The Book Club Review (The Book Club Review)

It's our 2021 Summer Reading episode!

What are we looking for in our summer reading? We want books that are going to carry us away, books that are immersive and compelling, books that take us places and teach us things. Sometimes we want short reads to suit our mood, others we want long immersive books that will last us through the summer. And as ever, we want books we can discuss and debate.

Embracing our usual tendency to veer away from the obvious we've compiled an eclectic list. We’ve got summer buzz books The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, but we’re also delving into mental health with Meg Mason’s hilarious and moving novel Sorrow & Bliss, considering the joys of the untethered life with Jhumpa Lahiri and learning about the Sackler family – architects, it turns out, of America’s opioid crisis – with Patrick Radden-Keefe’s Empire of Pain. Plus Laura throws in Michael Faber’s beguiling fantasy novel D: A Tale of Two Worlds, a novel by First Nations author Richard Wagamese she wants everyone to read, and we briefly consider Erik Larson’s gripping history of World War 2, The Splendid and the Vile and why really it’s the perfect thing to have beside your deckchair.

Wherever you are we wish you a brilliant summer and lots of happy reading.

Booklist

Sorrow & Bliss by Meg Mason

Hotel Silence by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden-Keefe

D (a Tale of Two Worlds) by Michael Faber

The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalia Harris

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

You can also find full details plus a few extras on our website, thebookclubreview.co.uk. And if you’re so inclined you can also sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter there. It has reviews and recommendations and is full of reading inspiration to tide you over until our next episode.

Follow us between episodes on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast, on twitter and facebook @bookclubrvwpod or email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com – do drop us a line and tell us what you’re reading, we always love to hear from you.

Special thanks to Mason Dietrich, our new Production assistant.

It's a new year and a new episode. Join Kate and Laura as they consider reading intentions for the year ahead, and try to set some realistic goals. Will 2025 be the year Kate gets into poetry? Will it be the year Laura weans herself off romance novels? And as always, they're thinking of book club reads to come. Meanwhile Phil sets a goal for himself in 2025 that might surprise you.

Books mentioned

 4,000 Weeks and Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

 Rejection by Tony Tulithamutte

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

The George Smiley novels by John le Carre

Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway

 My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgard

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

Assembly and Universality by Natasha Brown

Also a Poet and Crush by Ada Calhoun

Our Country Friends and Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart

Intimacies and Audition by Katie Kitamura

Robert Caro's Fifth Lyndon Johnson book

Polostan by Neal Stephenson

Finance for the People by Paca Leon

Essays of E. B. White

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

 All That Glitters by Orlando Whitfield

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

My Friends by Hisham Matar

 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel

The Gifts of Reading, Robert Macfarlane (ed)

Untitled Memoir from Nicola Sturgeon

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind trilogy)

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Living and Death and Intimations by Zadie Smith

Notes

If you’re looking for inspiration in your reading life over the coming year why not subscribe to The Book Club Review Patreon. In addition to the various special episodes you’ll find on there, you’ll get The Book Club Review Weekend, my weeky-ish bonus episode just for Patrons, featuring Laura’s reading updates and regular chats with friends of the pod. Laura and I have cooked up a new feature, called One Book Wonder, that allows us to talk about those books that slip through the cracks between regular episodes. Listen in for our thoughts on Good Material by Dolly Alderton. 

You get all that at the entry level, but at the higher tier you can also join the podcast book club and come and talk books with me in person at the end of every month over zoom, or listen back anytime if you can’t make the live session. In January we’re reading the novel that appeared on many a best-of-the-year list, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, In February we’re we’re reading All The Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley, a museum guard's quest to find solace and meaning in art, and in March it’s short stories with Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage by Alice Munroe. But will they make for good book club reads? Join me and the book clubbers over on Patreon and find out. Join our bookish community, get brilliant book recommendations and get the warm glow from knowing that you’re supporting me in making the show. Head to Patreon.com/thebookclubreview and sign up today.

Otherwise come and find me anytime on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast or check out our website, thebookclubreview.co.uk. But for now, thanks for listening and happy book clubbing.

Join us as we dive, in spoiler-free fashion, into Lauren Groff's latest novel, Matrix. It tells of Marie de France, a cast-off from Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine's court, exiled to be a prioress at a run-down Abbey inhabited by starving nuns. Devastated and grieving the young Marie thinks only of regaining the queen's favour and returning to court. Gradually, though, she comes to see that if she is to stay, she must change, and the Abbey with her. The book has been a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist but what did Laura's book club think? We're joined by pod-regulars Phillip Chaffee and Sarah Oliver to discuss it.

Lincoln in the Bardo is a ghostly story that unfolds in a graveyard over the course of a single night. Narrated by a chorus of voices and historical sources this innovative novel invites discussion, and won the Booker Prize in 2017. In this episode we find out what Kate's book club made of it. Were they baffled or bewitched by this multifarious cast of ghostly characters, and were they daunted by the profound sadness of the subject matter, the death of a much loved child.

We also speak to Michelle and Claire from the East London Feminist Book Club, and get some good ideas for how to manage a book club where everyone is learning as they go along. As ever we end with a range of recommendations you won't want to miss for your next read.

Book recommendations

The Tenth of December, George Saunders

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

Memoir of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

The Bees, Laline Paull

Grief is a Thing With Feathers, Max Porter

The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey

Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas

Days Without End, Sebastian Barry

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome

The Power, Naomi Alderman

Notes

Keep listening for our 'extra' bit at the end, where we talk about what we've been reading outside of book club. Stay tuned for true confessions of what we keep on our kindles.

Follow us on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast, or get in touch at thebookclubreview@gmail.com and tell us about a book you love. You can also find our episode archive, full shownotes and articles on our website.

Tucked away in London's Soho is a hidden gem of a bookshop. The Second Shelf sells rare and antiquarian books, modern first editions, ephemera, manuscripts, and rediscovered works – all by women.

We sit down with proprietor A. N. Devers to learn how she went from rare-book dealing to shopkeeping. We also hear about the bookshelves that regularly make customers gasp, and why all women should think about collecting books by women writers.

•

For more information check out The Second Shelf's website www.thesecondshelf.com, find them on Twitter @secondshelfbks or Instagram @secondshelfbooks

•

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

What did Laura's book club make of THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead, now a Pulitzer Prize and US National Book Award winner. We also discover a school whose library is in a specially converted London bus. Teacher Tom Milne tells us all about their school book club, and how they came up with the ultimate list of reading recommendations. 

•

Books mentioned in this episode: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, The Miniaturist by Jesse Burton, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr, The Sellout by Paul Beatty, On Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, The Known World by Edward P. Jones, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

•

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod or leave us a comment at the episode page on our website, we'd love to hear from you. What's a follow-on read that you would recommend?

We love a prize and we love a special episode, and so we’re delighted to have an excuse to get together to discuss the 2022 Women’s Prize shortlist and its winner, The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. 

The Women’s Prize is the UK's annual book award that celebrates the best books written by women. Key criteria for the Prize are accessibility, originality and excellence in writing. Judges are asked to ignore the reviews, publicity spends, an author’s previous reputation, and any sense of ‘who deserves it’ to choose the novel that inspires them, moves them, makes them think – and that they admire and enjoy.

And so listen in to hear our frank but friendly take on the shortlist, Ozeki’s big win, and whether we agree with the judges. Maybe you don’t have time to read them all and just want to read one? Leave it to us, we’ve got you covered.

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

The Hand the Devil Knead by Lisa-Allen Agostini

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Have thoughts on this episode? Join us over on our website where you'll find the page for this episode, a transcript and our comments forum. Which of the shortlist was your favourite? Drop us a line and let us know.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com.

Since publication in 2019 The Hummingbird, by Italian Sandro Veronesi (translated into English by Elena Pala), has wowed readers and fellow-authors alike. 'A gripping masterpiece', 'a life-affirming triumph' 'unforgettable'... Just what is all the fuss about?

We’re joined by pod regular Phil Chaffee and first-timer Jo Norman, both members of Laura’s book club, to find out. We’ve also got four unmissable novels by international authors we think you should know about. 

Booklist

Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp (trans. Jo Heinrich)

The Martin Beck novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöo (Joan Tate)

Periera Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi (Patrick Creagh)

The Door by Magda Szabó (Len Rix)

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginsberg (Jenny McPhee)

Have thoughts on this episode? Are you team Kate or team Laura? Whenever you listen to the show you can always let us know via the comments forum on our website. And don't forget to leave us a book recommendation, tell us one of your favourites.

Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what we do please do take a moment to rate and review the show, and help other listeners find us.

'Beach read', 'holiday read', 'summer read'. This year there’s another term in the mix: the ‘stay-cation read’. But whatever you call it, for us summer reading is all about choice. Reading what you want. Not reading what you should. 

So, what do YOU feel like reading? Well, we’re here to help you decide. Speed read. Comforting classic. Wish fulfillment romance. Genre-bending Whodunnit. Rollicking historical epic. Forgotten 1930s gem. We’ve got you covered. 

Listen in to find your perfect ‘beach read’ – even if you’re nowhere near a beach. 

We’re joined by Emily of the Walking Book Group of Hampstead Heath, Elizabeth Morris of the Crib Notes newsletter, friend and journalist Phil Chaffee – who joins us on upcoming episode devoted to Rodham – and Simon of the Tea and Books podcast.

This show is all about recommendations. Here’s a list of everything we cover:

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
• Sea of Poppies by Amitav Gosh
• Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
• Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford
• The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo

Also mentioned:

• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala 
• The Meaning of Rice by Michael Booth
• Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Love in a Cold Climate, The Pursuit of Love and Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
• In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
• Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
• H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

You can find out more about Emily’s Walking Book Club, including how to join, here. We’d also encourage you to watch Emily sing the praises of Middlemarch, part of her brilliant lockdown series.

Have a listen to Tea or Books with Simon (Stuck in a Book) and Rachel (Book Snob) as they debate ideas around books. Warning: have your notepad at the ready, as this show will leave you with a ton of recommendations.

For more recommendations, from the back list to the hottest new new releases, sign up for Crib Notes, Elizabeth Morris’s monthly newsletter. Follow her on Instagram @cribnotesbookclub and Twitter @elizabethmoya for more tips and reviews.

It’s always good to have things to look forward to in life, and the books we can see coming up on the horizon are no exception. In this episode we’ll be finding out the books that Chrissy Ryan and her team at Bookbar are excited about. Whether it’s new books from authors we here at the Book Club Review have loved in the past or exciting new debuts from authors we’ve never heard of, we’re primed and ready to get reading as soon as they drop. Plus we have a nerdy dive into what it takes to run a small independent bookshop, and why it’s so important to be reading ahead of the pack. Listen in and be prepared to add to your TBR.

Book list

Chrissy recommended

Rosewater by Liv Little (Dialogue books / Hachette)

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Penguin)

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (Harpercollins)

Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery (Bloomsbury)

The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan (W&N)

Mrs S by K Patrick (Europa Editions)

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang (Harper Collins)

The Guest, Emma Cline (Penguin)

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks (Penguin)

Lucy recommended

Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater (Hachette)

In Memoriam by Alice Wynn (Penguin)

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Chandler and Frankie recommended

One Small Voice by Santanu Bhattacharya (Penguin)

Penance by Eliza Clark (Faber)

Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren (Pushkin)

Tomás Nevinson, Javier Marías (Penguin)

The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor (Penguin)

And Frankie also mentioned Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery (Bloomsbury)

In addition to bookselling Frankie is also author Francesca Reece and so you might also be interested to try her book Voyeur: 'Devastatingly witty, compulsively readable . . . like Sally Rooney meeting Martin Amis in Paris' writes Francine Toon, author of Pine.

To sign up to read and review proofs head to Netgalley UK or Netgalley.com 

Notes

Check out the episode page on our website for full shownotes and a transcript, and do comment there anytime if you have thoughts on any of the books discussed in this show. You'll also find our archive of over one-hundred episodes to browse through, from our Booker Prize or Women’s Prize specials to regular book club chats and interviews with authors and other book industry folk. You can also sign up to our free newsletter for more book recommendations between shows, and find out the details for our Patreon account and how to support us there.

A quick free way to support us is to take a moment to rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps us reach new listeners. Tell your friends, share on social media, it means so much to us when you do.

You can also find us on Instagram @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com.

So Many Damn Books is a show that aims to celebrate reading in all its forms, and to do so with a cocktail in hand. For over 200 episodes now Christoper Hermelin has been chatting to authors and crafting them bespoke drinks. From George Saunders and Ruth Ozeki to lesser-known but no less interesting authors, every episode in his archive is a delight. And it was no less of a delight to welcome him onto the Book Club Review podcast. So sit back and enjoy this very special episode, where you'll find out about a Stateside literary cult that's turns out to be an excellent resource should you need a new best friend, a book so good you'll end up dreaming about it, and how to cope when you've gone so deep into the reading world that you can no longer simply buy a book in a bookshop. Luckily, a problem shared is a problem halved, or at least a problem understood!

Booklist

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris by Leanne Shapton 

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno

Spangle by Gary Jennings

Hestia Strikes a Match by Christine Grillo

Notes

Enjoyed this episode? In the mood for more? Head over to SMDB and listen to Christopher's episode here. Amongst other things we discuss the amazing KICK THE LATCH by Kathryn Scanlan, and lesser-known gem PARNASSUS ON WHEELS by Christoper Morely.

Want to know more about the Tournament of Books? 2023 is here

Or browse the ToB archive

Keen to fall down a nostalgia rabbit hole? Try the Mac vs. PC commercials, but be aware it's half an hour of your life you won't get back.

Admin

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes do follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or get in touch direct at thebookclubreview@gmail.com. 

Website: https://www.thebookclubreview.co.uk

Instagram post: [link coming soon]

Newsletter sign-up: https://substack.com/@thebookclubreview

Patreon: Coming soon…

And if you enjoy our shows and want to do a nice thing in return please do leave us a quick star rating and review. Wondering how to do that? From apple podcasts click the '...' next to the episode title (under the square graphic) and choose 'go to show'. From there scroll down past the episodes till you find 'Ratings & Reviews'. Tap the stars to add a star rating, tap 'write a review' slightly further down to add a comment. Thank you!

Dull account of one woman’s day or rich and resonant masterpiece? Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf has divided readers since it was published and continues to spark debate today.

In London, one day in June, 1923, society hostess Clarissa Dalloway sets out to buy flowers for a party she is giving that evening. Returning home later she is visited by an old friend, Peter Walsh, who rekindles memories and feelings from her youth. Meanwhile making his own path through London traumatised soldier, Septimus Smith, is finding everyday life a torment and his young Italian wife cannot help him. Although they never meet, the two stories interweave as Woolf captures her characters and London on the page.

Join Kate and special guest, prolific reader and Instagram book reviewer  Charles Pignal as they dive into Dalloway and debate the results. Could Woolf have used a few less semi-colons? Can Kate talk about the book without weeping? If you haven’t read it, should you read it? Listen in for the answers to all these questions plus some great follow-on recommendations from Charles and from Kate and Laura picking up on the London theme. Whether you’re wondering what to read next for book club or just want some good additions to your own reading pile we have the book for you.

Book list

The Annotated Mrs Dalloway, with notes by Merve Emre

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Young Eliot and Eliot After the Waste Land by Robert Crawford

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

White Teeth and Intimations by Zadie Smith

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

On Golden Hill and Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

Queenie by Candice Carty Williams.

Notes

For more from Charles including reviews, his weekly books quiz, and author interviews find him on Instagram @charleslangip

Have thoughts on this episode, or a book to recommend? Go to the episode page on our website where you'll find full show notes for all the books discussed, a transcript and a comments forum. Comments go straight to our inboxes so get in touch, we love to hear from you.

You can also keep in touch between episodes on Instagram @BookClubReview podcast, or Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or drop us a line at thebookclubreview@gmail.com.

It's Mother's Day here in the UK and as there's nothing Kate loves more than a special episode we've put together a show on the theme of Motherhood. We're joined by Claire Lynch, author of Small: On Motherhoods, her literary memoir of her own unusual journey into motherhood. Elizabeth Morris of Crib Notes book club joins us too – who better to help us pull together our essential reads on the topic. We've got laughter, we might shed a few tears, and brilliant books to cover all eventualities.

