The Perks Of Being A Book Lover Podcast

Season 4 Ep. 81 Lions, Tigers, Bears, and Books with guest Katy Morrison

When I say the word “zoo” your first thought is probably elephants or giraffes; maybe a great memory of going on a school field trip or of taking your own children there for a special outing. A word you probably don’t associate with a zoo is “Book club”. But our guest today, Katy Morrison, a zoo educator at the Louisville Zoo, wants to broaden your vision a bit. At the beginning of the pandemic, she was brainstorming ways that the zoo could still serve its patrons virtually, especially adult patrons who are often not the focus of zoo outreach. And then she read a book on primates that she was dying to talk about with someone. So she pitched the idea of the Conservation and Conversation bookclub to the zoo and it was soon full steam ahead for her vision of non-traditional education through book discussions.

Katy uses her liberal arts background in history and classical studies to explore conservation issues through non-fiction books. While the book club makes the hard sciences more accessible to non-scientists, it is still challenging enough for those with more scientific backgrounds. The concept of conservation is a broad one that can include the most obvious for a zoo; animal conservation, but can also include things like cultural conservation, sustainable agriculture through the lense of cookbooks, and green burials.

Each month, Katy moderates the book discussion, sometimes with special guests, and sends the participants a guide with additional links and resources so they can continue the conversation with family and friends through things like podcast links, related reading for younger readers, and suggested documentaries. And of course one of the wonderful things about a virtual bookclub is that you don’t have to be in the same city as the zoo. In fact, Katy was inspired by a bookclub she joined virtually at an aquarium in New Jersey.

Katy talks to us about the fantasy books she was crazy about as a child where the protagonists could talk with animals, why many organizations are starting book clubs during the pandemic, and which decidedly non cuddly creature at the zoo is her favorite because of a project she did in 3rd grade.

Books mentioned in this episode:

1- Tortall Universe series by Tamora Pierce
2- The Wild Magic series by Tamora Pierce
3- Harry Potter series by J.K.Rowling
4- The Polar Affair by Lloyd Spencer Davis
5- Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson
6- Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty
7- Smoke Gets In My Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
8- The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
9- Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas by Jim Ottaviani
10- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
11- No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg
12- A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough
13- Far From the Tree by Robin Benway
14- The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
15- The Pocket Change Collective series (This is What I Know About Art by Kimberly Drew)
16- The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food by Marcus Samuelson
17- You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexis Coe

Podcasts mentioned:
Ologies by Alie Ward

Documentaries mentioned:
1- A Life on Our Planet
2- Making Of (videos)
3- My Octopus Teacher (Netflix)

 

 

 

 

Season 4 Ep. 80 Resistance Reading with guest Farrah Alexander 3-3-21

Sometimes it only takes a spark to start a fire. For writer and activist Farrah Alexander, the small flicker of an idea that eventually became her first book was her January 2017 participation in the historic Women's March in Washington DC. She encountered so many women who were emboldened to make change but weren’t sure how to channel their energies.

Farrah wrote her book titled Raising the Resistance: A Mother’s Guide to Practical Activism which gives suggestions on how to be a leader in your life and a model for change for your children. But the book is also witty and whimsical which makes it accessible to a wide audience.

Farrah has been a journalist and freelance writer whose articles have appeared in the Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, and BuzzFeed. Her work focuses on feminism, social justice, parenting, and politics. She is also a Jeremiah Fellow with Bend the Ark, a Jewish partnership for justice which aims to combat white supremacy and mobilize communities for social change.

In this episode, Farrah talks to us about how even as a child she was drawn to books with strong female characters like Amelia Bedelia, how she wants to make the ideas of feminism less academic and more accessible, why she feels essay writing can be a powerful tool for women to share their stories, and which item of her political memorabilia collection is her most cherished.

