias Anna: A True Story of Outwitting the Nazis by Susan Hood and Greg Dawson 

13- Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau 

14- The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by David Grohl 

15- The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram - @perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button.

You can find Daniel Kraus at his website danielkraus.com or on IG at @kraus_author.

This week our episode features Daniel Kraus, a writer who has published over 20 books, but among moviegoers he may be best known as the co-author with Guillermo del Toro of The Shape of Water. The film of this story won four Oscars in 2018. Daniel’s 2023 novel Whalefall is being turned into a 20th Century Fox motion picture, and I hope that at some point his latest novel, Angel Down, will also be on film. 

Both the premise and writing in Angel Down are unique. It is the story of a group of World War I soldiers told to go into No Man’s Land to rescue what they think is a wounded soldier. What they find is an angel. If you enjoy war novels, and even if you don’t, I recommend giving this book a read. 

Our book rec section of the show features books related to women in politics. If you are interested in politics yet hate the nuttery of American government at the moment, these books can provide a reprieve. We have contemporary fiction, biography, memoir, alternative history, and electoral nonfiction. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Whalefall by Daniel Kraus 

2- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus 

3- The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus

4- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

5- The Leaphorn and Chee Series by Tony Hillerman

6- Hearts of the Missing by Carol Potenza

7- The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch by Daniel Kraus 

8- Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp 

9- From Under the Truck by Josh Brolin

10- Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali 

11- The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue 

12- A Five Star Read recommended by fellow Book Lover State Katz @all.da.bookish.things - The Witch's Orchard by Archer Sullivan 

13- Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing by Alison Winn Scotch 

14- Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win by Jo Piazza

15- The Partisan Gap: Why Democratic Women Get Elected But Republican Women Don't by Laurel Elder 

16- Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld 

17- Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton 

18- A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Arden

Media Mentioned:

1- Frankenstein (2025-Netflix)

2- Dark Winds (2022 - present, Netflix)

3- The Shape of Water (2017)

4- 1917 (2019)

5- Whalefall (Upcoming Fall 2026)

6- Michelle Obama Says US Not Ready for a Female President - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/michelle-obama-says-us-not-ready-woman-president-rcna244136

You can find Carmichael’s at carmichaelsbookstore.com

We were sad last fall that we weren’t able to record with our favorite bookseller, Sam Miller, manager at the Frankfort Ave location of Carmichael’s Bookstore for our Holiday Book Buying episode. But she is back for summer, telling us all about the new titles that will get you excited to sit back on a hot afternoon, either at the pool or in the air conditioning, and read to your heart’s content. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly 

2- The Grand Paloma Resort by Cleyvis Natera 

3- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus 

4- A book that Changed a Life - Sisters of the Yam by bell hooks recommended by Briana Lathon Bluford 

5- Yesteryear by Claro Claire Burke 

6- American Fantasy by Emma Straub 

7- Whistler by Ann Patchett 

8- Puck by Samantha Allen 

9- Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett 

10- Fortune of Sand by Ruta Sepetys 

11- Go Gentle by Maria Semple 

12- Country People by Daniel Mason 

13- These Days by Lucy Caldwell 

14- Devotions by Lucy Caldwell 

15- Opening by Lucy Caldwell 

16- Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhorn 

17- The Keeper by Tana French (Cal Hooper #3)

18- Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth 

19- Killer Vibes by Jack Friday 

20- Fishbone Cinderella by Elizabeth Lim 

21- Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffman 

22- Sublimation by Isabel Kim 

23- Book Witch by Meg Shaffer 

24- We Burn So Bright b y TJ Klune 

25- Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorrne

26- American Rambler by Isaac Fitzgerald 

27- Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess by Ben Mezrich 

28- The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery by Kaitlyn Tiffany 

29- The Carpool Detectives by Chuck Hogan 

30- The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh by James Lasdun 

31- True Biz by Sara Novíc 

32- Mother Tongue by Sara Novíc

33- The Left and the Lucky by Willy Vlautin 

34- London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe 

35- 4 Janes by Marian See 

36- Love and Other Monsters by Emily Franklin 

37- This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman 

38- Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment by Rhae Lynn Barnes 

39- Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano 

40- The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland 

Media Mentioned:

1- White Lotus (2021 - present, HBO Max)

2-2026  Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction - https://www.pulitzer.org/news/2026-pulitzer-prize-announcement

You can find Aaron Starmer at www.aaronstarmer.com or on IG @aaron_starmer.

This week on the podcast we welcome middle grade and young adult novelist Aaron Starmer whose most recent book, You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This, is a quirky middle grade novel about a Toe Beast and a girl who travels with a pack of dogs and a boy named Roman who learns some family secrets.  That sounds like a lot so we are glad Aaron joins us to explain it all in a much more succinct way than we ever could. And his 2025 YA novel Night Swimming just came out in paperback this week.

And our book recommendation segment of the show is about aliens because what pairs better with a quirky novel than some extraterrestrials? We have Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning titles, a book about alien garbage, a wacky buddy road trip adventure, literary fiction about a girl who doesn’t feel human, and a philosophical first contact story starring the Catholic Church.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- You Are Old Enough To Hear This by Aaron Starmer

2- Night Swimming by Aaron Starmer 

3- The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly 

4- Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

5- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 

6- The Humans by Matt Haig 

7- The Riverman by Aaron Starmer

8- The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler 

9- Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy

10- The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager 

11- A 5 Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Tess @books_andthebeach - Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers 

12- The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Wayfarers #1) by Becky Chambers 

13- The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell 

14- Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 

15- Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino 

16- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card 

17- The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis 

Media Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Whitehall Book Club - https://www.historicwhitehall.org/whitehall-book-club

2- Resident Alien - (2021-2025, Netflix)

3- Project Hail Mary (2026)

You can find Folger Shakespeare Library at www.folger.edu

Now you may be familiar with the Folger Shakespeare Library’s editions of Shakespeare’s works. In fact, Carrie is still using some of  hers from high school. But she had no idea this world-famous research library in Washington DC had a book club. As a Shakespeare enthusiast, she was definitely intrigued, and we are so excited that emma poltrack, the Arts Engagement Program Manager for the Folger Shakespeare Library, agreed to join us and tell us all about the book club. 

Our book rec segment this week are books about…..book clubs! We’ve got two memoirs about book clubs–one made up of professor friends and the other between a mother and son. We’ve got a horror novel with a book club that battles vampires, an intergenerational mystery-solving book club in England, a women’s fiction novel about a book club that asks its members to present the book that matters most, and a writing and reading group for Punjabi women in London that’s breaking boundaries.

Books Mentioned in this Episode

1- The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly 

2- The Calculating Stars (A Lady Astronaut series) by Mary Robinette Kowal

3- The Martian Conspiracy by Mary Robinette Kowal 

4- Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma 

5- Tastes like Shakkar by Nisha Sharma 

6- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 

7- The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu 

8- Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell 

9- Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson 

10- Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton 

11- Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons 

12- Well Met by Jen DeLuca 

13- Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett 

14- Booth by Karen Joy Fowler 

15- The Fraud by Zadie Smith 

16- It Goes So Fast by Mary Louise Kelly 

17- The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehman 

18- The Night We Became Strangers by Lorena Hughes 

19- Shibby Magee by Carrie Kabak 

20- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Abigail @nobadbooks - Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser 

21- The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix 

22- The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood 

23- The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams 

24- The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe 

25- The Busybody Book Club by Freya Sampson 

26- Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows: A Novel by Balli Kaur Jaswal 

Media Mentioned:

1- For All Mankind (Apple +, 2019 - present)

2- But That's Another Story Podcast (featuring Will Schwalbe)

3 - Whitehall House and Gardens Book Club - https://www.historicwhitehall.org/whitehall-book-club

You can find Daria Lavelle at www.darialavelle.com and on IG at @daria.lavelle.author

What is a food that, when you smell it or taste it, reminds you of a person or a place? Our guest this week, Daria Lavelle, has written a novel titled Aftertaste that asks what would happen if you could summon ghosts with food.  This isn’t a horror novel, so these ghosts aren’t here to haunt us in the traditional sense.  But the main character, Kostya, is a chef who helps his clients find closure from their loss and grief through food memories. Lavelle’s novel is super unique, and she talks to us about her own Ukrainian-American family’s passion for food, how Covid and Russia’s war on Ukraine heavily affected its writing, and how love becomes the crux of all the book’s momentum.

Our book rec segment of the show features women in STEM doing all kinds of cool sciency, techny, engineery, and mathy things. We’ve got women doing research in the Amazon and under the sea, women physicists, young girls learning botany, Regency period women studying fossils, and female scientists who bring back a woolly mammoth. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode

1- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

2- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller 

3- The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh 

4- The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow 

5- A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat 

6- Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach 

7- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Kris N. @theretiredlibrarian - Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet 

8- The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly 

9- The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel 

10- Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier 

11- The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner by Marissa Moss 

12- State of Wonder by Ann Patchett 

13- Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield 

Media Mentioned --

1- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2024)

2- Bringing Back Wooly Mammoths - https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s1-5704318/colossal-woolly-mammoth-dire-wolf

You can find Books with Betsy at https://www.bookswithbetsy.com/ and on IG at @books_with_betsy

This week, we chat with Chicago resident Betsy Tomszak who by day is a kindergarten teacher who reads lots and lots of picture books. After school hours, though, she is a reader of all kinds of other genres and the host of the podcast Books with Betsy. She was kind enough to invite us to be guests last summer, and we’re finally able to return the favor so she can tell our listeners all about her show. We get the nitty gritty about why she started the podcast and why she wanted to talk to regular readers. 

Our book recommendation segment of the show this week is about characters in disguise. Sometimes a disguise is just to mask one’s appearance, but in other situations it is not only a physical disguise but an assumption of an entirely different personality and back story. We offer you historical fiction novels set in Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, a novel based on a medieval legend, a National Book Award winner, and a memoir.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

2- My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar 

3- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

4- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

5- Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet 

6- So You Wanna Be On Top? by Sarah Hartshorne 

7- Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica 

8- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Hartman 

9- Rules of Civility by Amor Towles 

10- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 

11- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 

12- Summerdale by David Jay Collins 

13- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 

14- The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy 

15- The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley 

16- Sundial by Catriona Ward 

17- A Five Start Read recommended by Fellow Book Lover Jeanine Neale @jeans_stacked_shelf - Nobody Knows You are Here by Bryn Greenwood 

18- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 

19- Master Slave, Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyoon Woo 

20- Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear 

21- Pope Joan: A Novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross 

22- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl 

23- The Good Lord Bird by James McBride 

Media mentioned:

1- Wuthering Heights (2026)

2- Shrinking (Apple +, 2023 - present)

3- The Good Lord Bird (2020)

4- Jateska Cultural Center - https://jasteka.org

5- Artwork by Vian Sora - -https://jasteka.org/abcs-events

6- Run and Read Chicago - https://www.readandrunchicago.com

This week we talk to Rachel Ray, CEO of the International Book Project, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, KY that helps make book lovers out of people all over the world. She talks to us about the logistics of shipping books and how close relationships with the Peace Corps and other nonprofits help get English-language books into people’s hands. 

And for our book recommendation section of the show, we are focusing on spies, but these definitely aren’t of the James Bond variety. We offer up 6 book suggestions that stretch our understanding of an espionage story.  We are light on books set during the Cold War or World War II but instead focus on outside-the-box spy characters.   

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City by David Dominé

2- The White Heart of the Mojave: An Adventure with the Outdoors of the Desert by Edna Brush Perkins 

3- Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams on the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood 

4- Guards, Guards! (Discworld series) by Terry Pratchett 

5- The Storyteller of Casablanca by Fiona Valley 

6- Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson 

7- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Jenni Scott @storytimereviews - Theo of Golden by Allen Levi 

8- Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park 

9- Who is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht 

10- An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole 

11- Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead 

12- Mr. Nice Spy by Tiana Smith 

13- The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix 

Media Mentioned:

1- Murder in Glitterball City (HBO Max 2026)

2- John Hendrix's link to The Faithful Spy research - https://goose-hawk-c589.squarespace.com/bonhoeffer-research

3- Terry Pratchett Puzzle - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-of-terry-pratchett-1000-piece-puzzle-a-discworld-jigsaw-by-paul-kidby-terry-pratchett/29dbddde082184ce?ean=9781399620697&next=t&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=%7Bcampaignname%7D&utm_content=6443417794&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=16235479093&gbraid=0AAAAACfld41whhyxRMyYH28KslljMJPpx&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIieS7rND8kgMVYCBECB3sphbOEAQYByABEgIRtvD_BwE

You can find Eiren Caffall at her website eirencaffall.com or on IG @eirencaffall

We chat this week with Eiren Caffall, a Chicago writer whose memoir, The Mourner’s Bestiary, sat on Carrie's shelf staring at her for a year until she finally made time to read it but she is so glad I did. In this creative nonfiction work, Eiren talks about her family’s long history with a chronic illness (specifically, polycystic kidney disease (PKD)) and connects that to the health of the waterways and living creatures in Maine. It is a master work that merges scientific writing with poetic language. We also talk about her novel, All the Water in the World, which came out less than six months after The Mourner’s Bestiary. It is also about water, but in a fictional dystopian setting where New York City has flooded due to the melting of the ice caps. If you enjoyed Station Eleven, you must give this novel a try.

And for our book recommendation section of the show, we are focusing on Old Dudes!!  Carrie has a soft spot in her heart for curmudgeonly and/ or cuddly elderly men, so we are giving you six ideas of books that feature crotchety (or not) male senior citizens.  We have a memoir, a children’s book series, a book translated from Swedish, novels featuring LGBTQ protagonists, and literary fiction.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

1- The Mourner's Bestiary by Eiren Caffall 

2- All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall 

3- Howards End by E.M. Forster 

4- Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius 

5- Ignition by MR O'Connor 

6- Hotshot: A Life on Fire by River Selby 

7- The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Story of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown 

8- The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann 

9- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones 

10- Queen Bee by Cierra Geraghty 

11- The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

12- A Five Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover - In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes 

13- The Very Long Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl by Bart Yates 

14- The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray by Walter Mosley 

15- The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku 

16- The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson 

17- The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain 

18- Mr. Putter and Tabby series by Cynthia Rylant

19- A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City: Murder, Secrets, and Scandal in Old Louisville by David Dominé

Media Mentioned:

1- 'Murder in Glitter Ball City' - https://www.wdrb.com/news/murder-in-glitter-ball-city-hbo-documentary-explores-2010-old-louisville-murder/article_1b4cc513-c22b-4543-b609-5b6267e1dce2.html

2- Our Episode with David Dominé - https://ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/season-5-episode-108-sex-drugs-and-true-crime-vibes-with-guest-david-domine-10-13-21/

3- True Detective Night Country (HBO Max, 2024)

This week we talk to Rachel Ray, CEO of the International Book Project, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, KY that helps make book lovers out of people all over the world. She talks to us about the logistics of shipping books and how close relationships with the Peace Corps and other nonprofits help get English-language books into people’s hands. 

And for our book recommendation section of the show, we are focusing on spies, but these definitely aren’t of the James Bond variety. We offer up 6 book suggestions that stretch our understanding of an espionage story.  We are light on books set during the Cold War or World War II but instead focus on outside-the-box spy characters.   

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City by David Dominé

2- The White Heart of the Mojave: An Adventure with the Outdoors of the Desert by Edna Brush Perkins 

3- Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood

4- Discworld series by Terry Pratchett 

5- The Storyteller of Casablanca by Fiona Valpy 

6- Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson 

7- A 5 Star Read by a Fellow Book Lover Jenni Potter Scott @storytimereviews - Theo of Golden by Allen Levi 

8- Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park 

9- Who is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht

10- An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole 

11- Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead 

12- Mr. Nice Spy by Tiana Smith 

13- The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix

Media Mentioned:

1- Murder in Glitterball City - HBO Max, 2026

2- John Hendrix - Link to The Faithful Spy research - https://goose-hawk-c589.squarespace.com/bonhoeffer-research

You can find Christina Henry at christinahenry.net or on IG  @authorchristinahenry 

In this week’s episode, our focus is on houses that are so important to a story that they essentially become a character. When we started thinking about this idea, we realized that Chicago writer Christina Henry would be a perfect guest because her last two novels are focused on houses. Her most recent is titled The Place Where They Buried Your Heart and is about a neighborhood house that lures people in, causing heartache for neighbors as well as a sense of family among a handful of them. Prior to this novel, Christina wrote The House That Horror Built. We talk to Christina about the importance of houses in her stories and how a house can straddle setting and character. 

In our book rec section, we continue the house idea with a range of titles in which houses are critically important—-we’ve got a memoir, a National Book Award winner, children’s fantasy, classic literature, and propulsive literary fiction.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry

2- The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry 

3- Howards End by E.M. Forster 

3- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

3- Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen by Jon M. Chu 

4- Double Indemnity by James Cain 

5- From the Moment They Met It Was Murder: Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir by Alain Silver and James Ursini 

6- Out by Natsuo Kirino 

7- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata 

8- Earthlings by Sayaka Murata 

9- The Mantis by Kotaro Osaka 

10- Three Assasins by Kotaro Osaka 

11- Bullet Train by Kotaro Osaka 

12- The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir

13- Night Shift by Alex Finlay

14- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Kris Wyatt @froggyreadteach - The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt 

15- Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman by Patrick Hutchison 

16- House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

17- The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom 

18- Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones 

19- The House with the Clock in it's Walls by John Bellairs 

20- Behind the Waterline by Kionna Walker LeMalle 

21- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

22- Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier 

Media Mentioned:

1- If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

2- Platonic (Apple +, 2023 - present)

3- Train Dreams (2025)

4- The Studio (Apple +, 2025)

5- Howards End (1992)

6- Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

7- The House with the Clock in it's Walls (2018)

8- House of Sand and Fog (2003)

9- LibroVox app for free audiobooks of books in the public domain

10- Whitehall House and Gardens Book Club - https://www.historicwhitehall.org/whitehall-book-club

You can find Jessica Walker on IG @hellojessicawalker

In this week’s episode, we’re talking to debut novelist and assistant professor of fine arts at Parsons School of Design Jessica Walker, whose novel Amy discovered late last year. The Secret Astronomers is an illustrated novel, which is not the same as a graphic novel.  This is a novel that is written on sticky notes between two people inside a book.  It’s in full color and really eye-catching. Although it is technically geared towards young adults, it is a feast for the eyes for any age reader.  The story is about two girls who keep their identities secret from each other and converse through an old astronomy textbook in the school library. This new take on the epistolary novel takes the reader on an adventure to solve a mystery in this small West Virginia town.  

And in our book rec section, inspired by the West Virginia setting of The Secret Astronomers, we’re giving you other books set in The Mountain State. We have a mystery, a Pulitzer Prize winner, several historical fiction, and an investigative nonfiction.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- The Secret Astronomers by Jessica Walker 

2- I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak 

3- Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe by Preston Norton 

4- Floreana by Midge Raymond 

5- What You are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte 

6- Yellow Singing Sail: A Memoir of an Only Child in China by Yinfan Huang 

7- Otto: A Palindrama by Jon Agee 

8- Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Address Book by Nick Bantok 

9- My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for a Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar

10- The Doorman by Chris Pavone

11- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Karla @karla_bookishlife - Blood Like Ours and Blood Like Mine by Stuart Neville

12- The Road to Blair Mountain by Charles Keeney

13- The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

14- The Unquiet Grave by Sharyn McCrumb

15- Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

16- The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence by Stephen Kurczy

17- The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg

18- Foote: A Mystery Novel by Tom Bredehoft

19- The Coffin Quilt: The Feud Between the Hatfields and McCoys by Ann Rinaldi

20- The Grand Design by Joy Calloway

Media Mentioned:

1- Footnotes and Tangents Substack - War and Peace

2- Eden (Netflix, 2024)

3- Our episode with Meg Shaffer - https://ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/s12ep249-the-lost-story-with-guest-meg-shaffer-11525/

4- Article about Reading Resetting the Nervous System - https://www.hellomagazine.com/healthandbeauty/health-and-fitness/873671/why-reading-cures-overactive-nervous-system-experts-explain/

You can find Archer Sullivan at her website archersullivan.com or on IG @archer_sullivan.

We are back with all new episodes, book recommendations, and, most importantly, guests!  To start the new season with a bang, we have author Archer Sullivan whose book The Witch’s Orchard is the first in a new series featuring Private Investigator Annie Gore, who travels to small town North Carolina to solve the mystery of young girls who have disappeared. What makes the cases even more creepy is that an Appalachian apple face doll is left in place of the child. Archer draws on her personal knowledge of place as a 7th-generation Appalachian, although she now resides in Los Angeles, and is always looking for a reason to come home. The novel was a nominee for the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards in the Best Debut Novel Category. The next Annie Gore installment comes out in August of 2026.

Our book rec section for this episode is a call back to what a lot of people were doing the past two weeks–taking planes, trains, and automobiles to family and friends to celebrate the holidays. We give you two books set on planes, two on trains, and two in automobiles, which you can look into whenever you’ve got travel plans in 2026.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- The Witch's Orchard by Archer Sullivan 

2- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

3- Sous Chef: 24 Hours of Working on the Line by Michael Gibney 

4- Marrying the Ketchups by Jennifer Close 

5- Brimstone Hollow by Archer Sullivan 

6- Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly 

7- The Curse of Chalion by Lois Bujold 

8- The Wizard of Earths by Ursula K. LeGuin

9- Silver Medal Lover by Tanith Lee 

10- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison 

11- Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson

12- The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo 

13- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover - Babel by R.F. Kuang

14- West With The Night by Beryl Markham 

15- Circling the Sun by Paula McClain 

16- Turbulence by David Szalay

17- Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

18- Border Crossing by Emma Pick 

19- Mrs. Nash's Ashes by Sarah Adler 

20- The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett

Media Mentioned:

1- Simon Haisell's Slow Read at Footnote and Tangents Substack - https://footnotesandtangents.substack.com

2- From the Front Porch Podcast - Patreon Conquer a Classic 

3- The Bear on Hulu 

Our first show of Season 14 will begin on January 7, 2026. We’ve been coming up with ideas for book recommendations and will soon be recording with guests. But until then, Amy is going to make merry, and Carrie is going to begrudgingly deal with the holidays. And in this episode, we’re reviewing some of the notable books that we have loved over the last 12 months. Some of these are backlist titles, and some are new releases—we cannot keep up with the publishing industry, nor do we really try. You will also hear from some of our guests from this year who share their favorites of 2025. 

Books Discussed In This Episode:

Carrie's Favorites of 2025

1- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

2- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder 

3- The Millicent Quibb School for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon

4- The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh 

5- Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug

Amy's Favorites of 2025

1- Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce 

2- You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

3- Culpability by Bruce Holsinger 

4- The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives by Theresa Brown, RN 

5- Paris Letters: A Travel Memoir About Art, Writing, and Finding Love in Paris by Janice MacLeod 

Other books mentioned

1- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

2- The Nature of Pain by Mandi Fugate Sheffel 

3- The Strange Case of Jane O by Karen Thompson Walker 

4- The Devils by Joe Abercrombie 

5- Everything's Fine by Cecilia Rabess 

6- The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb

7- I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

8- Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

9- Starling House by Alix E. Harrow 

10- Dead Man Blues by S.D. House 

11- God of the Woods by Liz Moore 

12- The Road to Blair Mountain: Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal by Charles B. Keeney

13- Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O' Yea 

14- Carpool Detectives: A True Story  of Four Moms, Two Bodies, and One Mysterious Cold Case by Chuck Hogan 

15- Anima Rising by Christopher Moore 

16- The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest by Aubrey Hartman

17- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

18- Grace and Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon by Matthew Norman 

19- Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

You can find Daniel Kraus at his website danielkraus.com or on IG at @kraus_author.

This week our episode features Daniel Kraus, a writer who has published over 20 books, but among moviegoers he may be best known as the co-author with Guillermo del Toro of The Shape of Water. The film of this story won four Oscars in 2018. Daniel’s 2023 novel Whalefall is being turned into a 20th Century Fox motion picture, and I hope that at some point his latest novel, Angel Down, will also be on film. 

Both the premise and writing in Angel Down are unique. It is the story of a group of World War I soldiers told to go into No Man’s Land to rescue what they think is a wounded soldier. What they find is an angel. If you enjoy war novels, and even if you don’t, I recommend giving this book a read. 

Our book rec section of the show features books related to women in politics. If you are interested in politics yet hate the nuttery of American government at the moment, these books can provide a reprieve. We have contemporary fiction, biography, memoir, alternative history, and electoral nonfiction. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Whalefall by Daniel Kraus 

2- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus 

3- The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus

4- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

5- The Leaphorn and Chee Series by Tony Hillerman

6- Hearts of the Missing by Carol Potenza

7- The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch by Daniel Kraus 

8- Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp 

9- From Under the Truck by Josh Brolin

10- Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali 

11- The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue 

12- A Five Star Read recommended by fellow Book Lover State Katz @all.da.bookish.things - The Witch's Orchard by Archer Sullivan 

13- Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing by Alison Winn Scotch 

14- Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win by Jo Piazza

15- The Partisan Gap: Why Democratic Women Get Elected But Republican Women Don't by Laurel Elder 

16- Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld 

17- Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton 

18- A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Arden

Media Mentioned:

1- Frankenstein (2025-Netflix)

2- Dark Winds (2022 - present, Netflix)

3- The Shape of Water (2017)

4- 1917 (2019)

5- Whalefall (Upcoming Fall 2026)

6- Michelle Obama Says US Not Ready for a Female President - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/michelle-obama-says-us-not-ready-woman-president-rcna244136

You can find out more about Kristine and Meet Me At Luke’s at www.gilmorebookclub.com or on IG at  @gilmorebookclub.

This week we catch up with Kristine Eckart, the founder of the online Gilmore Book Club. When we first spoke to her in Season 9, Episode 188 (2023), she talked about creating this book club, which is based on the books read by the characters in the beloved bookish TV show The Gilmore Girls. 

This year the show is celebrating its 25th anniversary since it first aired, and to commemorate this occasion, Kristine has written a book titled Meet Me at Luke’s, which is a compendium of essays about the show and its impact on Kristine and other book lovers. If you have a Gilmore Girl fan in your life, this might be the perfect holiday gift. In this remix episode, you’ll hear an update from Kristine as well as clips from her initial visit on The Perks. 

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- Meet Me At Luke's by Kristine Eckart 

2- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

3- The Vampyre by John Polidori 

4- Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw 

5- Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakeable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness by  Rick Hanson 

6- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway 

7- The Paris Wife by Paula McClain 

8- The President's Wife by Tracey Emerson Wood 

9- The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson 

10- A 5 Star Read Recommnended by a Fellow Book Lover Kim Layman @the_read_rat - A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness 

11- The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature by Viv Groskop

Shows Mentioned:

1- The Gilmore Girls (2000-2007)

2- Gossip Girl (2007-2012)

3- The Office (2005-2013)

4- Anne with an E (2017-2019)

5- White Lotus (MAX, 2021-present)

You can find JH Markert at jamesmarkert.com or on IG at @jamesmarkert74

This week we chat with JH Markert who we spoke to pre-Covid in the before times when he was writing historical fiction. Over the last couple of years, he has changed gears and returned to the genre that first made him an avid reader: horror. JH has been cranking out horror novels and finding a great deal of success with them. We catch up with James and discuss his transition to horror and what that has been like after writing five previous historical fiction novels.  His most recent release that came out in September, Spider to the Fly, is dark horror suspense that deals with a serial killer, a true crime influencer, and a family with some bizarre dynamics. 

And for our book rec section, we are talking about notable nonfiction. These are nonfiction books we’ve read in the last year that have made us think differently about a topic or stood out for us in some way (even though these books might not have been published in the last year). We’ll talk about a micro-history, a biography, a true crime, a memoir, a study of morality and politics, and a niche book about cussing. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Spider to the Fly by J.H. Markert 

2- Molokai by Alan Brennert

3- A White Wind Blew by James Markert

4- Nightmare Man by J.H. Markert 

5- Mr. Lullaby by J. H. Markert

6- Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert 

7- Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel by James Markert 

8- The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb

9- Dietrich Bonhoeffer: In the Midst of Wickedness by Janet and Geoff Benge 

10-The Vanishing Place by Zöe Rankin 

11- Five Star Read by a Fellow Book Lover Jasper Adams-Smith - Be Kind, My Neighbor by Yugo Limbo 

12- For F*ck's Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude, and Fun by Rebecca Roache 

13- The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone 

14- The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss 

15- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt 

16- Playing to Lose: How a Jehovah's Witness Became a BDSM Model by Ariel Anderssen 

17- The Carpool Detectives: A True Story of Four Moms, Two Bodies, and One Mysterious Cold Case by Chuck Hogan 

18- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Media Mentioned:

1- The Friend (2024)

2- Chief of War (Apple +, 2025)

3- The Outsider (HBO Max 2019)

4- Sinners (2025)

5- Nosferatu (2025)

Carrie and I are on fall hiatus this week so we don't have a new episode for you.  But what we do have is your chance to check out a new-to-you book podcast, Books with Betsy, hosted by Betsy Tomsak.

This past summer we were guests to the show where we talked about all things in our book lives, maybe even tidbits we have never shared on our own show.  It's a fun conversation and we hope you will listen in and give Books With Betsy a follow.

We will be  back with an all new episode on October 29 when we chat with horror/ thriller writer J.H. Markert about his new release, Spider to the Fly, and give you book recommendations for notable non-fiction we've read recently.  

We hope you enjoy this episode of Books With Betsy.

Happy Reading!

You can find Rediscovered Books at rdbooks.org/ or on IG at @rdbooks

The American Library Association’s Banned Books Week is October 5-11, so we’re sharing an interview with one of the co-owners of Rediscovered Books in Boise, Idaho, a store that has pioneered a program in their city to push back against book banning in their state. Rebecca Leber-Gottberg talks to us about the history of the bookstore, her role there, and books that folks in Boise have been buying, but she also explains the bookstore’s Read Freely Project, which is their effort to get banned and threatened books dispersed throughout the community. 

And in our book rec section, we’re jumping into spooky season with books related to ghosts, but if you don’t like horror, don’t worry: a lot of these “ghostly” books aren’t horror, and some of them may only seem to be about ghosts. We’ve got a historical fiction about the Sri Lankan civil war, a detective story in which ghosts are witnesses, a nonfiction book about unexplained phenomena which may or may not involve ghosts, a funny novella, a supernatural suspense, and a ghostly gothic novel set in Mexico.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

1- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

2- The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve House, Four Patients' Lives by Theresa Brown

3- American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics by Kevin Hazzard

4- The Queen Bees of Tybee County by Kyle Casey Chu

5- The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer 

6- Trans History: A Graphic Novel by Alex L. Combs and Andrew Eakett 

7- Lone Women by Victor LaValle 

8- Wild Tongues Can't be Tamed: 15 Voices from the LatinX Diaspora edited by Saraciea J. Fennell 

9- Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray 

10- Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

11- House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune 

12- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 

13- The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf

14- Firekeeper's Daughter by Angleine Boulley 

15- Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley 

16- Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley 

17- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 

18- Culpability by Bruce Holsinger 

19- Songs for Other People's Weddings by David Levitan 

20- A Five Star Read Recommended by Claire @bookishly_claire - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

21- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka 

22- The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

23- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch 

24- Ghost Tamer by Meredith R. Lyons 

25- The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale 

26- The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

27- This is Going to Hurt by Adam McKay

Media Mentioned:

1- The Pitt (Max 2025)

2- ER ( 1994- 2009)

3- This is Going to Hurt (2022, Amazon Prime)

4- The Craft Lit Podcast - https://craftlit.com/

You can find Sam Sussman at www.samevansussman.org or on IG at @sam_sussman.

Our guest is debut novelist Sam Sussman whose book Boy From the North Country comes out this week. Sam originally wrote a short memoir piece for Harper’s Magazine that referred to the possibility that he might be Bob Dylan’s son but really the essay focused on his relationship with his mom, who had had a love affair with the musician. Eventually, Sam decided to explode the moment, or the series of moments of his life and with his mother, to get a better handle on who he was and how much that was about who his mom was and how she had raised him, not whether his father was Dylan.  The book is receiving high marks in early reviews, and Sam has been making the rounds in newspapers and magazines, including a profile by the New York Times. Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, The Library Journal, and the American Library Association have all given Boy From the North Country starred reviews. 

And for our book rec section of the show, we’re thinking about books that center on male relationships.  We realize that our guests and listeners are primarily female, but we thought we would equal the playing field a little by talking about books that deal with father-son relationships, male friendships or brotherly love.  We have a multigenerational story about the men in a Mexican-American family, a group of friends in a small town of the American Midwest, a pair of quirky Irish friends, a memoir about two very different guys at Harvard, two Greek heroes and their deep relationship, and boys from different cultures who develop a bond in unlikely circumstances. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Boy From the North Country by Sam Sussman

2- The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

3- The Guncle by Steven Rowley

4- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 

5- Anima Rising by Christopher Moore 

6- The Last Mona Lisa by Jonathan Santlofer 

7- The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Santlofer

8-  A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Megan Burnett - The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish 

9- We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship by Will Schwalbe 

10- The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza 

11- Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Bulter 

12- A Forty Year Kiss by Nickolas Butler 

13- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 

14- Circe by Madeline Miller 

15- Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh 

16- Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession

Media Mentioned - 

1- The Silent Type: On Possibly Being Bob Dylan's Son- https://harpers.org/archive/2021/05/the-silent-type-on-possibly-being-bob-dylans-son/

2- School Cell Phone Ban Increases Library Visits - https://www.wave3.com/2025/09/02/school-cell-phone-ban-creates-surge-jcps-library-visits/

3- Reading for Pleasure Declines - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/americans-spend-time-reading-fun-time-screens-study/story?id=124807367

4- The Four Seasons (Netflix 2025)

5- The Four Seasons (1981)

6- How the Passionate Male Friendship Died --https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/05/men-friendship-history/682815/

You can find Lindy Ryan at her website lindyryanwrites.com or on IG @lindyryanwrites.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan 

2- Another Fine Mess by Lindy Ryan

3- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

4- Howl edited by Lindy Ryan 

5- The Darkest Night edited by Lindy Ryan 

6- But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo

7- Play Nice by Rachel Harrison 

8- Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison

9- Cackle by Rachel Harrison 

10- Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 

11- Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck 

12- A 5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover @arizonabookstagrammer - Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

13- All's Faire in Middle School by Victoria Jamieson 

14- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

15- Lewis Sinclair and the Gentleman Cowboys by DMS Fick 

16- The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler 

17- Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham 

18- The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts by Tessa Fontaine

Media Mentioned:

1- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Youtube)

2- Nosferatu (1922, Youtube)

3- Metropolis (1927, Youtube)

4- Nosferatu (2024)

5- The Thursday Murder Club (2025, Netflix)

6- Santa Clarita Diet (2017-2019, Netflix)

7- Chernobyl (2019, Max)

8- Nightmare Alley (2021)

9- Shelby County KY Library books taken - 

https://www.wlky.com/article/unreturned-library-book-dispute-shelby-county-reformation-church/65875001

10- Travels with Charley Fact Checking - 

https://www.steinbecknow.com/2020/08/01/travels-with-charley-painting-snapshot/

You can find Sarah Landenwich on her website SarahLandenwich.com or on IG @sarahlandenwich

Books Mentioned in this Episode

1- A Home for Friendless Women by Kelly E. Hill 

2- The Fire Concerto by Sarah Landenwich 

3- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi 

4- Possession by AS Byatt 

5- Plainsong (trilogy) by Kent Haruf

6- Old Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

7- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich

8- How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self Care Epidemic One Dubious Cure at a Time by Amy LaRocca 

9- Say Everything by Ione Skye 

10- The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

11- A Five Star Read recommended by fellow Book Lover Cathleen @wovenfromwords - Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray 

12- Sleepless by Romy Hausmann

13- What Happens in Amsterdam by Rachel Lynn Solomon 

14- The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel 

15- A Death in Door County (Monster Hunter series) by Annelise Ryan 

16- Death in the Dark Woods (Monster Hunter series) by Annelise Ryan

17- Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug

18- The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb

Media Mentioned:

1- Speed Museum Glass Art exhibit - https://www.speedmuseum.org/the-adele-and-leonard-leight-glass-art-award-victoria-ahmadizadeh-melendez/

2- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

3- The Naked Gun (2025)

You can find Keisha Mennefee at honeymagnolia.co and honeyblossompress.com

We have had great luck finding excellent books from small independent publishers, and so we periodically invite one on the show to tell us a little about how they operate. Our guest this week is Keisha Mennefee, a literary strategist who has worked with high profile Black artists like Jada Pinkett Smith and Kennedy Ryan.  She recently started her own publishing house called Honey Blossom Press. The mission of this press is to amplify underrepresented voices and powerful narratives that might otherwise go unheard. Some of their new titles include When Forty Blooms by Jacinta Howard and The Divorcetante by Mia Hentzelman. 

And since it is August, and we’re in the dog days of summer, our book rec section is focused on dogs. Amy especially loves a book where a dog features as a significant character who not only has personality but moves the plot along and helps create the theme. We’ve got some children’s lit, teen lit, Japanese narrative, literary fiction, memoir, and apocalyptic fiction. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

2- Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton 

3- The Survivors by Jane Harper 

4- Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton

5- Track of the Cat (Anna Pigeon series #1) by Nevada Barr

6- When Forty Blooms by Jacinta Howard 

7- This Side of Beautiful by Tiye 

8- The Divorcetante by Mia Hentzelman

9- Walk Through Fire: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Triumph by Sheila Johnson

10- The House on the Strand by Daphne duMaurier 

11- Alive and Beating by Rebecca Wolf 

12- The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angline Boulley 

13- Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley 

14-  A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Katelyn @bookclubwithkatelyn - Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley 

15- Gather by Kenneth Cadow 

16- Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment 

17- The Body in Question by Jill Ciment 

18- Because of Winn Dixie by Kate diCamillo

19- Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People by Rick Bragg

20- The Boy and The Dog by Seishu Hase

21- A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. by C.A. Fletcher

22- Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion

23- Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman

24- Martha Speaks series by Susan Meddaugh

Media Mentioned

1- Cat Video Fest - https://www.catvideofest.com

2- The Survivors (Netflix, 2025)

3- Untamed (Netflix, 2025)

4- Because of Winn Dixie (Disney, 2005)

5- 5 Flights Up (2014)

6- Martha Speaks (Prime Video, 2008)

You can find Suzy Krause at her website suzykrause.com/ and on IG at @suzykrause

Usually, Christmas in July sales feature new cars or mattresses, but we are giving you a Christmas in July book episode. Our guest this week is Suzy Krause, a Canadian novelist whose book I Think We’ve Been Here Before is set in the few weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday in a small town in Saskatchewan.  This book is cozy but not in a way you would expect because something terrible is about to happen.  A cosmic event is going to end the world, and residents have several weeks to prepare.  But this apocalyptic story is hopeful and uplifting and makes you feel good.  How can you combine the end of the world with Christmas and make it comforting?  That’s what we asked Suzy because she has written a book that is nothing like I’ve ever read.  It’s like a little unexpected gift under the tree. 

For our book rec section of this episode, we are talking about diaries. And no, we’re not going to be reading from our diaries because that would be a snoozefest. We’ve selected both nonfiction and fictional diaries that allow us to get a sneak peek into a historic event or a situation that we don’t know much about. 

Books Mentioned In this Episode:

1- I Think We've Been Here Before by Suzy Krause

2- We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver 

3- A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold 

4- The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

5- Space Crone by Ursula K. Le Guin 

6- The Millicent Quibb Schook of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon

7- The Cicada Tree by Robert Gwaltney

8- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Lizzy Roth - Dead Water by C.A. Fletcher

9- The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani

10- These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 by Nancy Turner 

11- This is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay 

12- The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lilly Koppel 

13- Here Comes the Fun: A Year of Making Merry by Ben Aitken 

14- The Lost Diaries of Édouard Manet by Maureen Gibbon 

Media Mentioned:

1- Adolescence (Netflix 2025)

2- We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

3- Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (Prime, 2012)

4- Ben Aitken Podcast episode - https://ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/s-7-ep-146-a-may-december-friendship-with-guest-ben-aitken-9722/

You can find Colleen Gleason/Colleen Cambridge at her website www.colleengleason.com or on IG @colleengleason

Typically Amy has not been a cozy mystery reader, but this week’s guest, Colleen Gleason who also writes as Colleen Cambridge, may have single-handedly converted her.  She is the author of over 57 books in numerous series but her “American in Paris” series has been a delightful escape over the last year. It is a cozy mystery set in postwar 1950s Paris with a dynamic mystery-solving duo featuring none other than Julia Child. Book 3 in the series titled A Fashionably French Murder was published in April.  So we were thrilled when Colleen agreed to chat with us about this series as well as several of her other books.

Colleen’s style of writing often includes a pairing.  She has a mystery series that involves Agatha Christie and her housekeeper, another series featuring Abraham Lincoln and his aide, and even a steampunk paranormal YA series involving an imaginary crime-fighting pairing of Bram Stoker’s younger sister and Sherlock Holme’s niece. As we know from doing this podcast, having a partner-in-crime makes things much more fun. 

In our book rec section of the episode, we are all about gardens. We are not reviewing gardening books, however. Rather, we’re talking about books in which gardens, gardeners, flowers and shrubs are part of the story in some format. We’ve got thrillers, middle grade, fantasy, contemporary family drama, murder mysteries, and Appalachian gothic. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

18- The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

19- Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

20- The Summer of June by Jamie Sumner 

This week we have Sam Miller, manager at Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, with us to chat about books readers might want to consider for their summer reading. It is always fun to hear what is new and notable from Sam. 

This is our last episode of the season.  We will be back in July after our summer hiatus with all new episodes. Happy Reading!

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

You can find Nickolas Butler at https://nickolasbutler.com/ or on IG @wiscobutler

Amy discovered Nickolas Butler earlier this year when she attended the author event for his newest novel A Forty Year Kiss at Carmichael’s Bookstore. Nick has six novels and a collection of short stories under his belt, but A Forty Year Kiss may be his first love story.  His mind was set to wondering after he overheard a passionate conversation in his favorite local bar between two older people, a conversation that made him blush just a little. He began playing with the idea of what this couple’s back story was. Nick’s book asks readers to consider the difference between first love and love between mature adults, how life’s baggage affects personal relationships, and whether people can really change. 

Nick also talks to us about his rural Wisconsin roots, why he read Babysitter Club books in his childhood, and the debate on whether he should wear a cape.  

For our book recommendation section of this episode, we decided to find some of our favorite books we’ve read as a result of being in a book club together for two decades. For the most part, our book club chooses novels, but there is one memoir in the lot, as well as contemporary fiction, historical fiction, sci-fi, and a classic. 

Books Discussed in this Episode:

You can find Holly Gramazio at her website https://www.hollygramazio.net/ or on IG at holly_gramazio

When we first heard the premise of Holly Gramazio’s novel The Husbands, we were intrigued. A woman’s husband goes up to the attic to retrieve something and down comes…a different husband. Wouldn’t we all sometimes like to exchange the husband we have for a better, newer, or just different model? Holly turned this idea into a novel that is both funny and thoughtfully considered. It may not, in fact, be such a great thing to have an endless supply of potential husbands so easy to exchange.  Her book has been optioned by Apple Plus for a limited series and I just saw that Juno Temple, the actress who played Keeley in the Ted Lasso series, is slated to play the starring role.

And because it is April, and April is National Poetry Month, we’re discussing books related to poets. Not everyone loves poetry, but these books aren’t actually poetry–so you can still partake of poetry month. They are historical fiction, memoirs, essays, and children’s books written by or inspired by poets. 

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

Media mentioned--

1- Severance (Apple+, 2022 - Present)

2- Reduced Shakespeare Company--https://www.reducedshakespeare.com

3- Saint X (Hulu, 2023)

You can find Ben Shattuck at his website https://www.benshattuck.com/ or on IG @Benshattuck_

This week we chat with Ben Shattuck, author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau published by Tin House Books in 2022.  Amy knew this book would appeal to Carrie because she is nothing if not a literary weirdo, and she has been since high school when she quoted from Thoreau in her senior yearbook. Despite her hopes that Ben would, like her, have a high school infatuation with Thoreau, he explains that his interest began much later. Even if you don’t know anything about Thoreau, if you're a walker or a hiker, you have experienced the unique meditative impact of this activity and can appreciate Ben’s insights on it. Ben also has a book of fiction out titled The History of Sound that is a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner prize so we are just really thrilled to have him with us today.

 And this week, for our recommendations section, we didn’t just pick a random topic like asparagus or comas to share books about—we actually continue with the theme of walking. We each share at least 3 books that feature walking, hiking, or being in nature in some meditative way. We have literary fiction, memoirs, essays, and even a romance.

Books mentioned--

17- In My Boots: A Memoir of 5 Million Steps Along the Appalachian Trail by Amanda K. Jaros

18- Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail by Sally Chaffin Brooks

19- The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge by Wendell Berry

20- Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabelle Abbs

21- Ulysses by James Joyce 

22- The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher

23- The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses by Patrick Hastings

24- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

25- You Are Here by David Nichols

You can find Rebecca Schinsky on IG @rebeccaschinsky and Book Riot at www.bookriot.com

In this week’s episode, we chat with Rebecca Schinsky, who is chief of staff for Riot New Media Group and co-host of The Book Riot podcast. Book Riot is the largest independent editorial book site in North America and book lovers can find all kinds of interesting stuff there, such as numerous podcasts, newsletters, and articles about different genres.

I have long been a listener of this podcast and love it because ….I am a book nerd through and through and this podcast gives me the inside look at the world of publishing.  If you enjoy learning about trends and want the inside scoop about how and why certain books make it to your eyeballs or just want to have your pulse on bookish news, this podcast is for you.  Rebecca talks to us about what book trends have had the biggest impact on the industry over the last 15 years, what other goodies you can find at Book Riot.com, and why social media flattens the book options we see in our feeds.

And this week for our book recommendations section, we put on our 10 gallon hats and our chaps because we’re talking about westerns. Westerns became popular in the late 1800s and derived from the dime novels of the mid-19th century. Many of these stories were later turned into movies in the 1940s and 1950s, which is probably the way most people had exposure to them. Films like High Noon and Shane were based on western stories. There was a second resurgence of western films based on novels between the 1970s-90s such as The Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales. We offer westerns that are in the graphic novel genre, the horror genre, literary fiction, and middle grade.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

17- Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

18- Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison

19- The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

20- Pony by RJ Palacio

You can find Katherine Marsh at her website www.katherinemarsh.com or on IG at @katherinemarshauthor.

This week we chat with Katherine Marsh, author of The Lost Year, a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. I recently discovered this book after one of our book club members selected another Katherine Marsh book, Nowhere Boy, for our August read. The Lost Year is middle-grade historical fiction and it is super timely because part of it is set in Ukraine in the 1930s. The story introduced me to a topic in Ukraine history I knew nothing about called the Holodomor. Katherine tells us all about her novel which was inspired by her relationship with her grandmother who was from Ukraine. It is a perfect book selection if you are curious about Ukrainian history that influences current events; reading this book would also allow you to check off having read something for Middle Grade March. 

For our book recommendations in this episode, we’re talking about books in which cats are a central part of the story. We have some nonfiction selections, as well as literary fiction and graphic novels that will definitely appeal to your inner cat. If you don’t love cats, you can check out these books anyway for their compelling stories OR you can wait around for Amy to muscle Carrie into a future dog episode. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

15- The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa by Jonathan B. Losos

16- Katie the Catsitter by Colleen AF Venable, illustrated by Stephanie Yue

17- The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Shawn Harris

You can find Sariah Wilson at her website www.sariahwilson.com or on IG - @sariahwilsonauthor

We chat this week with Sariah Wilson, the author of many, many rom-coms, who recently published her first romantasy titled A Tribute of Fire. A Tribute of Fire is inspired by the myth of Cassandra who, if you remember, is the Trojan princess who was cursed with the ability to see the future but no one believes her. Sariah’s story focuses on Cassandra’s assault in Athena's temple by Greek hero Ajax and the resulting punishment which is that two maidens from Ajax’s home, Locris, will be sacrified. How exactly, this punishes Ajax, I’m not sure, but such is Greek myth. 

Sariah talks to us about her favorite romance trope (which she hardly ever writes herself), the whirlwind backstory to the publishing of this book, and how the popularity of The Fourth Wing series really cracked open a whole new world for romance writers.

And for our book recommendations, we’re going to share some children’s picture books that have stories and illustrations we love. Earlier this month was National Picture Book Authors & Illustrators Week, but we don’t think you need a special week as an excuse to read a delightful picture book. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- A Tribute of Fire by Sariah Wilson

9- Little Golden Book, The Christmas Story 

10-  Little Golden Book, Colors Are Nice 

11- Little Golden Book Riddles, Riddles From A to Z

12- Little Golden Book,  Mickey Mouse Picnic

13- Disney’s World of Wonders The Magic Grinder

14- The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

15- Ferdinand the Bull by Munro Leaf

16- The Mitten by Jan Brett

17- Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett

18- The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone

24- Mimi’s Dada Catifesto by Shelley Jackson

25- Oh, Bear by Melissa Nelson Greenberg. illustrated by Ruth Hengeveld

26- Boobies by Nancy Vo

27- The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mickey Please

28- The Cave Downwind of the Cafe by Mickey Please

29- Shakespeare The Tempest by Georghia Ellinas, illustrated by Jane Ray

Media mentioned--

1- Stephen King/Maurice Sendak upcoming children's book - https://apnews.com/article/stephen-king-maurice-sendak-hansel-gretel-c9f8c7e18254d1e406b59e0ebe3cd20b

2- Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey - coming in 2026 - 

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/the-odyssey-matt-damon-odysseus-christopher-nolan-1236311018/

3- The Return (2024)

You can find if there is a chapter of Silent Book Club near you or look into starting your own by going to their website; https://silentbook.club/

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at perksofbeingabooklover.com.  We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a BookLover. To send us a message, go to our website and click the Contact button.

Have you ever wanted to try a book club but they just seem too peopley?  Or maybe you don’t want to be told what book you have to read. OR maybe you are looking for a place away from kids and responsibilities where nothing else but the words in front of you are vying for your attention.  If any of these apply, then a Silent Book Club might be for you.  Silent Book Club began in 2012 and is, according to their mission statement, a “global community of readers, with more than 1500 chapters in 54 countries around the world led by local volunteers. SBC members gather in public at bars, cafes, bookstores, libraries, and online to read together in quiet camaraderie.”  

This week we chat with Brittany Brar, the leader of a local chapter of the Silent Book Club in Louisville, Kentucky.  Brittany started the local chapter here in 2019, right before the pandemic with 5 people.  She was new in town and didn’t know where to find a booklcub to join.  Now the group has over 2000 members of their FB group and as many as 60 people have shown up to their monthly meetings. Brittany talks to us about how people have developed a new sense of community, when a powerpoint presentation can be regarded as fun, and her go-to  genres

After our chat with Brittany, we will give you our recommendations for big honking books that meet not only your reading but also strength training goals. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

14- Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (546 pages) 

15- When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson (528 pages)

16- East of Eden by John Steinbeck (601 pages)

17- A Five Star Read Recommended By Fellow Book Lover Kim Wells @the_salty_islander - A Home for Friendless Women by Kelly E. Hill

You can find Wes Browne at www.wesbrowneauthor.com or on IG at @browne_all_over

This week we chat with Wes Browne, a Michigan transplant who has been a Kentucky attorney for over 20 years. When he’s not lawyering, he writes crime fiction, and his most recent novel is called They All Fall the Same. In this novel, he picks up with a character who readers met in his first novel, Hillbilly Hustle. While Wes’s new book is not a sequel, readers were so intrigued by the character, Burl Spoon, that Wes felt like he could make an entire book around him. Burl is a character you love to hate, but readers also feel his humanity, which always makes for a more interesting bad guy. 

We chat with Wes about how his job as a defense attorney has prepared him to write books that make you root for a bad guy, his passion for soft serve ice cream, and why a timeshare ended up giving him a book idea.

And in the second half of the show, we each give you 3 book recommendations on the theme of books about the art world.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- If You Lived Here, You’d Be Here by Now: Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie by Christopher Ingraham

2- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Media mentioned—

1- Come From Away —

You can find Meg Shaffer at www.megshaffer.com or on IG at meg_shaffer.

This week we officially begin Season 12 so we have both a guest and book recommendations on a particular theme. Our guest this week is Meg Shaffer, best-selling author of The Wishing Game and The Lost Story. She talks to us about shifting gears to write books for adults that read a lot like the cool fantasy books we read as kids (think The Chronicles of Narnia in The Lost Story). And for our book recs, we will each be sharing 3 books related to libraries. 

Books mentioned—

21- The Nightmare Man by JH Markert

22- The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

23- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

24- I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

25- Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck

26- A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

27- A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck

28- Reading Behind Bars: A True Story of Literature, Law, and Life as a Prison Librarian by Jill Grunenwald

29- Lonely Planet Hidden Libraries: The World's Most Unusual Book Depositories by DC Helmuth

30- The Godwick series by Tiffany Reisz

Squid Games (Netflix, 2021 - present)

Cunk on Life (Netflix, 2024)

Black Doves (Netflix, 2024)

Night of the Hunter (Tubi, 1955)

This week we are doing our 2024 recap, covering the books that earned 5 stars. We’ve also got some audio interspersed in the episode from 2024 guests to The Perks who also share their favorite books of the year. This is always one of our most popular episodes of the year.

And don’t forget, this new season is a whole new bag.  We are going to every other week episodes and each one will include an interview with a bookish guest plus some book recommendations by us on a particular topic.  

Books mentioned--

1- The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

2- Woodworm by Layla Martinez

3- North Woods by Daniel Mason

4- Six Truths and a Lie by Ream Shukairy

5- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

6- Greenwood by Michael Christie

7- Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

8- A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney 

9- Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle

10- The Library Book by Susan Orlean 

11- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

12- The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner

13- One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus 

14- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

15- I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

16- The Wedding People by Alison Espach

17- The Huntress by Kate Quinn

18- Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransom

19- The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise by Colleen Oakley

20- All the Sinners Bleed by SA Cosby

21- Being Henry by Henry Winkler

22- The Weather Woman by Sally Gardner

23- Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

24- Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway by Emma Fick

25- The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

26- All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Brynn Greenwood

27- That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming

28- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

29- Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy

30- Arroyo Circle by JoeAnn Hart

31- Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World , Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

Media mentioned--

1- Dune: Prophecy (HBO Max, 2024)

2- Shrinking (Apple+, 2024)

3- What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu)

4- The Professor and the Madman (Tubi, 2019)

5- Your Friend by Nate Bargatze (Netflix, 2024)

6- The Skinny by Jim Gaffigan (Hulu, 2024)

7- Catastrophe (Prime, 2015)

8- Three Body Problem (Netflix, 2024)

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a Book Lover

This week we have a Remix episode and catch up with Tracy Clark, who we interviewed in Season 8 (episode 161) about her first Harriet Foster novel titled Hide. Her most recent title, number 3 in the series, is called Echo, and it came out Dec 3. We chat with her about this book, as well as the Harriet Foster book she is currently writing. We caught her on a writing day in which Harriet Foster was not cooperating. Then you will hear some of our conversation with Tracy back in 2023 when Harriet Foster first arrived on the scene.

Books Mentioned In This Episode

1- Hide by Tracy Clark

2- Echo by Tracy Clark

3- Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

4- Her Name is Knight series by Yasmin Angoe

5- Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

6-The Ninja's Oath (Lily Wong series) by Tori Eldridge

7- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

8- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

9- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

10- American Fever by Dur e Aziz Almna

Authors mentioned:

1- Sarah Paretsky

2- Sue Grafton

3- Agatha Christie

4- Valerie Wilson Wesley

5- Barbara Neely

You can find Sharon Short at her website, www.sharonshort.com and on Instagram at @sharongshortauthor.

This week we have a Remix episode and catch up with Sharon Short, who we initially interviewed about her historical mystery novels which she wrote under the pen name Jess Montgomery. She has a new stand alone mystery suspense out titled Trouble Island that was inspired by a very interesting family story. You will first hear our most recent chat with her just a few weeks ago and then we will replay our original conversation with her back in the Spring of 2022 talking about her Kinship series.

Just a note that next week we will have another REMIX episode, this time with award winning mystery writer Tracy Clark whose most recent in the Detective Harriet Foster series came out Dec 3 titled Echo. The Washington Post has just named it one of their top mysteries of 2024.

Books Mentioned In this Episode:

1- Trouble Island by Jess Montgomery

2- The Widows by Jess Montgomery (Kinship series)

3- The Echoes by Jess Montgomery (Kinship series)

4- Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen Kirby

5- Deer Season by Erin Flanagan

6- How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

This week we chat with our favorite bookseller, Sam Miller, from Carmichael’s Bookstore. Each November we let her do the heavy lifting and share books that have come out and might be good choices for your holiday shopping.

If you would like to check out Carmichael’s Bookstore Holiday Book Gift Guide, you can find it online at www.carmichaelsbookstore.com/

Website- www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram - @perksofbeingabookloverpod FaceBook - Perks of Being a BookLover. To send us a message, go to our website and click the Contact button.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

2- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

3- Foster by Claire Keegan

4- So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

5- Let us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

6- Fraud by Zadie Smith

7- Armor of Light by Ken Follett

8- Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

9- Julia by Sandra Newman

10- 1984 by George Orwell

11- Reformatory by Tananarive Due

12- Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

13- A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand

14- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

15- West Heart Kill by Dann Mcdorman

16- The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

17- The Appeal by Janice Hallett

18- The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

19- Stalking Shakespeare by Lee Durkee

20- They Flew by Carlos Eire

21- Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire

22- Wild Girls by Tiya Miles

23- The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl

24- Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl

25- Watership Down (graphic novel) by James Sturm and Joe Sutphin

26- Watership Down by Richard Adams

27- Energy Follows Thought by Willie Nelson

28- World Within a Song by Jeff Tweedy

29- Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

30- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

31- Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

32- Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

33- Legend & Lattes by Travis Baldree

34- World Central Kitchen Cookbook by Jose Andres

35- Every Cook, Every Kitchen by Feed Louisville

36- Oldest Louisville by Kevin Gibson

37- Always Moving Forward by David Jones and Bob Hill

38- Back Page by Byron Crawford

39- Fathers by Richard Taylor

40- From the Heads of the Hollers by Shelby Lee Adams

41- Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson

42- Lewis Sinclair and the Gentlemen Cowboys by DMS Fick

43- Rabbit Heart by Kristine S. Ervin

44- My Dark Places by James Ellroy

45- Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore

46- Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

47- The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

48- The Man who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Rescued his Career and Revived our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford

49- Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva

5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Casey @Caseys_reads 12 Months To Live by James Patterson and Mike Lupica

Movie and Series Mentioned:

- CODA (2021) - Apple + - Bodies (2023) - Netflix

Website- www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram - @perksofbeingabookloverpod FaceBook - Perks of Being a BookLover. To send us a message, go to our website and click the Contact button.

The delightful Sam Miller, store manager at Carmichael’s Book Store, comes to save the day. She has, as usual, tons of great new reads that are already on shelves and would make perfect gifts this holiday for the book lovers in your life.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

2- The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

3- Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell

4- Women's Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery

5- The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya

6- This is Happiness by Niall Williams

7- Time of the Child by Niall Williams

8- Jim the Boy by Tony Early

9- The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

10- The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff

11- The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America, 1963-1973 by Clara Bingham

12- Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel

13- The Elements of Madame Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science by Dava Sobel

14- The Universe in Verse edited by Maria Popov

15- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

16- The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer

17- Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Revived Pop Music by Rob Sheffield

18- The Hitchcock Hotel by Stephanie Wrobel

19- We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

20- Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway

21- William by Mason Coile

23- Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison

24- Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

25- House of Frank by Kay Synclaire

26- Pride and Prejudice in Space by Alexis Lampley

27- Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

28- From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

29- Cher: The Memoir (Part One) by Cher

30- The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

31- Hot Mess by Jeff Kinney

32- The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon

33-Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories by Ann Byrn

34- Kentucky Ya'll: A Celebration of the People and Culture of the Bluegrass by Blair Thomas Hess and Cameron Ludwick

35- The Stackpole Legend by Wendell Berry

36- In Praise of Mystery by Ada Limon, illustrated by Peter Sis

37- Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

38- A Five Star Read recommended by fellow Book Lover Perin @mjreadsmagic - Sir Callie and the Dragon's Roost by Esme Symes-Smith

39- Gather by Kenneth Cadow

40- The Horse by Willy Vlautin

41- Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen by Suzanne Scanlon

42- How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

43- The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

Media mentioned--

1- A Real Pain (2024)

2- Wicked Little Letters (Netflix, 2023)

3- The Lost Daughter (Netflix, 2021)

4- The Return (2024)

November is Native American Heritage month so in this episode, we’re sharing some books written by Native American authors. There are so many great texts to choose from if you’re interested in broadening your reading. We bring your memoirs, poetry, Pulitzer Prize winners, and more. When we do these thematic episodes, we enjoy hearing from listeners who have their own recommendations within that theme so be sure to shoot us a message or comment on any of our socials.

Books Mentioned In this Episode:

1- A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

2- Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes

3- Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist by Jasmin Graham

4- A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Streets to the Stars by Hakeem Oluseyi

5- A Book Recommended by Fellow Booklover Vero Garcia @booksandcoffeemx - All This and More by Peng Shepherd

6- The Blessing Way and all books in the Leaphorn & Chee series by Tony Hillerman

7- Bad Indians: A Memoir by Deborah Miranda

8- Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis

9- House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

10-Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan

11- An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

12- Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII by Chester Nez

13- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

14- The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos: Reflections on the Newark Earthworks and World Heritage edited by M. Elizabeth Weiser, Timothy RW Jordan, and Richard D. Shiels

15- Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers

16- The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich (Birchbark House series #2)

17- The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

18- Shutter by Ramona Emerson

19- Exposure by Ramona Emerson

20- Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

21- The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

22- There, There by Tommy Orange

23- The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

24- The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland

Media mentioned--

1- Reservation Dogs (Hulu, 2021-2023)

2- Dark Winds (AMC and Neflix, 2022 - present)

You can find Alice Kaltman at www.alicekaltman.com or on IG @alicekaltman

This week we chat with Alice Kaltman about her latest book, Alice’s Big Book of Mistakes. She has written books of linked short stories, novels for various ages, and more, but she decided to try her hand at a graphic memoir all about silly and not-so-silly mistakes she has made throughout the course of her life. Her book aims to make both young and old embrace their missteps in life as building blocks for a life well lived.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Alice’s Big Book of Mistakes by Alice Kaltman

2- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

3- Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

4- Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

5- The Keeper by Kelsey Ervick

6- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

7- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

8- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

9- Middlemarch by George Eliot

10- Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz

11- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

12- A 5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Emily Craddick - Hotel Splendide by Ludwig Bemelmans

13- Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham

14- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

15- Look in the Mirror by Catherine Steadman

16- Sociopath by Patric Gagne

Media mentioned—

Small Things Like These (2024)

Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024)

Salem’s Lot (Max, 2024)

Will & Harper (Netflix, 2024)

This week our topic is philosophical. No, we’re not discussing those dull philosophy textbooks, but rather novels or nonfiction that ask big questions, such as “Who am I?” and “What is happiness?” and “Do we have free will?”. We will give you 10 books that will get you thinking with your big brains.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Carrie by Stephen King

2- A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

3- Faith, Hope, and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan

4- Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle

5- A Book Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Larissa @laralucretia - The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne

6- Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville

7- Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner

8- Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with Kids by Scott Hershovitz

9- Lotería by Karla Arenas Valenti

10- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

11- How to be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Any Moral Question by Michael Schur

12- The Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak

13- If Cats Disappeared From the World by Genki Kawamura

14- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

15- If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity by Justin Gregg

16- Walking Shadows by Faye Kellerman

Media mentioned—

1- Trap (2024, Max)

2- Carrie (2013, Tubi)

3- Carrie (1976)

4- Penny Dreadful (2014-2016 Pluto)

5- The Little Prince (2015, Pluto)

You can find Alisa Alering at www.alering.com or on Insta @alisa.alering.

This week we wrap up what has been a month of seasonally spooky books with guest Alisa Alering, the author of Smothermoss, a book that is set in 1980s Pennsylvania Appalachia. It is the story of two sisters who witness a murder on the Appalachian Trail. It is a book that Amy discovered while attending the Columbus Book Festival this past summer. If you like magical realism or gothic fiction, you will definitely want to check this novel out since there is a sentient mountain. Nature truly is a character in the story.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

2- Ritual by David Pinner

3- Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham

4- Watership Down by Richard Adams

5- Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms

6- Where I Can't Follow by Ashley Blooms

7- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Dina @ddemaiosmith - Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

8- The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

9- Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

10- Assembly by Natasha Brown

11- White Teeth by Zadie Smith

12- The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister

13- My Dear Henry: A Jekyll and Hyde Remix (Remixed Classics) by Kalynn Bayron

Media mentioned— 1- What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu 2019)

2- What We Do in the Shadows movie (2014)

3- Wellington Paranormal (Max 2018)

4- Psycho (Netflix 1960)

5- The Wicker Man (Tubi 1973)

This week we’re bringing you a Creature Feature in which we suggest books that tell the story of creatures. Those may be mythological creatures, cryptids, or beings from your favorite horror film. Some are scary, some are mysterious, some don’t seem that different from humans. All of them make for good October reads.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

2- Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

3- Treasury of Greek Mythology: Classic Stories of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes & Monsters by Donna Jo Napoli

4- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Katherine @katshomeig - Beautiful Prey by Lora Darc

5- The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrick Svenson

6- Silver in the Wood/Drowned Country by Emily Tesh

7- The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Millicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

8- Grendel by John Gardner

9- Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith

10- Dear Mothman by Robin Gow

11- The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

12- Mothman's Merry Cryptid Christmas by Andrew Shaffer

13- The Frandidate (Franny K Stein series) by Jim Benton

14- The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey

15- Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

16- The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

17- It Came From the Trees by Ally Russell

18- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Media mentioned---

1- What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu, 2019- present)

2- The Thing (1982)

3- The Fly (1986)

4- Santa Clarita Diet (Netflix, 2017-2019)

5- The Mummy (1999)

6- Harry & the Hendersons (1987)

7- The Shape of Water (2017)

8- The Goonies (1985)

9- Kaos (Netflix, 2024)

10- The Mothman Prophecies (1992)

11- Illustration of an Anthropophagi - themonstrumologistoverview.weebly.com/confli…t.html

You can find Daniel at his website www.danielolivas.com

This week we speak with Daniel Olivas, a lawyer with the California Department of Justice, who is also a novelist, poet, and playwright. His novel, Chicano Frankenstein, which published in March of this year, was an obvious book pick for Carrie because she loves Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The novel has been optioned by Universal Television, so fingers crossed on that.

Olivas’ reimagining of Shelley’s 1818 novel has an unnamed man as the narrator. He is a paralegal who has been reanimated from the corpse of a Mexican-American man, one of many such reanimated people (derogatively called “stitchers”) who are part of an effort to deal with the US’ labor crisis, but he struggles with his identity. How can a person have an identity if all knowledge of their family, their interests, their feelings, their thoughts have been stripped away? In addition to the idea of selfhood, the novel also explores the cruelty of politicians who pander to fear and racism, harming the people of their communities that one would expect them to protect.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel Olivas

2- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

3- The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande

4- Artificial Life After Frankenstein by Eileen M. Hunt

5- A 5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover The Biblioholic @thebiblioholic_ - Dorothy Must Die series by Danielle Page

6- Leech by Hiron Ennes

7- Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai

8- Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

9- Deathless Divide (Dread Nation #2) by Justina Ireland

Movies mentioned in this episode:

1- Frankenstien (1931)

2- The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- A Good Girls Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

2- Horribly Haunted in Hillbilly Hollow by Blythe Baker

3- Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig

4- A 5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Lan Nguyen-Colgate - A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I Lin

5- The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

6- "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin (Short Story)

7- The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

8- House of Cotton by Monica Brashears

9- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

10- Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs and Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

11- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

12- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

13- The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

14- Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

15- The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff

16- The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

17- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

18- The Thing about Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

19- Heavenly Bodies by Amani Erriu

20- Fallen Stars by Amani Erriu

Media mentioned--

1- A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (Netflix, 2024)

2- The Lovely Bones (Max, 2009)

You can find Lyndsay at her website www.lyndsayrush.com/ and on IG at @maryoliversdrunkcousin

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- A Bit Much by Lyndsay Rush

2- Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan

3- A Five Start Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Meg Longley @ohlongley - Meet Me at the Museum by Ann Youngson

4- Weyward by Emilia Hart

5- I Miss You When I Blink: Essays by Mary Laura Philpott

6- I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

7- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

8- Pets in the City: True Tales of a Manhattan House Call Vet by Dr. Amy Attas

9- The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

Media mentioned—

1- The Wild Robot (2024)

2- Saltburn (Prime Video, 2023)

3- Wuthering Heights: Hollywood's worst case casting decisions - www.bbc.com/culture/article/202…t-casting-decisions

4- A Room With a View (1985)

5- Downton Abbey (2010-2015)

You can find info about Midge and John at their website midgeandjohn.com/ or at ashlandcreekpress.com/. They are on IG @midge_and_john and @ashlandcreekpress.

Ashland Creek Press, an eco-fiction publisher, first came on our radar in the pre-COVID era when we interviewed Katy Yocom, author of Three Ways to Disappear, a novel set partly in India that focuses on animal conservation and a relationship between two sisters. But one of our other former guests, Jennifer Caloyeras, host of the Books Are My People podcast, also had a book published by Ashland Creek: her 2015 novel Strays. We’re always interested in small presses, so we were excited to talk to Midge Raymond and John Yunker about their work running one.

But Midge and John are also writers who have collaborated on a recently published novel titled Devils Island, which is set in Tasmania amongst the endangered and much-maligned Tasmanian devil. While this is a conservation-leaning novel, it is also a suspense story about a naturalist tour that goes very wrong, involving a disappearance and a death.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Three Ways to Disappear by Katy Yocom

2- Strays by Jennifer Caloyeras

3- Devils Island by Midge Raymond and John Yunker

4- My Last Continent by Midge Raymond

5- The Tourist Trail by John Yunker

6- A Five Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover Susan Cook @bookbookbagawk - Another Country by James Baldwin

7- The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu

8- The Spare Room by Helen Garner

9- We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

10- Pines by Blake Crouch

11- Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Media mentioned—

1- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

2- True Detective—Night Country (Max)

3- The Bear (Hulu)

4- Eco-lit books —ecolitbooks.com/

5- Maria Island Walk - www.mariaislandwalk.com/

6- What do Tasmanian devils sound like? - www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW27vpK4ALQ

JD Vance first made news when he published his book Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, but he has since become a senator in Ohio and a vice presidential candidate. When his memoir came out, there were many people who had strong negative feelings about his book, namely other people from Appalachia who felt that he misrepresented them and their struggles.

When JD Vance was selected as Donald Trump’s VP, we thought it might be a good time to look at some other Appalachia-related books that perhaps provide a fuller picture of the region, which spans 206,000 square miles, 423 counties, and six states. A region this large cannot be summed up by one person in one book.

So our goal this week is to give you some diverse Appalachian voices to add to your TBR for a broader view of this region.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

2- Storyteller by Dave Grohl

3- Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Clare Dederer

4- Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began by Leah Hazard

5- Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis by Emily Willingham

6- The Sirens of Soleil City by Sarah C. Johns

7- A Five Star Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Nikki Lee @nikkileethrillseeker - The Mechanics of Memory by Audrey Lee

8- "A Ribbon for Baldy" by Jesse Stuart (short story)

9- The Beatinest Boy by Jesse Stuart

10- Andy Finds a Way by Jesse Stuart

11- Many-Storied House: Poems by George Ella Lyon

12 - Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Carver Jr. ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/s9-e…-9623/

13- "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon (poem)

14- Prodigals: A Sister's Memoir of Appalachia and Loss by Sarah Beth Childers

15- Township by Jamie Lyn Smith

16- Water Street by Crystal Wilkinson

17- Affrilachia by Frank X Walker

18- "Burying Albatross" by Frank X. Walker (poem)- poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/ars…a/frank-x-walker

19- "Neoteric Kama no Sutra" by Frank X. Walker (poem)- poets.org/poem/neoteric-kama-no-sutra

20- Where I Can't Follow by Ashley Blooms ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/ep-6…30-20/

21- Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

22- Belle Prater's Boy by Ruth White

23- Clay's Quilt by Silas House

24- The Coal Tattoo by Silas House

25- Parchment of Leaves by Silas House

26- Fair & Tender Ladies by Lee Smith

27 - Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains by Cassie Chambers ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/ep-3…25-20/

28- Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/s-6-…-6-22/

29- A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

Media mentioned--

1- The To Read List Podcast

2- Slow Horses (Apple +)

3- The Bear (Hulu)

4- Ripley (Netflix)

5- True Detective: Night Country (HBO MAX, 2024)

6- Steve! (documentary) (Apple +, 2024)

7- Kaos (Netflix, 2024)

8- The Princess Bride (1987)

9- The Tourist (Netflix)

10- The Good Girl's Guide to Murder - (Netflix, 2024)

News articles

1- Dave Grohl Announcement - www.usatoday.com/story/life/healt…ock/75176681007/

2- Neil Gaiman controversy - www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/…xual-misconduct

You can find Kelly Hill on IG @kellyehill_author .

This week we chat with Kelly Hill who published her debut novel, A Home for Friendless Women, this year in March. It is the story of three Victorian-era women who experience a home for “fallen” women in very different ways.

What makes this novel especially unique is that Kelly got the idea for it from her time interning at The Filson Historical Society while she was completing her dissertation at the University of Louisville. She came across historic documents about a home for pregnant women here in Louisville and fictionalized them to create a powerful story. While the story is about a tough time for women over a century ago.

Books Mentioned In this Episode:

1- A Home for Friendless Women by Kelly Hill

2- The Age of Grievance by Frank Bruni

3- The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

4- A Five Star Read Recommended by fellow Book Lover Tracey Myers-Quesada @cubadianmom3 - Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch by Erin French

5- Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

6- When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by Jon Ganz

7- Washington’s Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben by Josh Trujillo and Levi Hastings

Media:

1- The Lost Kitchen (Hulu, Amazon, 2021- present)

2- The Wild Robot (2024)

For a lot of people, Labor Day, which this year fell on September 2, marks the end of summer, although astronomical summer doesn’t end until September 22 (and meteorological fall actually begins on September 1). And according to Carrie, summer ends on the first day of school, which was Aug 8 here in Louisville KY. And what was a common assignment when you returned back to schook? That's right. Write about what you did this summer. So this episode is a recap of what the two of us did from June through August told in the form of books!

Books mentioned--

1- Bad Monkey by Carl Hiassen

2- Hoot by Carl Hiassen

3- Flush by Carl Hiassen

4- Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway by Emma Fick

5- Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

6- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Amanda Pavlov @pavlovsbooks - A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch

7- The Kindred Spirits Supper Club by Amy E. Reichert

8- Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal

9- Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais

10- Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

11- Death’s Door: True Tales of Tragedy, Mystery, and Bravery from the Great Lakes’ Most Dangerous Waters by Barbara M. Joosse

12- The Elephants of Thula Thula by Francois Malby-Anthony

13- A Death in Door County (Monster Hunter Mystery) by Annelise Ryan

14- The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso

15- I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

16- The Deepest Lake by Andromeda Romano-Lax

17- Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke, audiobook narrated by Brendan Fraser

18- Death Stalks Door County (Dave Cubiak #1) by Patricia Skalka

Media mentioned--

1- Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father (Netflix, 2017)

2- Jack Whitehall: Fatherhood with my Father (2024)

3- The Tourist (Netflix, 2022)

4- Bad Monkey (Apple+, 2024)

5- Strong Sense of Place Podcast - https://strongsenseofplace.com/podcasts/

6-Lawsuit Against Florida Book Bans - people.com/publishers-authors-…a-book-bans-8704020

You can find Britton online at her website www.booksbybritton.com/ IG @booksbybritton On Etsy - Books By Britton

This week we chat with Britton Perelman, a unique artist and craftsperson who creates miniature bookshelves. We saw her at the Columbus OH Book Festival in 2023, which was the first festival she attended selling her amazing creations, and we were delighted when she agreed to be a guest.

We chat with her about how she sort of fell into designing and crafting miniature bookshelves during COVID and how the business has been booming, which leaves Britton, who has a BA in journalism and an MFA in screenwriting, with little time to compose written work. Britton has had to get all hands on deck, including her mom and sister, which means Books by Britton is a female-owned, family business.

Books Mentioned In this Episode:

1- The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

2- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

3- Tiny Treasures: Amazing Miniatures You Can Make by Nancy Holyoke

4- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

5- The Guest List by Lucy Foley

6- Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

7- Truly, Devious series by Maureen Johnson

8- A Five-Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Steve Elliot @stevereadthatbook - All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

9- Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

10- The Measure by Nikki Erlick

11- A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

12- The Hundred Loves of Juliet by Evelyn Skye

13- One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

Shows mentioned--

The Decameron (Netflix, 2024)

Links:

1- Pandora Productions - Little Shop of Horrors - www.pandoraprods.org/

2- Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest-- www.bulwer-lytton.com

3- Louisville Book Festival - www.louisvillebookfestival.com/

It's that time of year where kids and teachers are back at school or almost back at school so we thought we would offer recommendations for books related to education—novels or memoirs set in schools or colleges; books with teachers, deans, students, or staff as characters; literature in which education or learning plays an important if not essential role.

Books mentioned in this episode:

1- The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

2- Shanghailanders by Juli Min

3- A Five-Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Dawn Nacker @dawndevoursbooks - How To Read a Book by Monica Wood

4- Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson

5- Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

6- The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Matthieu

7- Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by RF Kuang

7- New Kid by Jerry Craft

8- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

9- The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

10- The Gilded Years by Karin Tanabe

11- The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

12- True Biz by Sara Nović

13- Girl at War by Sara Nović

14- "All Summer in a Day" (short story) by Ray Bradbury

15- Love at First Book by Jenn McKinlay

16- The Rom-commers by Katherine Center

Bookish events—

1- Poe: A Dream Within a Dream fareharbor.com/embeds/book/belle…ow=1089772&g4=yes

2- Untimely Ripp’d kyshakespeare.com/season/untimely/

3- Cincy Bookstore Crawl cincybookstorecrawl.my.canva.site/

4- Books by the Banks booksbythebanks.org/

5- Cynthiana KY Skeletons wkdq.com/small-kentucky-city-halloween/

6- Rail Explorers www.railexplorers.net/

7- Fenrir Viking Festival www.kyrenfaire.com/viking-fest

8- New Kid by Jerry Craft Book Banning

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/28/1144458555/banned-books-author-jerry-craft-new-kid

Media mentioned—

1- The Whale Rider — 2002 www.imdb.com/title/tt0298228/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

2- Happiness for Beginners (Netflix, 2023)

You can find the Bookery Cincy at www.bookerycincy.com/ or on IG @bookerycincy. To find info about the Bookstore Crawl visit FB at Cincy Bookstore Crawl.

This week we chat with Sierra Hollabaugh, one of the co-owners and founders of Bookery Cincy, an independent bookstore located in Cincinnati, OH. When Amy went to Cincinnati recently, she met Sierra so we thought it would be nice if everyone got to know a little more about the bookstore as well as a cool October event, the Cincy Bookstore Crawl, which includes 16 small bookstores in the area. Cincinnati is a great place for a weekend visit, and the bookstore crawl just makes it an even more appealing location.

We talk about the resurgence of the independent brick and mortar bookstore, what it’s like running a small business when you have young kids, and what visitors can expect if they come to Cincy for the Bookstore Crawl which is the weekend of Oct 4-6.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Orbital by Samantha Harvey

2- American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

3- Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

4- Sociopath by Patric Gagne

5- A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

6- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

7- Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

8- The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

9- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

10- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

11- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

12- Trust by Hernan Diaz

13- In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

14- The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

15- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Elias Eells @eliaseells - The West Passage by Jared Pechaček

16- Cocktails and Consoles by Elias Eells

17- All the Sinners Bleed by SA Cosby

18- Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby

19- Sandwich by Catherine Newman

20- We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman

21- Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family by Catherine Newman

22- A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney

Media mentioned-- 1- American Psycho (2000, Netflix)

2- Catastrophe (2015-2019, Prime Video)

3- Art is Not a Luxury with Ethan Hawke - www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeCuqtFKLHI

4- Utah Book Ban -Utah recently banned 13 books by 7 authors from all public schools in the state. apnews.com/article/utah-school…a6cd2cb5ddd25fca700

This week we’re going “boldly where no man has gone before.” Yes–that’s right into space.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg

2- The Paris Affair by Maureen Marshall

3- A Five Start Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Stephanie Affinito @affinitolit - The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood

4- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

5- Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey

6- The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut Universe series) by Mary Robinette Kowal

7- Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

8- Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar

9- Orbital by Samantha Harvey

10- The Lion of Mars by Jennifer L. Holm

11- A Rovers Story by Jasmine Warga

12- Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

13- Bright Objects by Ruby Todd

14- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

15- A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars by Hakeem Oluseyi and Joshua Horwitz

Media mentioned--

1- Constellation (Apple+, 2024)

2- Zone of Interest (HBOMax, 2023)

3- Cat Video Fest--www.catvideofest.com

4- For All Mankind (Apple+, 2019)

5- The Expanse (Prime Video, 2015)

6- Spaceman of Bohemia (Netflix, 2024)

7- Literature as an Olympic Sport - lithub.com/did-you-know-that-p…tual-olympic-sport/

You can find Jean Duffy at her website www.jeanduffy.com or on IG @soccergranniesbook. Sarahlyn Bruck can be found at her website www.sarahlynbruck.com or on IG @saralynbruck.

If you can’t get enough of sports and global camaraderie watching the Paris Summer Olympics on your TV screens, we have an interview for you today to scratch that itch even more; books that include women’s soccer.

In Season 10, we did a dual-interview with two authors who wrote Jane Austen-inspired books: AH Kim and Melodie Edwards. It was so much fun, we thought we would do it again. This time, though, we’re pairing two women who wrote books related to soccer.

Sarahlyn Bruck is the author of several novels; her most recent is titled Light of the Fire, which is about two adult women who were connected by soccer in high school. Jean Duffy’s debut nonfiction book is titled Soccer Grannies: The South African Women Who Inspire the World, about older women who play recreational soccer. These two writers, who both have an abiding love of the game, were down with joining each other and us to chat about their respective books.

While these books on the surface deal with soccer, they ultimately address friendship and teamwork, the elements of the game that change lives for the better.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Light of the Fire by Sarahlyn Bruck

2- Soccer Grannies: The South African Women Who Inspire the World by Jean Duffy

3- The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women's Lives by Kelcey Ervick

4- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover, Patricia @patriciapluggedin - Funny Story by Emily Henry

5- I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

6- Anna Bright is Hiding Something by Susie Orman Schnall

7- Invisible Women: Exploring Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez

8- Magonia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller

9- Know My Name by Chanel Miller

10- Starter Villain by John Scalzi

11- Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Media mentioned—

1- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

2- Trying (2024, Apple+)

3- Catastrophe (2015, Amazon Prime)

4- The Dropout (2022, Hulu)

Our Episode with Kelcey Ervick about her graphic memoir, The Keeper -ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/s9ep…21323/

You can find Carter Wilson at his website www.carterwilson.com or on IG @carterwilsonauthor. You can also find his podcast Making It Up on all podcast platforms.

This week we chat with Carter Wilson, a thriller writer and podcast host who lives in Colorado and who is the author of nine novels. His most recent is titled The Father She Went to Find, a story of Penny, a girl who suffered a brain injury at an early age that left her a savant with curious abilities. It was at this time that her father disappeared, but he has remained in contact via a birthday card every year. Until she turns 21. And that is the impetus she needs to go find him. This is a road trip/ scavenger hunt thrill ride that even has a few Stranger Things vibes. It’s set in the 1980s after all.

Carter talks to us about why this book is different from all his others and his favorite TV thriller series he has watched this year. And we laugh when he tells us one of the reasons why someone might start writing a book.

Books mentioned-- 1- The Father She Went to Find by Carter Wilson

2- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Yayoi Kusama (Penguin Classics) 2012

3- Deception at Diamond D Ranch by GR Stahl

4- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

5- Pines by Blake Crouch

6- Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

7- Greenwood by Michael Christie

8- My Mama, Cass: A Memoir by Owen Elliot-Kugell

9- The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel by Douglas Brunt

10- The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton

11- The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

12- The Language of Love and Loss by Bart Yates

13- The Five Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover Iresha Jayasinghe @resh_bookstagram - Cinder Luna by Marie Soleil

Movies and Limited Series--

1- Where'd You Go Bernadette (2019)

2- Shogun (Hulu, 2024)

3- Ripley (Netflix, 2024)

Links--

1- Salted Brown Butter Krispie Treats recipe - smittenkitchen.com/2009/11/salted-…-crispy-treats/

2-Yayoi Kusama Exhiition - www.speedmuseum.org/yayoi-kusama-in…urvive-forever/

3- Rediscovered Books in Boise, ID - www.rdbooks.org/

4- Free Little Art Galleries (FLAGS) - freelittleartgalleries.art/

So back during Season 10 we flew to Los Angeles, California for the LA Times Festival of Books, which was held on the campus of USC. We were able to meet our bookish friend, Jennifer Caloyeras from the Books Are My People podcast; hear cool authors and audiobook narrators speak; and visit some awesome places in LA.

Amy is usually the one who reads around the places she is visiting, although she is apparently rubbing off on me because I’m finding myself doing it too. We decided to make an episode centered around Los Angeles/Hollywood reads.

Books Discussed in This Episode:

1- Everything I Learned, I Learned In a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin

2- The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

3- The Library Book by Susan Orlean

4- A 5 Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover Lauren Becker @laurenashleybecker- Elephant and Castle by Hannah Ledford

5- Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins series) by Walter Mosley

6- The Monstrous Misses Mai by Van Hoang

7- Love & Saffron by Kim Fay

8- Daytime Drama by Sarahlyn Bruck

9- Code Name Edelweiss by Stephanie Landsem

10- California Dreamin: The True Story of the Mamas and Papas by Michelle Phillips

12- Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

13- Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

14- The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

15- Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle

16- Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

17- Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

18- Icebreaker by Hannah Grace

19- Wildfire by Hannah Grace

Movies mentioned--

Feast of Death (documentary about James Ellroy) - 2001

Articles mentioned--

100 Best Books of the 21st Century - www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/…21st-century.html

Episodes mentioned--

1- www.perksofbeingabooklover.com/episodes/…m-vidrine

2- www.perksofbeingabooklover.com/episodes/…akespeare

You can find Mai Corland on IG @maicorland as well as at her website at meredithireland.wordpress.com

This episode begins Season 11 for us–we’ve got over 200 episodes under our belts and are back to bring you more.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that fantasy is big right now, and we discovered a fun fantasy that feels like an Ocean’s 11 type romp with multiple characters trying to take down a king. The book is titled Five Broken Blades and it is written by Mai Corland. We were delighted to speak with her a couple weeks back, especially since she is now an international bestselling author. And in fact, while recording this episode you will hear Mai receiving some good news. While some people might let this success go to their heads, Mai is down-to-earth and gets entirely too much pleasure poking fun at her new status.

We chat about the fantasy series she can’t stop recommending, why writing middle grade and YA novels was such good prep for pacing in her new romantic fantasy, and how riding the subway opened up her world as a teen.

Books Discussed In This Episode:

1- Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland

2- Four Ruined Realms by Mai Corland

3- You Are Here: Connected Flights edited by Ellen Oh

4- Emma and the Love Spell by Meredith Ireland

5- The Jasmine Project by Meredith Ireland

6- Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse

7- Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

8- The Jane City trilogy by Fonda Lee

9- The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent

10- 5 Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover Marné Deranger @readerbythewater - Sandwich by Catherine Newman

11- Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives by Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett

12- Such Charming Liars by Karen McManus

13- One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

14- The Cousins by Karen McManus

15- Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson

This week we are talking all about journeys. Whether they be physical or mental, we whisk you away in a good book. Choose from 10 book recommendations from Carrie and Amy for when you're ready to be on the move.

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and FB Perks of Being a Book Lover.

Books Mentioned in this Episode

1- How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas Foster

2- American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

3- Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

4- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

5- The Lion of Lark-Hayes Manor by Aubrey Hartman

6- The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester (The Surgeon of Crowthorne)

7- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

8- Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool by Lauren Artress

9- Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

10- Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

11- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

12- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

13- What the Ermine Saw: The Extraordinary Journey of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Most Mysterious Portrait by Eden Collinsworth

14- News of the World by Paulette Jilles

15- Enemy Women by Paulette Jilles

16- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

17- The Road Towards Home by Corinne Demas

18- A Pearl in a Storm: How I Found my Heart in the Middle of the Atlantic Ocean by Tori Murden McClure

19- The Gran Tour: Travels with My Elders by Ben Aitken

20- Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker

21- Cosmic Cats and Fantastic Furballs by Mary Turzillo

22- Your Cat and Other Space Aliens by Mary Turzillo

23- Mars is No Place for Children by Mary Turzillo

5 Star Book Recommendation by a Book Lover 1- Empire Of A Vampire by Jay Christoff recommended by Tiffany K., Omaha, NE. Instagram @chaiteaandbooksareallineed

Shows/Movies watched—

1- American Born Chinese (Disney+, 2023)

2- Annihilation (Netflix, 2018)

3- The Professor and the Madman (2019)

Labirynth Locator www.labyrinthlocator.com

Bookish News

Article about Henrietta Lacks apnews.com/article/henrietta-l…efa34c9b79a544f0729

Did you know it is National Humor Month? Neither did we but now we do and so do you. Which means this week we are talking about books that make us laugh.

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a Book Lover.

Books We Mentioned:

1- The Peripheral by William Gibson

2- Foundation by Isaac Asimnov

3- Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

4- The Martian by Andy Weir

5- The Alaskan Laundry by Brendan Jones

6- Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

7- The One and Only Bob by Katherine Applegate

8- The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

9- Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

10- Yearbook by Seth Rogen

11- This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

12- The Guncle by Steven Rowley

13- Why Don't You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It? A Mother's Suggestions by Patricia Marx; illustrated by Roz Chast

14- Calypso by David Sedaris

15- A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson

16- Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel by Suzanne Roberts

17- Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald

18- She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

19- Sacred Geometry by Robert Lawlor

20- Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis

21- What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry

22- Hestia Strikes A Match by Christine Grillo

23- My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimers by Sandeep Jauhar

24- Elf Dog and Owl Head by M.T. Anderson

TV Series mentioned:

1- The Peripheral (Amazon Prime 2023)

2- Foundation (Apple+ 2021)

Bookish News

www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/…olastic.html

At the start of summer, we like to chat with Sam Miller, bookseller and manager at Carmichael’s Bookstore here in Louisville (We actually like to chat with Sam anytime, but she has especially useful information about new books twice a year.) Sam does the heavy lifting this week by telling us what is coming out and might be good for your TBR list.

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a Book Lover.

Books mentioned in this episode:

1- The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

2- Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

3- Be Mine by Richard Ford

4- The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

5- The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

6- The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

7- Color of Water by James McBride

8- Deacon King Kong by James McBride

9- The Tusk that Did the Damage by Tania James

10- Loot by Tania James

11- Happy Place by Emily Henry

12- I Didn’t Do It by Jamie Lynn Hendricks

13- Only One Left by Riley Sager

14- Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

15- Independence Square by Martin Cruz Smith

16- Small Mercies by Dennis LeHane

17- Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway

18- Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong

19- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

20 The Other Renaissance by Paul Strathern

21- Ice by Amy Brady

22- The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II by David Chrisinger

23- Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer

24- A Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

25- Pageboy by Elliot Page

26- Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams

27- Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong

28- King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

29- Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

30- Sweet Enough: A Dessert Cookbook by Alison Roman

31- Franklin Smoke by Aaron Franklin

32- Love is a Pink Cake by Claire Ptak

33- Back to the Dirt by Frank Bill

34- Code of the Hills by Chris Offutt

35- If You Write Me a Letter, Send it Here by Louisville Story Program

36- Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.

37- Tar Hollow Trans by Stacy Jane Grover

38- The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers

39- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

40- Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

41- Weather Together by Jessie Sima

42- The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

43- Big Gay Wedding by Byron Lane

44- Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

45- Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott

46- Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

47- Prom Mom by Laura Lippman

48- The Disinvited Guest by Carol Goodman

This week we celebrate all the special days of June! Want a book rec for Pride month? We have one. What about Juneteenth or Father's Day? We have you covered. And did you know it's National Audiobook Month? It's new to us as well but we love audiobooks so we give you some recommendations for that too. And we throw in one wildcard category - one of those random National Days or Months that always makes you wonder why there needs to be a month for that:)

This is the last episode for Season 8. We are taking a month off for summer family travel and some rest and relaxation. We will be back the late July/ early August with all new episodes. Until then, we will air some of our favorite past episodes in case you missed them the first time around.

Happy Reading!

For show notes for any episode or to contact us, go to our website at perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a Book Lover.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

2- The Road by Cormac McCarthy

3- No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

4- Changes: A Love Story by Ama Ata Aidoo

5- Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo

6- The Scent of a Garden by Namrata Patel

7- The Candid Life of Meena Dave by Namrata Patel

8- The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule

9- Fun Home: A Famliy Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

10- Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

11- And Then the Grey Heaven by RE Katz

12- Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

13- The Changeling by Victor Lavalle

14- Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

15- The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander

16- The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

17- The Chosen by Chaim Potok

18- Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

19- The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

20- The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

21- Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis by Emily Willingham

22- The Good One by Polly Stewart

23- On Earth as it is on Television by Emily Jane

Shows/movies mentioned--

1- No Country For Old Men ( 2007)

2- My Octopus Teacher (Netflix, 2020)

Articles Mentioned:

1- Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghanaian writer who was voice of African women, dies at 81

2- The convoluted world of best-seller lists, explained

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a Book Lover.

This week are celebrating AAPI Heritage Month (Asian American Pacific Islander) and we give you a list of 10 (plus maybe a few more) of our favorite books to add to your TBR written by authors with family heritage from this part of the world. We give you books in a variety of genres; literary fiction, historical fiction, memoir, food writing, graphic novels, horror, poetry, and middle grade.

So join us this week as we explore the big wide world of Asia and the Pacific Islands heritage in literature. Plus, we talk about the most recent Jane Austen film adaptation we've watched, a new environmentally friendly product we've tried, and why sometimes it might be nice to be a disembodied head.

Books mentioned-- 1- Persuasion by Jane Austen

2- Emma by Jane Austen

3- Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

4- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

5- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

6- The Girls of Fall by Jessica Minyard

7- You Should Have Known by Rebecca Keller

8- An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helen Tursten

9- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

10- Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia

11- The Candid Life of Meena Dave by Namrata Patel

12- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

13- The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

14- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

15- Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef's Journey to Discover America's New Melting-Pot Cuisine by Edward Lee

16- American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

17- The Fervor by Alma Katsu

18- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

19- Two Brown Dots by Danni Quintos

20- World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

21- A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park

22- The Milk Lady of Bangalore by Shoba Narayan

23- Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson

24- Moloka’i by Alan Brennert

25- Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

26- The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer by Athena Aktipis

27- A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus

28- The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

29- Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and 500 Miles Across Spain by Andrew McCarthy

Movies mentioned--

1- Persuasion (Netflix 2022)

2- Ted Lasso - Season 3 (Apple TV 2023)

3- Jury Duty (Amazon 2023)

4- Enchanted (2007)

5- The Terror (Hulu 2018)

We will be on a much needed hiatus for the entire month of June and a smidge into July. You will get replays of some of our book recommendation episodes from last year, but toward the end of June, we may have a remix episode where we catch up with a former guest.

This last episode of Season 10 is about a very important topic. Although May is almost over, it isn’t too late to recognize books for Mental Health Awareness month. Carrie and I both know and appreciate that mental health is part of total health. Your brain is a really big, extremely powerful, exceedingly important part of your body. If it ain’t happy, no other part of you is happy either. It’s no different than your kidneys or heart not performing their best. This week we give you some book recommendations, both fiction and nonfiction, that highlight mental health or bring some exposure to mental health issues.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond by Henry Winkler

2- Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

3- Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

4- And Then, Boom! by Lisa Fipps - A 5 star read recommended by fellow book lover Cassie Sanders @allroadsleadtoausten

5- Starfish by Lisa Fipps

6- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

7- The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

8- The Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O' Sullivan

9- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

10- Wesley Yorstad Goes Outside by Stephanie Hunter

11- All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner

12- Homer and Langley by EL Doctorow

13- The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein

14- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

15- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

16- Sylvia Plath: A Biography by Linda Wagner-Martin

17- Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook

18- The Act of Disappearing by Nathan Gower

19- The Year of the Horses by Courtney Maum

20- Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac by Jeremy Hance

21- The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

22- Jingo by Terry Pratchett

23- Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

24- Mort by Terry Pratchett

25- Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Shows/podcasts mentioned—

1- Barry (HBO, 2018 - 2023)

2- Reservation Dogs (Hulu, 2021 - 2023)

3- Good Omens (Amazon Prime, 2019 - present)

4- Dear Therapists with Lori Gottlieb and Guy Winch - podcast

You can find Nathan Gower at his website www.nathangower.com or on IG @nathan_gower_

Our guest this week is Nathan Gower, a writer with roots in Kentucky, having earned degrees from Spalding University and the University of Louisville. He now serves as a professor of English at Campbellsville University. His debut novel, The Act of Disappearing, publishes on May 28 with Mira Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.

The novel is about a woman named Julia, who her friends call Jules. Julia has been trying to make a name for herself as a fiction writer, but she works at a bar to make ends meet. It is there that she meets a famous older man named Jonathan Aster who gives her a photograph and offers to pay her to tell the story of the woman in the picture: the woman in the photo is jumping off a bridge holding a baby. Julia begins a quest to discover who this woman is and learns about herself in the process.

He also talks to us about how terrifying it was to write a book from a female point of view, how the women in his family inspired this story, and the sci-fi book he just read and thoroughly enjoyed even though he doesn’t like sci-fi.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- The Act of Disappearing by Nathan Gower

2- Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

3- Dead Boy Detectives by Neil Gaiman

4- Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

5- Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen

6- The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

7- The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty - A 5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Claire Boswell @clairesbookobsession

8- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

9- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

10- The Man In The Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas

11- Made for You by Jenna Satterthwaite

12- Johanna Porter is Not Sorry by Sara Read

Entertainment mentioned—

1- Beetlejuice (1988)

2- Beetlejuice (Broadway Across America)

3- Seinfeld (1989- 1998, Netflix)

4- Dark Matter (2024, Apple+)

5- The Dead Boys Detective (2024, Netflix)

6- Locke & Key (2020, Netflix)

7- The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

Photograph mentioned— time.com/3456028/the-most-bea…h-an-immortal-photo/

This week we have our annual summer reading episode with our favorite bookseller, Sam Miller, store manager at Carmichaels Bookstore in Louisville, KY. By this point in our spring season, we are tired, so having Sam on and letting her do the heavy lifting on book suggestions is what we’re about. Sam clues us in to some new fiction, nonfiction, traditional summer reading, mysteries, sci-fi/fantasy, and children’s books you may want to scoop up.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- James by Percival Everett

2- Hamilton by Ron Chernow

3- We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman

4- Sandwich by Catherine Newman

5- Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult

6- By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

7- Long Island by Colm Tóibín

8- Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

9- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

10- I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

11- The Summer Pact by Emily Giffen

12- Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

13- Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

14- Knife by Salman Rushdie

15- The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larsen

16- 1974 by Francine Prose

17- The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

18- Sociopath by Patric Gagne

19- An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin

20- The Searcher by Tana French

21- The Hunter by Tana French

22- One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware

23- Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

24- Highway 13 by Fiona McFarland

25- This Bright River by Liz Moore

26- God of the Woods by Liz Moore

27- The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

28- Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

29- The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

30- Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

31- House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

32- Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

33- The Deading by Nicholas Belardes

34- Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones

35- Eva’s Man by Gayl Jones

36- You Are Here edited by Ada Límon

37- Black Gold by Marguerite Henry

38- The Kentucky Oaks by Avalyn Hunter

39- Bourbonland by Edward Lee

40- Smoke and Pickles by Edward Lee

41- Buttermilk Graffiti by Edward Lee

42- The Gaga Mistake by Emma Straub

43- Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

44- The Squish by Brianna Carzoo

45- The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay

46- Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

47- Finna by Nino Cipri

48- The Divorcees by Rowan Beaird

49- I’m Afraid You Have Dragons by Peter S. Beagle

50- The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Apps mentioned— Merlin app (birds)

May is Audiobook Appreciation Month so this week we suggest to you 10 plus books that give an added dimension when you listen to the audiobook version. And we aren't even entertaining the notion that listening to audiobooks isn't reading. Listening counts!

Books mentioned--

1- The Jinn Daughter by Rania Hanna

2- The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

3- Rules for Second Chances by Maggie North (A 5 star read recommended by fellow book lover Shannon Loar @shopcoffeekids

4- Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, narrated by Kristoffer Tabori

5- Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci, narrated by Stanley Tucci

6- Nothing is Wrong and Here is Why by Alexandra Petri, narrated by Rebecca Gibel

7- Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, narrated by Marin Ireland

8- The Assasination of Brangwain Spurge by MT Anderson and Eugene Yelchin narrated by Gildart Jackson

9- Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, narrated by an ensemble cast

10- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, narrated by Tom Hollander

11- Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams, narrated by author

12- Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, narrated by Marin Ireland

13- Ava's Man by Rick Bragg

14-The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and his People by Rick Bragg

15- My Southern Journey: True Journeys from the Heart of the South by Rick Bragg

16- It's All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg

17- Calypso by David Sedaris

18- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

19- Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, narrated by Bronson Pinchot

20- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

21- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

22- The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

Movies and Shows mentioned--

1- Big Night (1996)

2- Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy (CNN)

3- The Hunger Games (2012)

4- The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

5- Daisy Jones and the Six (Amazon, 2023)

6- Leave the World Behind (Netflix, 2023)

7- Ripley (Netflix, 2024)

We interact with book publicists pretty often, but a few months ago, one of them, Sami Lien, emailed and asked for recommendations about things to do in Kentucky around Derby. She explained that she is in a travel book club; they read books over the course of 12 months about a particular US location and then take a trip to visit. The novel Horse by Geraldine Brooks was the book that inspired this particular trip for their club.

Well, we love books and travel so we had to invite Sami and her book club friend, Marilyn, to be guests on the show. We had a great time learning about the ins and outs of their travel book club and are excited to get to meet them this Friday at a restaurant about an hour outside of Louisville.

If you would like to see the full list of books they read this year preparing to travel to Kentucky and the Derby, you can find the list in the show notes.

Books Mentioned in the Episode:

1- Horse by Geraldine Brooks

2- Relative Strangers by A.H. Kim

3- Once Persuaded, Twice Shy by Melodie Edwards

4- 1984 by George Orwell

5- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

6- Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

7- East of Eden by John Steinbeck

8- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

9- Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

10- South of Broad by Pat Conroy

11- My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

12- Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

13- Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse by Kim Wickens

14- Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

15- Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon - A five star read recommended by fellow book lover Caitríona Shannon @these_thats_and_prose

16- Friday Harbor by DC Alexander

17- Blood in the Bluegrass by DC Alexander

18- Mary by Janis Cooke Newman

19- Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming

20- Norah Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan

Shows mentioned--

1- Ripley (Netflix, 2024)

The Divine Destinations Reading List for Kentcuky and the KY Derby

1- Horse: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

2- The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

3- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

4- Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

5- Groundskeeping by Lee Cole

6- Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

7- Lincoln by Russell Freedman

8- Water Street by Crystal Wilkinson

9- The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

10- The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis by Elizabeth Letts

11- First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

12- The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett

13- Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal by Sarah Maslin Nir

14- Lexington by Kim Wickens

This week we have a remix episode because we are attending the LA Festival of Books. We catch up with author Ellen Birkett Morris. We first spoke to her in 2020 about her short story collection, Lost Girls, and now she has recently published a novel Beware the Tall Grass. So we will hear a little something old and a little something new from her in that episode.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Beware the Tall Grass by Ellen Birkett Morris

2- Lost Girls by Ellen Birkett Morris

3- Harriet The Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

4- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

5- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

5- Arabel's Raven by Joan Aiken

6- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

7- Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

8- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers by Mary Roach

9- Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

10- Lake Life by David James Poissant

11- Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

12- The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

13- The One and Only Bob by Katherine Applegate

14- Door to Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn translated by Melody Shaw - 5 Star Read recommended by Sarah Phillips @cosymidlifebooknook

Article mentioned in this episode: lawnlove.com/blog/best-cities-for-book-lovers/

This week we are playing the nostalgia card. All of the books we mention are backlist in a big way; the majority are at least 15 years old. Our episode is about books that take up space in our heads. They may be books that, when we see them on a shelf, stir up all kinds of feelings or memories from years past. Or they are books that simply left a huge impression on us and we think about them from time to time. Even though they aren’t new and shiny, these books deserve a place on your TBR.

Books mentioned:

1- The Dead Boy Detectives comic series based on characters developed by Neil Gaiman

2- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

3- Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman

4- The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

5- Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin

6- When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker - A 5 star read recommended by fellow book lover - Kasey @kayree_reads

7-It by Stephen King (1986)

8- Jack Gance by Ward Just (1997)

9- Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (the Bernie Rhodenbarr series) by Lawrence Block (1977)

10- The Good Men by Charmaine Craig (2003)

11- The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir (1991)

12- Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography by Marion Meade (1991)

13- Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce by Brenda Maddox (1998)

14- House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (1999)

15- Eva’s Man by Gayl Jones (1987)

16- Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (1988)

17- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)

18- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

19- Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs

20- Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

Shows mentioned—

1- Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix, 2024)

2- Catherine, Called Birdy (Amazon Prime, 2022)

3- Ripley (Netflix, 2024)

4- Sandman (Netflix, 2022)

5- Good Omens (Amazon Prime, 2019)

6- Sherlock (Hulu, 2010)

7- The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

8- Emma ( Amazon Prime, 2020)

9- 3 Body Problem (Netflix, 2024)

10- Burglar (1987)

11- House of Sand and Fog (Max, 2003)

12- Lion in Winter (1968)

13- Jude (1996)

14- Far from the Madding Crowd (Max, 2015)

Theatre mentioned—

Broadway across America production of “Six”

Articles mentioned—

8 Bookish Podcasts for Booklovers - www.badasswomensbookclub.com/blog/2024/…booklovers