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Perks of Being a Book Lover is a show about books, people who read, and how reading, at its very best, is a social experience. Whether it be a book club, a poetry slam, or the production of a play; words are meant to be shared. Keep up with us on FB.
Episodes
4 days ago
4 days ago
Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
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To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button.
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
Wednesday Apr 29, 2026
Wednesday Apr 29, 2026
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 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)
Wednesday Apr 15, 2026
Wednesday Apr 15, 2026
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 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
Wednesday Apr 01, 2026
Wednesday Apr 01, 2026
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 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
Wednesday Mar 18, 2026
Wednesday Mar 18, 2026
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 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
Wednesday Mar 04, 2026
Wednesday Mar 04, 2026
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.
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
Wednesday Feb 18, 2026
Wednesday Feb 18, 2026
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 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)
Wednesday Feb 04, 2026
Wednesday Feb 04, 2026
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.
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
Wednesday Feb 04, 2026
Wednesday Feb 04, 2026
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 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
Wednesday Jan 21, 2026
Wednesday Jan 21, 2026
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 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/