We’re enjoying a summertime break this week, so we hope YOU enjoy our Philly Podcast Festival show about Anne of Green Gables from last month!
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Ben Lerner's novel 10:04 is about a man named Ben trying to write a novel. Yes, it's meta. Yes, it can get navel-gazey. But there's an underlying humanity and economy that keeps the book afloat.
Discussion topics include gatekeeping, listening, dinosaurs, and superstorms.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Ranking on multiple Saddest Books Ever lists, Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia is a classic young adult novel. A young boy makes a new friend, and their friendship blossoms despite the daily grind of middle school. Then someone dies.
Weep along with us as we swap sibling stories, chat about teacher feelings, and make at least *two* Will Smith references.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a book about apprehension and grifting and murder, which makes it feel like a great selection for this, the Year Of Our Lord 2017. You never like Tom Ripley, exactly, but he’s a fascinating character to inhabit for a few hundred pages.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Hold on to your hors--I mean, rats, it's a live show! We present to you this dispatch from Boston on Robert C. O'Brien's novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
While we don't come away with a newfound love of rats, we do develop an appreciation for their arts and culture and their will to survive. Other topics include mouse marriage, Beantown humor, and the scientific process.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Laura Esquivel's best-selling novel Like Water for Chocolate is a work of revolutionary magical realism. No really, it takes place during the Mexican Revolution and chronicles the life of a young woman whose strong emotions affect the world around her.
Join us for a chat about exploding showers, sexual food, and everyone's favorite birthday boy Waluigi.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Live shows and a busy summer mean there’s nothing special about our 250th episode, except insofar as each and every one of our episodes is a special wonderful delight!
Alias Hook is a 2014 book that asks what Peter Pan and Neverland would seem like from the perspective of one Captain James Hook. The answer is: not great! But as with so many works of fiction that put us in the shoes of sometime antagonists, it adds interesting layers to Hook and to the Peter Pan-theon even if the straight action and romance sequences aren’t anything to write home about.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Larry Shue's 1981 play The Nerd is about a gumption-less architect trying to extract a painful person from his life. Did we mention it's a comedy?
We cover the play's plot (including its final reveal), the allure of answering machines, anonymous favors, and the Nintendo Switch.
Steve Kluger’s Last Days of Summer isn’t a complicated novel—it’s a nice, emotionally resonant book about a kid without a father and a man without a kid who form a unique and heartwarming bond. Sometimes it’s just nice to read a nice book where (mostly) nice things happen, you know?
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
What's hidden in your secret garden? Which weeds need weeding? Which flowers need water, sunlight, and a Pokemon trainer to bring them to life?
This week we talk about our own secret gardens, as well as the novel The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Other talking points include New Women, stolen identities, and The Secret.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook