The Perks Of Being A Book Lover Podcast

Perks REMIX S9 Ep193- Mel Joulwan and David Humphreys of the Strong Sense of Place Podcast - 10-18-23

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.

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To find Mel and David, check out their website, www.strongsenseofplace.com.

or Insta @strongsenseof

In episode 86, we first spoke with Melissa Joulwan during the COVID pandemic. She is one of the co-hosts of the Strong Sense of Place podcast. Melissa has been one of our favorite guests to date. You will here the original interview in the second half of the show. For something a little new, you will hear us chat this time around to both Mel and her partner David Humphreys. Since we last spoke with Melissa in 2021, they have added a short weekly podcast to their lineup called the Library of Lost Time in which they each recommend a book and a fun distraction. In this remix, they tell us all about this short concept podcast and they each share a book about a library with us! (Carrie is now reading David’s suggestion.)

A Strong Sense of Place is both a podcast and a website where readers can find interesting bookish conversations with our guest this week, Melissa Joulwan, and her husband David, two expatriates living in Prague located in the Czech Republic. In this week’s episode, she tells us about how they select the places they will visit each season, why place in a book has to meet very stringent specifications, and how roller derby helped her make some big life decisions.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

Podcasts mentioned--
Strong Sense of Place (strongsenseofplace.com)
The Library of Lost Time

Books mentioned--

1- Pockets: An Intimated History of How we Keep Things Close by Hannah Coulson

2- The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

3- The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

3- Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld

4- Unseen City by Amy Shearn

5- Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume

6- Forever by Judy Blume

7- The First Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders

8- Archie McNally series by Lawrence Sanders

9- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

10- My Antonia by Willa Cather

11- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

12- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

13- The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

14- She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb

15- The Phryne Fisher mysteries by Kerry Greenwood

16- Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

17- Less by Andrew Sean Greer

18- The Curse of Jacob Tracy by Holly Messinger

Movies or TV adaptations mentioned in this episode:

1- Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (Amazon)

S9 Ep192 - Women Talking Horror with Guest Jenny Kiefer of Butcher Cabin Books - 10/11/23

You can find Jenny Kiefer on her website at jennykiefer.com/ or at Butcher Cabin Books at www.horrorbookstore.com/. She is also on instagram at @horrorbookstore and @_jennykiefer

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

 

It has been one year since Louisville welcomed a horror bookstore to its ranks of cool, independent offerings. Butcher Cabin Books is a mother/daughter labor of love; Jenny Kiefer and her mother run the show.  Jenny has been a horror fan since she was a child and also happens to be a horror writer whose debut novel titled This Wretched Valley will be published in January 2024 by Quirk Books. It has a wild inspiration story which she tells us about in this episode. Her dog Rye also gets in on the interview action, although his horror tale was that dinner might be delayed. 

Butcher Cabin Books prides itself in having a large selection of books in stock from not only the Big 4 publishers but also small independent presses where so much of the exciting new horror literature is produced.  Via their website, you can get these indie press scary favorites shipped to your door.

Last but not least, the store is sponsoring Butcher Cabin BookFest in Lexington KY on Oct. 18 from 5-9 at Pivot Brewing to benefit the Lexington Public Library.  There will be a mass meeting of great horror writers to sign books and chat with readers, including Cynthia Pelayo, JH Markert, Andrew Shaffer, and Laurel Hightower. There will also be book bingo, silent auctions, and more. 

Books mentioned--

1- This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer

2- The Eyre Affair (Tuesday Next series) by Jasper Fforde

3- Women Talking by Miriam Toews

4- The Shining by Stephen King

5- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

6- Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

7- The Troop by Nick Cutter

8- Bunny by Mona Awad

9- We Need to Do Something by Max Boot III

10- Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

11- Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi

12- 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered by Sadie Hartmann

13- Ghost Girl by Ally Malinenko

14- Coraline by Neil Gaiman

15- Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes

16- The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan

17- Sadie by Courtney Summers

18- The Skull by Jon Klassen

19- The Last Devil to Die (The Thursday Murder Club series) by Richard Osman

Films mentioned--

1- Women Talking (2022)

2- The Shining (1980)

3- It Follows (2014)

4- The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix - 2018)

Historic Events mentioned-
Dyatlov Pass

S9 Ep191 - Witch, Please! A Book Rec Episode - 10/4/23

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. You can email us throught the contact button on the website.

