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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
Wednesday Jun 15, 2022
Wednesday Jun 15, 2022
Once again we have our favorite local bookseller, Sam Miller, of Carmichaels Books in Louisville KY on the show to talk about summer reads. She is like our in house book seller who joins us every summer and winter to tell us what is new and notable in bookstores.
Not all of these books are the typical fluffy summer books about the beach and booze; we have her cover all genres—sci/fi, cookbooks, local authors, YA, and literary fiction. We always enjoy when Sam visits us. And this week besides us, she also got to visit with resident cat Miso who was spreading the love around in the studio while we were recording.
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- For show notes for any episode, go to our website at perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Books Mentioned In This Episode:
Wednesday Jun 08, 2022
Wednesday Jun 08, 2022
In this episode, we chat with debut novelist Donna Gordon. While she has a long background as a poet and short story writer, she ventured into writing a novel when two ideas began swirling around in her head.
Her novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me, tells the story of two characters, Lee and Tomás, who seem to have nothing that connects them and yet they do. It’s a novel that deals with some heavy topics in a way that doesn’t leave you despondent but instead you feel strangely hopeful. It was recently named one of "45 Books We're Excited About from Indie Presses in 2022" by the Indepdendt Book Review. Donna’s book hits bookstore shelves today.
You can find Donna Gordon on instagram at @donnagordon8994 and at her website donnagordon.com
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- For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Wednesday Jun 01, 2022
Readers have heard of the big 5 publishing companies that include Harper Collins, and Penguin/Random House. But there is something really special about university presses. Unfortunately, they don’t often get the attention they deserve. Sarah Munroe, Marketing Manager and Acquisitions Editor at West Virginia University Press, is our guest this week who talks to us about what makes a university press special and how they operate differently from the big 5.
One of the unique things about them is that they can and do feature more diverse voices and topics than what major publishers are willing to put out there. Former guest Neema Avashia, author of Another Appalachia, was published by WVU Press and she is just one of the diverse voices that readers can find at smaller publishers. WVU Press has made some pretty important headlines lately after their author Deesha Philyaw’s book The Secret Lives of Church Ladies became a finalist for the National Book Award in 2020.
While we definitely book nerd out with Sarah, we hope you stay tuned to what was supposed to be her 3 in the Third Degree where we asked only one question but learned a ton about her abiding love for dinosaurs and how they were part of her wedding ceremony with her husband.
You can find WVU Press at their website, www.wvupressonline.com and on instagram and twitter @wvupress and Facebook at West Virginia University Press.
Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover
Instagram at @perksofbeingabookoverpod
For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Books Mentioned In This Episode:
1- Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia
2- Bad Tourist by Suzanne Roberts
3- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
4- Deer Season by Erin Flanagan
5- Even As We Breathe by Annette Sanuooke Clapsaddle
6- Ghosts of New York by Jim Lewis
7- Foote: A Mystery Novel by Tom Bredehoft
8- Lioness by Mark Powell
9- Curing Season by Kristine Langley Mahler
10- Kindred by Octavia Butler
11- Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin
12- Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James
13- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
14- The Kill by Richard House
15- City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty
16- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Greene
17- Eragon by Christopher Paolini
Podcast mentioned:
Strong Sense of Place hosted by Melissa Joulwan and David Humphreys
Wednesday May 25, 2022
Wednesday May 25, 2022
It's travel season and a great time to revisit our episode with travel writers and illustrators Amber Share and Suzanne Roberts. This week’s episode is jam-packed with travel writing. .
Our first guest is not a writer, but a graphic designer who began making cool illustrated posters of national parks on an Instagram account called Subpar Parks. Amber Share couples her illustrations with terrible one-star Yelp reviews those parks receive from visitors who weren’t terribly impressed with majestic things like The Grand Canyon and Old Faithful. Those illustrations have gone viral and she recently collected them all in book format and included facts about each national park from park rangers. Her book, SubPar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors is a New York Times Bestseller.
Our second guest is writer Suzanne Roberts, who National Geographic named a “Next Great Travel Writer.” Her most recent book, Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel, has received many awards including the Independent Publisher Book Award and National Indie Excellence Awards. She weaves a story of maturing as a woman and becoming a veteran traveler. Her book will make you laugh but it also gets serious, and those serious essays make her humor seem all the more poignant.
You can find Amber Share on social media at @subparparks or at her website www.ambersharedesign.com. And Suzanne Roberts can be found on instqgram @suzanneroberts28 or on her website at www.suzanneroberts.net
Books Mentioned in This Episode:
1- SubPar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors by Amber Share
2- Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love & Travel by Suzanne Roberts
3- My Antonia by Willa Cather
4- Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
5- Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
6- The Innocents by Michael Crummey
7- The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
8- Dispatches from Pluto: Lost & Found in the Mississippi Delta by Richard Grant
9- The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner
Wednesday May 18, 2022
Wednesday May 18, 2022
Namrata Patel has been writing for 20 years, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that she had more time to work on it. She had always been interested in dual culture and challenges of the diaspora, specifically Indians who had moved to the United States. The isolation of COVID really brought home how lonely life can be if you don’t feel like you fit anywhere. Her debut novel The Candid Life of Meena Dave follows a photojournalist who inherits an apartment from a stranger. The apartment in Back Bay Boston surrounds her with a close-knit network of other Indian-Americans. Meena comes to learn more about herself and her culture, as well as understands the gift of found family and friendship through this experience.
The book comes out June 1 but those book lovers who have Amazon Prime can download her book for free during the month of May with their First Reads program. If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you are able to download 1 free book a month from their First Reads selections which are editor favorites hitting bookshelves the following month. Just search First Reads in the search bar.