Books mentioned in this episode:

1- Raising the Resistance: A Mother's Guide to Practical Activism by Farrah Alexander
2- Amelia Bedelia books by Peggy Parish
3- Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
4- The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols
5- A Promised Land by Barack Obama
6- Becoming by Michelle Obama
7- Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen

Season 4 Ep. 79 Breaking Barriers with Black Theater with guest Sidney Edwards 2-24-21

February is Black History month and while we believe Black authors should be read any and all times of the year, this month can sometimes be the impetus readers need to help them discover new-to-them Black writers. Not only can you experience Black art through literature, you can see it in the theater where a play is brought to life and someone else’s reality is laid bare before the audience.

Our guest this week is Sidney Edwards, the new, young and vibrant director of the African American Theatre Studies program at the University of Louisville which includes both a minor and a graduate certificate. The University’s graduate certificate program is the only accredited program in the country for African American Theater. The unique thing about this program is its flexibility. It can be part of a graduate degree in theater or the certificate can be done separately and online; it’s perfect for professionals like teachers or community leaders who want to become more familiar with black culture and art as a whole.

Sidney talks about her journey to becoming a performer, a professor, and the head of the program. She tells us how the Battle of the Books program for school students in North Carolina sparked her competitiveness and love of reading as a child, how the subject matter for many plays written by black playwrights hasn’t changed that much in the last century even though the format has evolved, why theater jobs behind the curtain are a relatively untapped job area for African Americans, and why elementary and middle school students are some of the toughest audiences out there.

Books/Plays/Authors mentioned in this Episode:
1- A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
2- August Wilson
3- Rachel by Angelina Weld Grimke
4- Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau
5- Lynn Nottage
6- Moonlight by Tarell Alvin McCraney
7- Choir Boys by Tarell Alvin McCraney
8- Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris
9- Brandon Jacob Jenkins
10- Nikkole Salter
11- Blood Line Rumba by John Chenault
12- The Round House by Louise Erdrich
13- There, There by Tommy Orange
14- Home by Sam Art Williams
15- A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston by Robyn Crawford
16- For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
17- The Lost Man by Jane Harper
18- The Dry by Jane Harper
19- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
20- Dust Tracks on the Road by Zora Neale Hurston
21- Maybe You Never Cry Again by Bernie Mac (audiobook)
22- The Decision by Kevin Hart (audiobook )
23- Pryor Convictions by Richard Pryor (audiobook)

Shows mentioned--
1- Bridgerton - Netflix
2- P-Valley (penned by black playwright Katori Hall)- Starz
3- Euphoria - HBO
4- Snow Piercer - TNT
5- Blind Spotting - movie

Season 4 Ep. 78 Spinning a Good Yarn with Books and Brew with guest Susan Thomas 2-17-20

This week we travel to Eastern Kentucky to the town of Morehead in our quest to explore cool independent bookstores in our region. Morehead is home to a little over 7,000 residents and Morehead State University. The university as well as the regional medical center in town give the community a diverse makeup. And it’s location inside Daniel Boone National Forest and the head of the Sheltowee Trace Trail make it a tempting destination for folks who like to hike, hunt, fish, and soak up nature.

Our guest, Susan Thomas, is a managing partner and owner of CoffeeTree Books and the Fuzzy Duck Coffee Shop which have been a family business for over 20 years. It has morphed several times and is now housed in the town’s old single screen movie theater on Main Street. They have transformed the space to include a coffee shop in the old concession area, event space at the stage, and a business office in the old projector room, not to mention everything you would expect to see in a bookstore. But they have been creative with their space and have included a store within a store. CoffeeTree is also a destination for locals looking for supplies for fiber arts like knitting. They carry high quality yarns and classes for knitters. Susan is a knitter herself and wanted to offer products she used to have to travel over an hour to purchase. And while there weren’t initially many knitters in Morehead, Susan and others have nurtured a whole crop of townspeople anxious to learn and create.

Susan tells us why books and yarn aren’t the strangest store within a store concept in town, why she has an affinity for books about bees, and why moving back to her hometown after 16 years in Nashville is a decision she hasn’t once regretted.

Books mentioned in this episode:
1- The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
2- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
3- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
4- Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
5- The Storied Life of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
6- The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald
7- Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin
8- Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
9- The New One: Painfully True Stories From a Reluctant Dad by Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein
10- The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr
11- We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
12- Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston
13- Good Talk by Mira Jacob
14- Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia
15- The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage, and a Girl Saved by Bees by Meredith May
16- Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese by Brad Kessler
17- The E Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What To do About It by Michael E. Gerber

Season 4 Ep. 77 Romance Language with guest Tiffany Reisz 2-10-21

This coming Sunday, February 14, is Valentine’s Day, and we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to talk about the genre of romance.

If you are of a certain age, you may most associate romance novels with Fabio, the long-haired king of Romance novel covers. But romance is a very wide umbrella. There are historical romances like the books that inspired the Netflix series Bridgerton, classical romances (think Jane Austen books), and queer romances. Some romances are just about the emotional aspects of love, while others venture into the erotic beyond just a little kiss.

Our guest this week, Tiffany Reisz, is a Louisville-based erotic romance writer who started writing her first romance novel while a seminary student. She left seminary, though, to follow her love of writing and is now a USA Today bestselling author of over 28 books including the Original Sinners series and The Red. She has a dedicated fan base all over the world. I recently saw a FB fan club for her based in Italy.

Tiffany gives us a “romance for dummies” crash course on the differences between romance, erotica, and smut. She also talks about how her preference for fantasy books as a child morphed into writing a different kind of fantasy, why she doesn’t let preconceived notions against her genre bother her, and why being married to another writer is a “two heads are better than one” situation.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
2- A Cricket in Times Square by George Selden
3- The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
4- Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
5- Star Trek: The Next Generation novels
6- Return of the Jedi (novelization)
7- Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
8- Lives of the Mayfair Witches by Anne Rice (series)
9- Sleeping Beauty series by Anne Rice
10- The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox
11- The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
12- The Siren (The Original Sinners series) by Tiffany Reisz
13- Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
14- Love Story by Erich Segal
15- The Story of O by Anne Desclos (pen name Pauline Reage')
16- The Chateau by Tiffany Reisz
17- The Lucky Ones by Tiffany Reisz
18- The Red by Tiffany Reisz
19- The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz
20- The Pearl by Tiffany Reisz
21- The Auction by Tiffany Reisz
22- Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
23- Nothing Lasts Forever (Die Hard) by Roderick Tharp
24- The Whisper Man by Alex North
25- The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
26- Sea People: The Power of Polynesia by Christina Thompson
27- A Polar Affair by Lloyd Spencer Davis

 

 

 

 

Season 4 Ep. 76 Braille Broadens Opportunities with guests Gary Mudd and Jayma Hawkins 2-3-21

If you are listening to this podcast, you probably appreciate a good book. You can pick up a paperback or read a digital copy on your e-reader whenever you have spare time. But imagine if you didn’t have the ability to see the words on the page? Blindness doesn’t make a person any less of a book lover but it sure does make reading them more complicated.

We assumed that technology would make things easier for people with visual impairment, and while it can help, it can also complicate things. Even recording our podcast took on unique challenges when we realized that one of our guests wouldn’t be able to read the questions we sent in the same ways that our former sighted guests did. When there was a snafu with recording and we thought to text our guests, we had to remember that the text might have to then go to audio format. How long would that take? Was that immediate or was there a delay? Would the remote recording technology pick up not only our guest’s voice but also the voice dictation from the computer at the same time?

Though sighted, Carrie and I were definitely blind to some of the complications that life with visual impairment can mean when it comes to the world of reading.

Our guests this week, Gary Mudd and Jayma Hawkins, from the American Printing House for the Blind, generously recorded with us twice to work through complications. Gary, who became blind at the age of 12, has recently retired from his role as VP of Government and Community Affairs and Jayma is the National Prison Braille Director.

Gary and Jayma talk to us about how braille books are produced as well as many other products that help visually impaired students be successful, how braille production programs in prisons produce braille books for students but also create newfound skills and confidence in inmates, and how one blind mother’s desire to read books to her sighted children helped create the Braille Tales program in coordination with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Katie the Catsitter by Colleen A. F. Venable
2- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
3- Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani
4- Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Season 4 Ep. 75 The Perks of the Merc with guest Amy Hunter 1-27-21

If you are a book lover, you are probably also a library lover. Those two things just go together, like peanut butter and jelly or Sherlock and Watson. Some book lovers not only visit their local libraries all the time, but they also visit libraries when they travel. Carrie, for example, checked out Maison de la litterature in Quebec City when she visited several years ago. It is cool to see what libraries in other places look and feel like.

Closer to home, there is a membership library in Cincinnati Ohio that would be well worth a stop if you find yourself in the Queen City. Our guest this week, Amy Hunter, is the programs and marketing manager at The Mercantile Library, one of only about 18 surviving membership libraries around the country. She gives a crash course in membership libraries that were invented by Benjamin Franklin before the rise of public libraries at the turn of the 20th century.

Amy talks to us about the unique history of the Mercantile library including some of the interesting rules that were imposed back at its inception in 1835, about the wide variety of speakers they have hosted from Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1800s all the way to Margaret Atwood just a few years ago, and why many people consider the Mercantile a “steampunk” fantasy in library form.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Charlotte's Web/Stuart Little by E. B. White
2- Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
3- Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
4- Sweet Taste of Liberty by W. Caleb McDaniel
5- Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
6- Heavy by Kiese Lemon
7- Silver Sparrow/American Marriage by Tayari Jones
8- TigerLand by Will Haygood
9- The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
10- Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley
11- Meet Me at the Museum: A Novel by Ann Youngson
12- The Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott

Season 4 Ep.74 She Illustrates the Point with guest Danica Novgorodoff 1-20-21

Our guest this week, Danica Novgorodoff, is a writer, graphic novelist, and illustrator who has written 3 of her own graphic novels but her work has received some extra special attention recently.  She is the illustrator of the new graphic novel edition of Jason Reynolds’ award winning young adult novel Long Way Down.  She believes she was chosen for the book partly because of her special use of watercolors as a medium for graphic art, which gives the work an ephemeral feel.  

Besides this project, she is also in the process of writing a graphic novel on climate change, several children’s books, as well as essays and illustrating a cookbook with a James Beard award winning cookbook author.  And did I mention she has a 3 year old and a one year old? As well as working at home during a pandemic?  We need to give this artist and mother a medal... or at least a glass of wine and an hour to herself.  

Danica talks to us about what steps she takes to adapt a book into a graphic novel, how becoming a mother totally changed her thoughts on how to write and illustrate a good children’s book, and how the pandemic hastened her family’s move away from Brooklyn back to some of her roots in Kentucky.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:
1- Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
2- My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
3- Island of the Blue Dolphins  by Scott O'Dell
4- Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
5- Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
6- Long Way Down (graphic novel) by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Danica Novgorodoff
7- A Late Freeze by Danica Novgorodoff
8- The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff
9- Refresh, Refresh by Danica Novgorodoff
10- Slow Storm by Danica Novgorodoff
11- Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
12- What I Hate from A to Z by Roz Chast
13- The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humbolt's New World by Andrew Wulf
14- The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humbolt and the Shaping of America by Laura Dassow Walls
15- Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
16- Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

Ep. 58 RePlay - A Neighborhood Bookstore as Community Outreach with Clare Wallace

***Listeners, this week we have our last replay episode before we start back with Season 4 next week with an all new group of fascinating bookish guests. We’ve been recording over the hiatus, and we are excited to introduce you to more book lovers in just a few more days.

Our rebroadcast this week is from Season 3, episode 58 with Clare Wallace, the executive director of South Louisville Community Ministries which also runs The Rosewater bookstore in coordination with The BookWorks. The community bookstore opened just as COVID was hitting the city in the spring of 2020, and it took several months for them (and everyone) to figure out the new normal.

but they are up and running with regular hours, a really great selection of books, and gift items made by artisans in the neighborhood. Located on South 3rd Street, The Rosewater’s regular hours are:

Wednesday & Thursday, 10:00 - 4:00
Friday & Saturday, 10:00 - 6:00
Sunday, 10:00 - 3:00

It also offers mystery bags. Book lovers can complete a Google Form and request books from a certain genre. If you’re like me and spend way too much time in the house, something as simple as a mystery bag of books you can pick up curbside is the kind of excitement I’m down for in 2021.
_____________

This past weekend many people recognized Independent Bookstore Day, a day to be extra appreciative of their local bookstores and booksellers that give booklovers all the feels. Everyone loves a bookstore, don’t they?

Our guest today certainly does. When Clare Wallace visits a new place, she always looks for the closest used bookstore. This gave her the idea to open The Rosewater, aptly named after her favorite Kurt Vonnegut book, which she envisions as a comforting living room for everybody. Clare is the executive director of South Louisville Community Ministries, a nonprofit that provides emergency assistance for residents of South Louisville facing crisis, and she was looking for a visible way to do outreach in the neighborhood. The bookstore serves several purposes; to create a warm community space, to bring life to parts of the neighborhood that have seen hard times, to provide transitional employment for residents in crisis, and to offer a service that the neighbors want!

Clare grew up in a house filled with hundreds of books with a mother who worked for a publisher but her favorites were those that explored other worlds. After Clare left college, she literally went around the world working in international development and as a Peace Corps volunteer. When she settled in Louisville, she chose to land in the most diverse part of the city which is filled with a wide variety of different ethnicities and income levels; Clare works to bring people together in her adopted hometown.

Clare tells us how The Rosewater is pivoting from traditional retail sales to creative services like mystery book boxes delivered to your door due to Covid, why creating a comforting community space for the neighborhood is important to her, and how learning to deal with failure is a skill she learned abroad that helps her create new projects today.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

1- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
2- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
4- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
5- Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
7- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
8- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
9- The Lost Queen by Signe Pike
10- The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck
11- Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown
12- This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
13- My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris
14- New Kid by Jerry Craft
15- The Watchman by Alan Moore
16- Saga by Brian K. Vaughan
17- American Gods by Neil Gaiman

 

 

 

 

Replay Ep. 39 Cassie Chambers' Hill Women

This week we wanted to revisit an interview we did with Cassie Chambers.

Ron Howard’s movie adaptation of J. D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close has sparked quite a debate bordering on controversy in America this fall about Vance’s assertion as to the motivations and plight of Appalachian people. Many authors from this region have wanted to push back on that a bit to show that Appalachia is complex and not merely a place to rise above.

We welcomed Cassie Chambers as a guest back in March 2020, just as Covid was starting to hit this country in full force. Her memoir HIll Women was written as a response in her own way to Vance’s memoir; about a different view of the Appalachian experience from a woman’s perspective. Cassie’s had some more exciting news in 2020 as she went on to win a seat on the Lousiville Metro City Council as well as becoming a visiting professor at the University of Louisville School of Law.

**Our guest today grew up in poverty in eastern Kentucky, but attended Yale and Harvard, received her law degree, and came back to Kentucky to work for the Legal Aid Society, helping at-risk women in her home state. Cassie Chambers has also written a memoir, called Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains, about life and culture in Owsley County through the lens of three generations of women in her own family.

Her book came out in January of this year. Newsweek has named it a must-read book to savor this Spring, and Publisher’s Weekly called it a “passionate memoir”.

Cassie talks to us about her favorite book series from childhood that she still rereads as an adult, why she felt the women of Appalachia specifically need their stories told and what compelled her to write it, and why she thinks more women don’t run for office and why that needs to change.

Books mentioned:
1- Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery
2- Castaway: Poems For Our Time by Naomi Shihab Nye
3- Walkable City by Jeff Speck
4- Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith
5- The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
6- Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains by Cassie Chambers