We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a Book Lover.

It is officially Halloween season so we’re talking all about witches this week. We’ll each share 5 bewitching books, 10 total, that you should put on your TBRs.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Leslie “F*cking” Jones by Leslie Jones

2- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

3- My Friend Anne Frank by Hannah Pick-Goslar

4- Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Ari Folman

6- Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carriere

7- Circe by Madeline Miller

8- Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

9- Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher

10- Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

11- The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

12- Cackle by Rachel Harrison

13- Akata Witch–Nnedi Okorafor

14- Akata Warrrior by Nnedi Okorafor

15- Hester by Laura Lico Albanese

16- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

17- The Last Witch by Andrzej Sapkowski (The Witcher series)

18- Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski (The Witcher series)

19- A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

20- Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

23- The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

24- Macbeth by William Shakespeare

25- Dragons in a Bag by Zetta Elliott

26- The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

27- My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood (Amazon Original Story)

28- Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip

29- Loot by Tania James

30- Night watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

*5 Star Read Recommended by Book Lover Meghan Geary @biblioactivist203

              Celine by Peter Heller

Movies and or TV series mentioned—

1- Ghostbusters (2016)

2- Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

3- The Witcher (2019 - present, Netflix))

4- Discovery of Witches - (2018-2022 AMC)

Shows Mentioned—

1- Wicked (Broadway)

 

 

 

S9 Ep190 - The Greek Girls’ Guide To Murder with Guest Kika Hatzopoulou - 9/27/23

Our guest this week, Kika Hatzopoulou, grew up in Greece with the foundation of Ancient Greece and its mythology all around her. She now lives in London and until recently was an acquisitions editor for a Greek publisher, where she read and recommended books being published in the US and Britain for acquisition and translation for Greek audiences. She tinkered with the idea of writing a book herself, combining the Greek mythology stories she learned as a child with the detective stories and gritty noir that she loves reading. The result is Threads that Bind.

The novel Threads That Bind is about three sisters who are descendants of the Fates (also known as the Morai), the three mythological sisters who hold everyone’s destinies in their hands via threads. Io, the youngest sister, is a private investigator who discovers that someone is kidnapping women, tampering with their threads and essentially turning them into zombies. She has numerous potential suspects from Greek mythology: the Furies, the Oneroi (who control dreams), the Graces (who bestow artistic gifts on humans), and the Keres (who are the spirits of violent death). It is a novel that opens up a world of mythological characters you may not know much about.

A sequel to Threads that Bind titled Hearts that Cut comes out in summer 2024.

In addition to being our novelist guest, she also serves as this season’s global reader since we talk to her about Greek education and writers. She also turns the tables on us during the Fast and the Furious, the first guest to have ever done so, and we were unprepared.

You can find Kika at her website at kikahatzopoulou.com/ and on Insta at @kikahatzapoulou

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 Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou
2- Hearts That Cut by Kika Hatzopoulou
3- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
5- Frindle by Andrew Clements
6- Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
7- Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington
8- Good Girls Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
9- Suddenly a Murder by Lauren Munoz
10- Orpheus and Eurydice (the original Greek myth)
11- Lore by Alexandra Bracken
12- Girl Goddess Queen by Bea Fitzgerald
13- Mythology by Edith Hamilton
14- Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
15- The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
16- Simon & the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
17- What Bees Want: Beekeeping as Nature Intended by Susan Knilens
18- The Scholomance Trilogy by Naomi Novik
19- The Prison Healer by Linnette Noni
20- Wesley Yorstead Goes Outside by Stephanie Harper

5 Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover Fabee @devouredpages
1- The Ill-Made Mute by Celicia Dart-Thornton (and all of The Bitterbynde Trilogy)

Movies mentioned--
Rear Window (1954)

Theatre mentioned--
Hadestown

S9 Ep189 - Hispanic Heritage Month is Lit - 9/20/23

This week we are featuring books by Latino authors in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Molly's Tuxedo by Vicki Johnson

2- Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (short story)

3- Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

4- Fever by Mary Beth Keane

5- The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

6- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

7- Why Didn’t You Tell Me by Carmen Rita Wong

8- Ghetto Klown by John Leguizamo

9- The Last Cuentista by Barbara Donna Higuera

10- The Murmur of Bees by Sophía Segovia

11- The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease by Daisy Hernandez

12- The Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña

13- Carmela Full of Wishes by Matt de la Peña

14- In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

15- Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

16- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

17- Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen

18- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

19- I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

20- Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

21- Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

22- Leech by Hiron Ennes

5 Star Book Recommendation by a Fellow Book Lover - Ciera Oldham @Disappearherebookblog

- Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake

Movies mentioned--

1- Arrival (2016)

2- The Afterparty (Apple + TV, 2022 - present)

Article about Cuban community in Louisville:
www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/us/cub…lle-kentucky.html

Article about wasps and figs:

www.bonappetit.com/story/figs-and-wasps

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/us/cubans-louisville-kentucky.html

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.

S9 Ep188 -Good Reads With The Gilmore Girls with Guest Kristine Eckart - 9/13/23

We always enjoy chatting with people we find on Instagram who are doing bookish things, and Kristine Eckart is one of those folks. She is the creator of Gilmore Book Club, which offers all kinds of book blogs, discussions, videos, and lists associated with the show Gilmore Girls. As if that wouldn’t keep her busy enough, she also hosts a book club for people with chronic health conditions (and we’re including the link to it in our show notes) and is working on creating book-related content for other beloved shows, such as Gossip Girl and The Office.

You can find Kristine on Insta and Youtube at @gilmorebookclub and at her website www.gilmorebookclub.com. Her Chronic Illness Bookclub can be found at www.thechroniconcommunity.com/share/_diU…rce=manual

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 Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

2- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

3- Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons From Russian Literature by Viv Groskop

4- Cujo by Stephen King

5- Tortall series by Tamora Pierce

6- Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

7- Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

8- Moby Dick by Herman Melville

9- Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

10- The Vampyre by John Polidori

11- Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw

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

13- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

14- The Paris Wife by Paula McClain

15- The President’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood

16- The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson

17- The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict

18- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

19- The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

5 Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover

1- A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness recommended by Kim Layman @the_read_rat

Shows mentioned—

1- Gilmore Girls (Netflix, 2000)

2- Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (Netflix, 2016)

3- Gossip Girl - (HBO Max 2007 - 2012)

4- The Office (2005-2013)

5- White Lotus - (HBO Max 2021 - present)

6- The Good Witch - (Netflix 2015-2021)

7- Anne with an "E" - (Netflix 2017 - 2019)

S9 Ep. 187 - Bluegrass Moon and Neck Bones with Guest Willie Carver Jr. - 9/6/23

You can find Willie Carver on Instagram @williecarverjr or on his website at www.williecarver.com.

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.

 

Sometimes when people have experienced a loss or some kind of traumatic event, they are encouraged to write about it, which gives them an outlet for their feelings and a way to help them process the experience. Our guest this week, Willie Carver Jr. was the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year but he experienced loss and trauma when both he and his students were targeted because he is gay. He began putting his thoughts and feelings into poetic lines and stanzas.

The book of poems that resulted, Gay Poems for Red States published by University Press of Kentucky, helped him look back at prejudices he had experienced as a child living in rural Kentucky, as a gay man, and as a teacher offering a place of security for his students. The poetry served as an impetus for him to engage more as an activist, even testifying before the House Subcommittee on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights concerning the need for rights for LGBTQ students and educators. Book Riot has named Gay Poems for Red States one of its' best of the year.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Carver Jr

2- The Awakening by Kate Chopin

3- Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer (audiobook)

4- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll narrated by Sally Field (audiobook)

5- The Eyre Affair series by Jasper Fforde (audiobook)

6- What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

7- The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

8- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

9- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

10- Theoretical Tiger Society by Brian Fuchs

11- With a Hammer for My Heart by George Ella Lyon

12- Undercooked: How I Let Food Become My Life Navigator and How Maybe That's a Dumb Way to Live by Dan Ahdoot

Five Star Recommendation by Fellow Book Lover Michael DeConzo, author of Welcome to the Arcade and Two Nickels

1- Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

Podcast mentioned
1- Green Eggs and Dan

Perks Remix Ep. 186 - The Past and the Curious with Guest Mick Sullivan - 8/30/23

This week we are giving you something we are calling a "remix" episode. We have a new interview with former guest Mick Sullivan combined with some of his previous interview way back in 2019.

Amy is traveling this week so we’ve reconnected with former guest Mick Sullivan, who is the curator of guest experience at the Frazier History Museum and is also the creator of the award winning children's history podcast, The Past and the Curious, which grew out of the stories he tells people at the museum. His quirky combo of humor and music keeps both kids and adults interested and sneaks in a little history in the process.

The success of his podcast led to the publication of his first children's book, The Meat Shower, which is a fun telling of the historical event of meat falling from the sky in the 1800s. He has now published a book for older kids called I See Lincoln’s Underpants: The Surprising Times Underwear (and the People Wearing Them) Made History.

This episode is a little something new and something old. In this combo episode, we chat with Mick to see what he has been up to since his last book was published and you can also hear more about his first book which we discussed with him in the early days of the show in episode 27.

You can find more from Mick Sullivan including podcast episodes at thepastandthecurious.com/.

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 Discussed in This Episode:

1- The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough

2- The Meatshower by Mick Sullivan

3- I See Lincoln’s Underpants: The Surprising Times Underwear (and the People Wearing Them) Made History by Mick Sullivan

4- Al Capone Does my Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

5- Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontes by Devoney Looser

6- Braiding Sweetgrass For Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

7- Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz

8- Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz

9- Life of Pi by Yann Martel

10- American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Podcasts mentioned—
The Past and the Curious

S9 Ep. 185 -Place Settings: The Destination - 8/23/23

A few weeks ago we talked about journeys and this week we are completing the circle with an episode about destinations; specifically about places we have visited in the last few years. Do you read books about the places you travel before or during a trip? We talk about how it can enrich both your reading and travel experience.

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.

You can find books we've talked about and other curated lists at our Bookshop page.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Broadway Butterfly by Sara DiVello

2- When You Find My Body by D. Dauphinee

3- Alice the Cat by Tim Cummings

4- Tell the Rest by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

5- Burying My Dead by Bettie Lennett Denny

6- Martin Marten by Brian Doyle

7- Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan

8- The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

9- The Highland Witch by Susan Fletcher (Corrag)

10- Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

11- The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's
First Serial Killer by Skip Hollandsworth

12- Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

13- 44 Scotland Street (#1) by Alexander McCall Smith

14- Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

15- My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith

18- West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

19- City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

20- The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb

21- The Crow Road by Iain Banks

22- The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter

23- Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby

24- Razorblade Tears by SA Cosby

25- All the Sinners Bleed by SA Cosby

5 Star Recommneded Read By a Fellow Booklover - Ivana @MissTuned
1- Swear on This Life by Renee Carlino

Shows mentioned--

1- The Bear (Hulu)

2- Beef (Netflix)

3- Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Articles mentioned--

Shakespeare in FLA School

S9 Ep 184 - Alternative to Amazon with guest Andy Hunter, CEO of Bookshop.org - 8/16/23

We were honored to welcome Andy Hunter, the CEO of Bookshop.org to the podcast this week. Andy is a writer, a publisher, and now heads up a company that competes with Amazon for on-line book sales. But unlike Amazon, the proceeds of Bookshop.org’s sales go back to independent bookstores.

At the click of a button, you can order a book to be delivered while your favorite independent bookseller gets part of that sale. Independent bookstores that sell most of their books during summer or don’t have the capacity to ship books can create a Bookshop.org page and sell books to anyone at any time. Authors, schools, and book influencers can create pages, too.

We talk with Andy about why he started this endeavor a few months before COVID hit, why he loves Coney Island, and how his degree in philosophy has affected the types of books he gravitates to.

Oh, and as of this recording, we decided to get with the times. The Perks is a Bookshop affiliate; you can see any of the books we talk about on the show on our new bookshop page and order them there.

https://bookshop.org/shop/PerksOfBeingABookLover

 

You can find Bookshop at bookshop.org.

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 mentioned in this episode:

Books mentioned--
1- Is It Hot In Here? (Or am I Suffering for all Eternity for the Sins I Committed on Earth?) by Zach Zimmerman

2- Emergency by Kathleen Alcott

3- The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut

4- When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

5- Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

6- The Wizard's Guide to Magical Baking by T. Kingfisher

7- The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

Movies mentioned--
1- Barbie (2023)

Podcast episode-
1- Thrillers by the Bookclub Podcast - Ep. 39 - Murder Ensues

Recipe mentioned:

Tomato and Fried Provolone Sandwich