You can find Namrata Patel on instagram at @namratapatelauthor, on Twitter at Nampatel or on her author website, nampatel.com.
Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover
Instagram at @perksofbeingabookoverpod
For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Books Mentioned In This Episode:
1- A Room With a View by E. M. Forester
2- Six Days in Rome by Franscesca Giacco
3- My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith
4- The Candid Life of Meena Dave by Namrata Patel
5- Books by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Wednesday May 11, 2022
Wednesday May 11, 2022
This week we talk to our first mystery series author: Jess Montgomery. The first book in her 4-book Kinship mystery series is The Widows which introduces us to Lilly Ross, a wife and mother in 1920s rural Ohio whose husband Daniel, the county sheriff, is killed in the line of duty. The town council asks Lilly to take over the sheriff’s position for the rest of the term and the first crime she wants to investigate is the murder of her husband. Lilly Ross is inspired by a real Ohio woman named Maud Colins who also became one of the first female sheriffs in the United States after her husband, also the sheriff, was murdered.
Jess’ most recent novel, The Echoes, was published this past March and follows Lilly and the townspeople of Kinship, OH as they reckon with ghosts of World War 1 some 10 years later. Many of the men served. While some, like Lilly’s brother, died in The Great War, many others came back with emotional scars that affect their personal choices and the town at large.
You can find Jess Montgomery on instagram at @jessmontgomeryauthor or on her author website, www.jessmontgomeryauthor.com .
Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover
Instagram at @perksofbeingabookoverpod.
For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Books Mentioned in this Episode:
Thursday May 05, 2022
Thursday May 05, 2022
Our guest this week, Court Stevens is outreach director for a public library and the author of 6 young adult suspense novels. Her most recent, We Were Kings, came out this past February and is her contemporary version of an Agatha Christie locked room mystery where our main character, Nyla King’s dysfunctional family and juicy secrets means everyone is a suspect of a murder that took place 20 years earlier.
You can find Court Stevens on instagram at @quartland or on her author website, www.courtneycstevens.com.
To find out more about Foxing Books, go to their Instagram at @foxingbooktore.
Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover or on Instagram at @perksofbeingabookoverpod.
For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Books Mentioned in this Episode:
Tuesday Apr 26, 2022
Tuesday Apr 26, 2022
Our guest this week, Chelsea Hofmann, loves to feel her pulse quicken and gets excited by the idea that anything could happen. She lives her life spontaneously so her love of the thriller genre with its twists, turns, and surprise endings fit her personality just fine.
After finishing college and moving to Southern California with her husband, she wanted to reconnect with her love of reading books that she had as a child but none of the book clubs she tried felt like a good fit. So she started a virtual book club on the Instagram platform called Thrillers By The Bookclub. As that virtual club became became popular with members all over the globe, people started asking her about in-person book clubs. Chelsea nurtured this idea, encouraging book lovers to start their own Thriller By The Book Club chapters. There are now over 27 chapters and more are still forming. We chat with Chelsea in this episode about all the thrilling books she reads.
- You can find Chelsea on instagram at @thrillerbookbabe.
- To find out more about Thrillers By The Book club, to see if they have a chapter in your area or to get more information about starting your own, check out their instagram at @thrillersbythebookclub .
- Local Louisville listeners , there is a chapter in town. @txbc_louisville
Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover
Instagram at @perksofbeingabookoverpod
For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Books Mentioned in this Episode:
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Today is going to be a little different. Unfortunately we had some scheduling difficulties and therefore don’t have a new episode for you this week.
But, we do have a “New To You” episode because we have been lucky enough to be guests on several other podcasts. So, today we are offering up our appearance on The Modern Life Podcast, hosted by Tabby Pawlitzki. On the Modern Life Podcast, Tabby and guests read a book and then watch the screen adaptation and then pick apart all the things they loved and the things they loved to hate. And which was better? The book or the movie?.
Carrie and I were guests to Tabby’s podcast back in December to discuss The Princess Bride written by William Goldman which was then directed in 1987 by Rob Reiner.
This was our second time being a guest on Tabby’s show and we always adore nerding out with her.
You can find Modern Life podcast on all the major podcast platforms and follow her on Instagram at @Modernlifepod.
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
April is National Poetry Month and whether you love poetry or not, you’ve likely heard of poet laureates. You may not know what that distinction means, however. There are all kinds of poet laureates—of countries, or states, of cities, and of even smaller areas. A poet laureate is appointed by a head of government for her or his accomplishments and may publish poems for special occasions. It is an honor that comes with a lot of flexibility.
In this week’s episode, we chat with Luisa A. Igloria, a native of the Philippines who came to the US to attend graduate school and is one of only four poet laureates of color for the state of Virginia. She was appointed to the position right as Covid took over our lives in 2020. She talks about the three cornerstone projects she wanted to launch in order to make poetry a larger part of the community.
You can find Luisa on instagram at @poetslizard.
To see the Poetry Postcard Project and Young Poets in the Community, go to her website at www.luisaigloria.com.
Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover
Instagram at @perksofbeingabookoverpod
For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.
Books and Poetry mentioned--
1- Maps for Migrants and Ghosts by Luisa A. Igloria
2- "Song of Meridians" by Luisa A. Igloria
3- "Blue Bucket" by Naomi Shihab Nye
4- Cartography by Luisa A. Igloria
5- "Vacation" by Wendell Berry
6- Sapiens: A Graphic History Vols 1 and 2 by Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, Daniel Casanave
7- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
8- Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
9- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
10- Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now by Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang
11- Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr
12- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
13- Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr