A Baker's Dozen of Bookish Podcasts...Do You Listen?

Book Fight! calls itself "a book podcast where writers talk honestly about books, writing, and the literary world," and it's hosted by writing professionals Mike Ingram and Tom McAllister. (Rated 4.4 with 233 review)

I've listened to Books and Authors for a long time and find this podcast to be one of the most consistently high-quality book podcasts out there. I've recently enjoyed episodes featuring Zadie Smith and Ann Patchett, and another titled "George Orwell Now." (Rated 4.3 with 321 reviews)

I seem to be introduced to more new-to-me writers via Simon Mayo's Books of the Year than from most of the other book podcasts I favor. I did, however, particularly enjoy two recent episodes featuring an old favorite of mine, Sebastian Faulks. (Rated 4.7 with 55 reviews)

This one from the New York Times can always be counted on to get interviews with the currently hottest writers of the moment. They've recently switched to a new host and tweaked the format a bit, so I'm still getting used to the new look. (Rated at 4.1 with 3,200+ reviews)

I don't listen to the London Review of Books podcast as often as I do some of the others because, frankly, it's often over my head or outside my area of interest. But it's a quality podcast that keeps me coming back. (Rated at 4.5 with 201 reviews)

Write-Minded bills itself as "Weekly Inspiration for Writers" but I've enjoyed many of the podcasts strictly from a reader's point of view. In fact, the most recent episode on telling stories via different points of view is fascinating. (Rated at 4.9 with 400 reviews)

So Many Damn Books has been around since 2014 but it's one of the more recent "discoveries" of mine. It seems to feature a lot of writers I'm unfamiliar with so it's been the source of several author discoveries for me. (Rated at 4.7 with 251 reviews)

Reading Through Life caught my attention because it self-describes this way: "a weekly podcast by two best friends who would love to live in a library. We believe that there is no better company than that towering pile of 73 unread novels you have sitting on the nightstand." It's like eavesdropping on two best friends at a coffee shop while they gush about the books they are reading. (Rated at 4.5 with 133 reviews)

This one is a bit different in that it features one author reading aloud the work of another and commenting on it in an interview format. Unlike most of these podcasts, The New Yorker Fiction podcast updates only monthly, but I particularly enjoyed the July episode that saw George Saunders reading Claire Keegan's short story "So Late in the Day." (Rated at 4.4 with 2,900+ reviews)

Just the Right Book is hosted by an indie bookstore owner and features a lot of nonfiction alternated with "What's New" podcasts. It's fun to hear things from a bookseller's point of view. (Rated 4.6 with 327 reviews)

Sarah and a guest discuss: "2 old books they love, 2 new books they love, 1 book they don't love, and 1 new release they're excited about." Always interesting. (Rated 4.8 with 655 reviews)

What Should I Read Next? is right at the top of my list because of the topics it covers and its presentation...not at all "bossy." I recently enjoyed, and learned a lot from, the episode that covered "how bestseller lists are compiled." (Rated 4.8 with 4,800+ reviews)

I particularly love the "Author Takeover" episodes from Fully Booked in which one author comes in to interview another about their work. Usually the two are friends so what they share is a good way to learn more about their everyday lives and how they work. (Rated 3.9 with 77 reviews)

So there you have my baker's dozen of favorite book podcasts - at least as of today because I keep discovering new ones every week or so. As you can see, all of these are highly rated, but I think their overall popularity is best gauged by the number of reviews they've harvested from listeners so I've included those numbers also. This barely scratches the surface of the world of book podcasting, so let me know if you have a particular favorite one yourselves. I'd love to check them out.

Woman with a Blue Pencil - Gordan McAlpine

 

I really enjoy the way Gordon McAlpine's mind works. McAlpine (who has also used the pen name Owen Fitzstephen) doesn't just write historical fiction, or crime fiction, or for that matter, any kind of novel that uses the usual kind of plot line to move it along. Instead, he adds his own special twist to those genres to create something a whole lot different. Woman with a Blue Pencil is a good example. On its face, Woman with a Blue Pencil is historical fiction covering that awful period in American history after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor when all West Coast Japanese Americans, suddenly viewed as potential spies and traitors to this country, were moved into internment camps for safekeeping and "their own good." 

Sam Sumida is an academic investigating the murder of his wife on the eve of Pearl Harbor only because authorities don't care enough about what happened to her to do a proper investigation themselves. But then Sam discovers that he has no memory of the last several weeks and that everyone he knows no longer recognizes him. Even worse, he learns that there is no public record of him ever having existed - or of his wife's murder. Unbeknownst to Sam, his investigation is about to lead him into a deadly confrontation with an anti-Japanese personal investigator who is somehow linked to Sam's murdered wife. But the real kicker in Sam's world is that he is unaware that he and his wife are merely fictional characters in a novel - and that what happened at Pearl Harbor necessitated them being stricken from that novel and replaced by characters with a more politically correct feel to them. So now if Sam is ever to figure out what happened to his wife, he is going to have to confront his fictional replacement. 

The "woman with a blue pencil" calling the shots is all-powerful, but the young Japanese author taking her advice is not ready to completely let go of Sam Sumida. 

This one is fun, and it has led me to another Gordon McAlpine novel, Holmes Unearthed, that I'll soon be reading. 

Gordon McAlpine jacket photo

Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo

 

Richard Russo's 1993 novel Nobody's Fool turned out to be the first book in what would become known as Russo's "North Bath Trilogy," although the second and third books in the trilogy would not be published until 2016 and 2023, respectively. This, though, is the novel that introduced Donald "Sully" Sullivan and his messed up family to the world. Sully is one of those characters that are more lovable than not despite themselves, so I'm grateful that Russo eventually decided to write something close to 2,000 pages all told, exploring who Sully is and how he got that way.

Even when first introduced to readers, Sully is already an old man, especially physically. He's been a blue collar worker his entire life, and now even with a knee so damaged that most men would beg for the knee surgery Sully refuses to have, he is still surviving on whatever manual labor he can find on any given day. Despite having been divorced for decades, Sully is a woman's man and has never lacked for female company. He is also a drinker, and he has never lacked for drink or drinking partners.

As you probably have figured out already, Sully is also a man likely to have as many enemies as he has friends. One of Sully's eccentricities is that his acquaintances switch roles so often that he has a hard time keeping friends and enemies straight in his mind - often to his own detriment. In the North Bath trilogy, Russo has created an entirely believable little upstate New York town, and he's populated it with a cast of fully developed characters who probably deserve novels of their own. It's a world that most readers will probably be happy they don't have to live in, but it's definitely a fun place to visit. 

This year's Somebody's Fool made me want to go back and read the two earlier novels in the series, and I'm now looking forward to re-reading Everybody's Fool. If you enjoy long novels that you can fully immerse yourself in for a few days, I highly recommend the North Bath trilogy by Richard Russo.

Richard Russo jacket photo

Teddy and Booker T - Brian Kilmeade

 

Brian Kilmeade is fast becoming as known for his accessible books about some of the lesser covered aspects of American history as he is already known for his conservative political commentary on radio and television. Past Kilmeade books have included volumes on Andrew Jackson's miracle win of the Battle of New Orleans, on Thomas Jefferson's "forgotten war" against the Tripoli Pirates, on Sam Houston's army of "Alamo avengers" who won Texas from Santa Ana's Mexican army, on Abraham Lincoln's relationship with Frederick Douglas, and on George Washington's Revolutionary War spy ring. This time around, Kilmeade tackles the special relationship that developed between Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington around the turn of the twentieth century.

In the two decades prior to the turn of the century, Southern backlash to the policies of Reconstruction at home and in Washington D.C. had effectively ended the Reconstruction Era. Any further progress of America's black citizens was practically impossible in many states, but as so often happens in history, the exact right people to help right this wrong came along just when they were most needed. Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington stepped up and took over where Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas left off. 

It is hard to imagine a more unlikely pair, with one born into wealth and the other into slavery. But the two also had much in common, and they worked together during and after Roosevelt's time in office to get black men appointed to positions of power they would otherwise not have achieved for decades. But it all began with a single misstep that almost doomed their efforts before they had a chance to accomplish a thing when Roosevelt, in his naive audacity, invited Washington to the Roosevelt family's private White House dinner table. The backlash was quick and it was fierce, and in the eyes of many Southerners it overshadowed anything that Roosevelt would go on to accomplish as President of the United States. 

Teddy and Booker T is a reminder of just how unique, brave, and accomplished Roosevelt and Washington were, and how important a role they played together to make this country a better place for all of its people. Their struggle was at times frustrating and dangerous, but we are very lucky that each of them came along when they did - and even luckier that they found each other. 

Brian Kilmeade author photo

What I'm Reading This Week (September 11)

 I've been a bit distracted for the last two weeks because of the beginning of the college football season, and it didn't feel as if I were turning a whole lot of pages this week. But somehow, I managed to finish four books: A Town Called Solace, The Secret Hours, Paperback Jack, and Nobody's Fool. That's probably because I enjoyed each so much that I was always happy to get back to any of them. 

I'm still working on Brian Kilmead's Teddy and Booker T, and have also started Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story by Rick Bragg, Half-Life of a Stolen Sister by Rachel Cantor, Woman with a Blue Pencil by Gordon McAlpine, and Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead.

Crook Manifesto suddenly became available from my library, so it's the short-fuse book of the week. I've been a fan of Colson Whitehead since finally discovering him via his wonderful alternate history novel The Underground Railroad a while back. This one is, I think, the first time that Whitehead has ventured into series novels. It uses the same main characters from his previous novel, Harlem Shuffle, and gets off to a rousing start in Part I. Whitehead is just one heck of a storyteller.

I'm not very far along in any of those yet, so it's not likely to be a week with a lot of new adds to what I'll be reading, but these are the ones most likely to come up next:

I like the way Gordon McAlpine thinks, and I'm fascinated by the novel of his I'm reading now, The Woman with a Blue Pencil, so I'm looking forward to this tale about a now seventy-year-old Sherlock Holmes who is brought out of retirement by author Conan Doyle (author of the Sherlock Holmes series) in real life because someone is threatening to kill Doyle. It sounds like a fun story that is wide open for a lot of inside jokes that fans of the Sherlock Holmes books will appreciate. 

In the last few weeks, I've seen Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone featured on several of the book blogs I follow, and it sounds like something I will enjoy. It's an murder mystery written by Australian author Benjamin Stevenson, and the main character, as the title says, may be the only member of his crime family who hasn't killed someone. The book jacket makes it sound as kind of an homage to the likes of "Holmes, Christie, Chesterson..." Lots of potential here. 

I've never had the pleasure of seeing Lucinda Williams in live performance, but the singer's voice and style combination is one of the most recognizable I've ever encountered. She always comes across as such a tortured soul that I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about her life experiences in Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You. Williams is from Louisiana and according to the jacket was always told that she was "too country for rock and too rock for country." I can believe it. She's special.

Happy Reading, y'all...

Paperback Jack - Loren D. Estleman

 

I have been a fan of the noir novelists who were in their prime from the 1940s through the 1960s ever since discovering a dark closet treasure trove of cheap paperbacks that my then-teenaged uncle must have at some point hidden (and then left behind when he enlisted in the Navy) from my grandparents. The covers were just too good for a kid to ignore, and I had that same feeling when I spotted the cover of Loren D. Estleman's Paperback Jack in my local library. I had to bring it home, but unlike my uncle I didn't have to hide it from anyone.

Estleman set the novel in 1946, just when combat veteran Jacob Heppleman comes home hoping to publish his great American war novel. Heppleman had tried his hand at publishing a novel before the war, but he barely recognizes the publishing world he comes home to. The cheap paperbacks that were so loved by soldiers during the war are now the reading format of choice everywhere, and publishers are scrambling to be the first to publish a paperback original. The pulps are all dead or dying so publishers turn to unemployed pulp fiction writers, including Jacob Heppleman, to provide the stories they need. 

Jacob (who will become novelist Jack Holly) wants to join the fun but needs to do a whole lot of research if he is to write a credible crime novel. He is prepared to do just that; he is not prepared, however, for the reaction he gets from one gangland boss who demands a cut of the resulting novel's royalties. And no one is prepared when in 1951 the House Select Committee on Pornography and Juvenile Delinquency decides that the most popular fiction genre on the American market needs to be shut down. 

Paperback Jack is fun; that's the bottom line. But this is nostalgic fun all wrapped up inside an informative look at how publishing was forever changed by the introduction of cheap paperback copies of classics,  author back catalogs, and new books. The fictional congressional committee that tried so hard to ban books like Paperback Jack is based on the very real House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials that tried to do exactly the same thing in 1952. This one is primarily for readers who enjoy noir fiction, but I found its historical fiction aspects to be the best takeaway from Paperback Jack. It is also my first experience with the prolific Loren D. Estleman's work, but not my last. 

Loren D. Estleman jacket photo