BOOKLIST

Small: on motherhoods, by Claire Lynch

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann ní Ghríofa

M(otherhood) by Praya Agarwal

The Best Most Awful Job by Katherine May

The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

No-One Talks About this Stuff by Kat Brown

NOTES

Follow Claire on Twitter @drclairelynch, and find Elizabeth @Elizabethmoya. You can sign up for her monthly newsletter Crib Notes here.

Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Check out our full episode archive on our website www.thebookclubreview.co.uk.

Do subscribe to us to be sure you never miss an episode. And if you like what we do please rate and review the show, it helps other listeners find us. If you want to go one better please spread the word about us on your social media channels. Reaching new listeners makes us so happy, we treasure each and every one, and your support helps us do that.

It's our best books of 2022, one of our favourite episodes to record as by this point we've done all the hard work of reading, now it's time to sit back and consider which, of all the books we read in 2022, were our very favourites. That might be a new release or it might be a backlist gem. We've also got the books that got us through difficult moments, the books that made us laugh or cry, and the ones we recommended and gave to friends. As we're nothing if not critical we've got some books that didn't quite live up to our expectations before we finally crown our top three books of 2022. 

As snow falls gently around the shed, the fairy lights twinkle, the mulled wine is warm, and we discuss our favourite reads of 2022 with regular special guest, journalist Phil Chaffee. Books mentioned are listed below, but if you want to be surprised look away now.

Book recommendations for Best Books of 2022

Favourite new release: Laura loved TRUST by Herman Diaz, Phil’s favourite (with also-rans The Marriage Portraitby Maggie O’Farrell and Love Marriage by Monica Ali) was THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES by Deesha Philyaw, while Kate loved SEVEN STEEPLES by Sara Baume (with honorable mentions Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard and Briefly: A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens)

Favourite backlist title: Phil picked THE BETROTHED by Alessandro Manzoni (with also-rans The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toíbín, and Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig). Kate loved The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield-Fisher but her favourite was O CALEDONIA by Elspeth Barker. Laura went for WIVES AND DAUGHTERS by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Favourite non-fiction reads: For Kate it was THE PALACE PAPERS, Tina Brown’s engaging examination of the British royal family and our collective fascination with (or indifference) to them. Kate’s also-rans were Fall by John Preston (did Robert Maxwell fall or was he pushed?), 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (if we did but have the time to discuss it) and Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (book everyone says is great turns out to be great). Laura only reads non-fiction when her book club forces her too, but luckily she did end up reading CASTE by Isabel Wilkerson, a book that changed her view of the world within the first fifty pages. Phil loved Putin’s People by Catherine Belton and Not One Inch by M.E. Sarotte, but his overall favourite was THE RED PRINCE by Timothy Snyder.

Favourite Book Club reads. Top of the pile for Laura was MICHEL THE GIANT by Tété-Michel Kpomassie while Phil preferred EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET by Hilary Mantel. Kate loved The Heart is a Lonely Hunterby Carson McCullers but her ultimate choice was LIGHT PERPETUAL by Francis Spufford

Favourite comfort reads: For Phil it was EITHER/OR by Elif Batuman; he now only wants to read books narrated by her protagonist Selin. Laura escaped to a creepy Swiss hotel with THE SANATORIUM by Sarah Pearse while Kate sank into the arms of old friend E.M. Delafield with THE DIARY OF A PROVINCIAL LADY.

A book that made us laugh or cry: For Kate it was A HEART THAT WORKS by Rob Delaney. Phil enjoyed THREE MEN IN A BOAT by Jerome K. Jerome (in audiobook form read by Hugh Laurie). Laura loved Small by Claire Lynch and The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, but her final choice was THE BREAD THE DEVIL KNEAD by Lisa Allen-Agostini

A book we pressed on a friend: Runner-up for Phil was We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole but his favourite was THE FREE WORLD by Louis Menand. Laura’s pick was THE SIXTEEN TREES OF THE SOMME by Lars Mytting

Books we read that didn’t quite live up to our expectations: THE ABSOLUTE BOOK by Elizabeth Knox promised much for Laura but ultimately didn’t deliver. Phil really didn’t get on with A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanigahara (and has *really* thought about why) and for Kate LIBERATION DAY by George Saunders didn’t quite meet the soaring heights of his other books.

Overall Book of the Year: Laura’s standout was THE TREES by Percival Everett. Kate loved After Sappho by Selby Wyn Schwartz and The Door by Magda Szabó but her overall favourite read was LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry. Phil meanwhile loved the Elena Ferrante Neopolitan quartet, but his overall book of the year is, as mentioned earlier, THE FREE WORLD by Louis Menand.

A few other books we mention in passing:

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Babel by R. F. Kuang

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

The Little Library Parties and The Little Library Christmas by Kate Young

Find full shownotes and links to related podcast episodes at our website thebookclubreview.co.uk, where you'll also find a transcript and our comments forum. No matter when you listen to this episode you can always drop us a line there and let us know what you thought of it. Tell us your favourite reads of 2022, we'd love to hear about them. You can also sign up for our bi-weekly-ish newsletter and find out details of our new Patreon channel.

To keep up with us between episodes follow us on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com. If you enjoyed this episode please don't forget an easy way to give something back is to let people know about the show, whether through a quick rating on your podcast app, or letting people know via social media. We really appreciate it.

We chat with Chrissy Ryan, founder of Bookbar, a new bookshop and bar in Kate's North London neighbourhood. Chrissy's vision is for Bookbar to be a social space where people can discover their next read and meet other readers in a place where conversation is encouraged. We loved hearing about everything from her in-house book club featuring authors like Ingrid Persaud, Brit Bennett and Curtis Sittenfeld to her shelf-medicate book subscription service – as Chrissy says, like having a literary matchmaker on speed-dial. We come up with an idea for the perfect book club party and talk favourite books. Listen in for Chrissy's must-reads out now or coming soon.

Booklist

Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Dopesick by Beth Macy

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Faultlines Emily Atami

Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wollizer

China Room by Sunjeev Suhota

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Red Comet by Heather Clark

Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

For more about Bookbar check out their website.

For more from us follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Drop us a line and let us know what you’re reading – we always love to hear from you. For more listening browse our episode archive where you can also sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Our next book club read is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. That episode is coming soon.

We catch up with 2022 Booker Prize winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. Kate may have loved it, when she read it for our Booker Prize special episode, but what did the rest of her book club make of it?

And we catch up with two recent reads for Laura's book group. The first is My Phantoms, the most recent novel from critics favourite Gwendoline Riley. What's all the fuss about? And did Laura's book club agree it was worth the read?

Next we consider Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, a lesser-known work from Hilary Mantel. The real question, it seems, when reading Hilary Mantel is 'why would you ever read anyone else?' Listen in to find out just what it was Laura's group loved so much.

We also have a range of recommendations for follow-ons to try, or to read with your book club.

Book recommendations

Women and Power by Mary Beard

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam

Notes

The audiobook of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is published by Bolinda Digital (P) Bolinda Publishing 2022, My Phantoms is published by Granta Audio and Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is published by W.F. Howes and all three are available via your preferred audiobook retailer or library app.

If you enjoyed this episode catch up with our original take on The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida when we discussed it as part of our Booker Prize special episode.

For reviews and recommendations between episodes come and find us over on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, we always love to hear from you. If you'd like to support us, please do take a moment to rate and review the show, which helps us reach new listeners. And tell your book-loving friends, who might not have heard of us.

Our bookshelf episodes are the ones where we kick back and talk about the books we’ve been choosing for ourselves outside of our book club reading. And so join us as we get swept away by the French Revolution and Hilary Mantel’s spellbinding book A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, consider myth and storytelling with a surprisingly feminist slant thanks to Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, VICTORY CITY, see another side to New York with our guest Phil Chaffee and Chang Rae Lee’s book NATIVE SPEAKER, plan an architectural tour of Norwegian Stave churches thanks to THE BELL AND THE LAKE by Lars Mytting, which Laura reports is a tale of love and drama set among a remote community in 18th-century Norway. We also catch up with Barack Obama’s summer reading pick THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS by Jessamine Chan – with a brief aside to celebrate Kate’s new-found love for Richard and Judy's book club here in the UK. Phil reports back on the FT’s business book of the year, CHIP WAR by Chris Miller, which turns out to be a thumping page-turner, plus we quick fire through a stack of other books we couldn’t bear not to mention.

Book list

A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie (Penguin)

NATIVE SPEAKER by Chang Rae Lee (Granta)

THE BELL AND THE LAKE by Lars Mytting (Hachette)

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS by Jessamine Chan

CHIP WAR by Chris Miller (Simon & Schuster)

Plus

THE PEARL by John Steinbeck

SHADOW AND CLAW by Gene Wolff

CHARLOTTE by David Foenkinos

ROSES IN THE MOUTH OF A LION by Bushra Rehman (published in the UK in January 2023, from St. Martin’s Press)

Notes

Browse the newsletter archive of Three Lives & Company booksellers, New York. 

Our  Emily's Walking Book Club episode # 76

The article Phil mentioned is The 25 Most Significant New York City Novels from the Last 25 Years

My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite's superbly titled debut novel, has been one of the literary sensations of 2019 –nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction and long listed for the Booker.

But what did both our book clubs make of it? Does it merit all the acclaim? Listen in to find out. 

Heads up: it's SPOILER-full, so don't listen unless you've read the book, or have no intention of reading it.

•

Books mentioned on this episode:

Ponti by Sharlene Teo, Half of a Yellow Sun, Why We Should All be Feminists, and Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngoze Adiche and Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. 

•

On our next book club show, we’ll be discussing Palace Walk, the first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy.

•

To keep up with us between shows follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com.

And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have time to rate and review us we will love you forever, it helps other listeners find our pod.

For Kate's most recent book club we set off for the high Himalayas in search of snow leopards and spiritual enlightenment with Peter Matthiessen's cult classic. But what did we make of it? Is it a 'man's book'? And did it make for good debate? Meanwhile our regular interview feature sees us in Paris interviewing Morgan Thomas of The American Library about his Proust book club. We end with the usual round of recommendations for your next book club read. Our bookseller recommendation for this episode comes from Joe Hedinger of The Book Hive in Norwich.

•

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast. Email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, or leave us a comment on iTunes. If you like the show then do subscribe. You'll never miss an episode and it really helps with our iTunes rankings.

•

The Book Hive can be found at www.thebookhive.co.uk. The American Library in Paris is www.theamericanlibraryinparis.org

•

Books mentioned in this episode: Tracks by Robyn Davidson, Barbarian Days by William Finnegan, A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne, Birds, Art, Life, Death: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear, Dogear magazine, www.dogear.co.uk, Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane plus a few more in our extras at the end.

•

For our next book club we will be reading and discussing The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy.

•

If you have read this far then you're probably the sort of person who might want to keep listening for our extra bit at the end, where we talk about what we've been reading outside of book club. Catch up on the tail end of our summer reading and back-to-school good intentions.

Is there any point in doing a nice thing if you can’t flaunt it on social media? Can we ever know what it’s like to be a bat? If we know Cinderella isn’t real, why do we care about whether or not she marries the prince? In this episode Kate is joined by Jonny Thomson, the man behind the popular Instagram account @philosophyminis, and a bestselling book of the same name. With a new title out, Mini Big Ideas, it seemed the perfect time to catch up with him and consider the philosophical ideas that lie behind three works of fiction: The Death of Yvan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy, Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Just what connects these three titles? Listen in to find out, plus a few more book recommendations. All that, plus discover 'the gap', and how knowing about it might change your life, and the benefits of scepticism.

Book list

On Fairy Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy (and in particular the Peter Carson translation)

Death and the Penguin by Andrei Kurkov

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Leonard & Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer

Metaphysical Animals by Rachel Wiseman and Claire MacCumhaill

Philosopher Queens by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting

Mini Philosophy and Mini Big Ideas by Jonny Thomson

Notes

Find Jonny on Instagram @philosophyminis

Find us at: https://www.thebookclubreview.co.uk

Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast

Kate's Threads reading log: @bookclubreviewpodcast@threads.net

Newsletter sign-up: https://substack.com/@thebookclubreview

Patreon and book club: We've made free episodes of The Book Club Review for 6 years now, and we'll continue to keep them free, and ad-free. But they take a lot in terms of time and resources so if you appreciate the shows and would like to support us we now have a Patreon where you can do that. In return you'll get weekly bookish recommendations from Kate, plus, at the higher tier, extra episodes and membership of our podcast book club, to be held over Zoom once a month on Sunday nights (UK time). We would love to see you there. https://patreon.com/thebookclubreview

Listen in for Laura’s take on Matt Haig's bestselling The Midnight Library, which Kate hasn’t yet read. Should she? Meanwhile Kate gets swept into literary Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. Laura takes us to Iceland with an immersive novel that she now wants everyone to drop everything and read, and we catch up with Deborah Levy with the third volume of her living autobiography, Real Estate. Also, we consider what it’s like to live in Iceland for two years with writer Sarah Moss, and remember Boomerang, Michael Lewis’s enjoyable (though also alarming) economic world tour, and how Iceland’s fishermen took to currency speculation like ducks to water.

Booklist

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Parisian Lives by Deirdre Bair

Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Real Estate by Deborah Levy

Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss

Boomerang by Michael Lewis

Sign up to our weekly newsletter which comes out on Sundays and is full of reading inspiration for the week ahead. You can subscribe via the link in our Instagram bio or on our website, thebookclubreview.co.uk.

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Drop us a line and let us know what you’re reading – we always love to hear from you.

For many parents home-schooling their children over the coming weeks, the idea of reading in snatches of borrowed time will strike a strong chord.

After the birth of her son, Elizabeth Morris decided to put her career in the book world to good use and set up Crib Notes, a book club in newsletter form. Every month, she curates the perfect book recommendations for new and busy mothers. ‘Sometimes you just need a little spark of mental stimulation to remind you of who you are beyond being a mother’, Elizabeth explains.

Listen in for some fantastic book recommendations – for all readers, not just mums! – and some great practical tips for how to fit in reading when all you have are stolen moments.

•

Sign up for Crib Notes at tinyletter.com/CribNotes

Find Elizabeth on Twitter @elizabethmoya and on Instagram @cribnotesbookclub

•

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

My Wild and Furious Nights by Clover Stroud

Constellations, Sinead Gleeson

I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell

Weather by Jenny Offill

The Panic Years, Nell Frizzell

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

• 

Keep up with what we're doing between episodes on Instagram and facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, and email us anytime at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, we'd love to hear from you. If you like what we do please do take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to us, it helps other listeners find us and means you'll never miss an episode.

'The baby is dead. It took only a few seconds.' So begins this bestselling thriller by French author Leïla Slimani, and the winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Unmissable? Unreadable? 

Listen in to hear Laura report back on what her book club made of Lullaby – and whether she made it out intact. With much, much to debate and discuss, Lullaby may well be our most divisive book club book yet.

Books mentioned on this episode:

• The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
• Somewhere Someone is Waiting for Me and Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda
• A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk
• My Thoughts Exactly by Lily Allen
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Laura also mentioned the play Girls and Boys by Dennis Kelly.

What do we read when not busy reading our book club books? Listen in to find out. This episode it’s a wide-ranging list as we report in on Lily Allen’s My Thoughts Exactly, The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis, the provocative Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey, short stories from the Orkney Islands, French classic Bonjour Tristesse, and the indulgent, laugh-out-loud Why Mummy Drinks by Gill Sims. Oh yes, and The Female Persuasion by Meg Wollitzer too.

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod or leave us a comment on iTunes, we'd love to hear from you. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang clocked in at number 80 on The Guardian's list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Barack Obama's a fan too. But what about Laura's book club? What did they make of this mesmerising collection of eight stories, one of which formed the basis of the film Arrival starring Amy Adams?

Real-life rocket scientists Kristy and Ed join the discussion and weigh in on the big questions. Like, will reading Chiang make you more intelligent? Do you have to be a sci-fi devotee to enjoy these stories? And finally, did the book make for a good book club discussion? All this, plus some great book recommendations for your next read.

•

Find us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast

on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod

email thebookclubreview@gmail.com

Please do take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to us on iTunes, it helps other listeners find us and means you’ll never miss an episode.

•

Books mentioned

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Wally Funk's Race for Space: The Extraordinary Story of a Female Aviation Pioneer by Sue Nelson

Pavane by Keith Roberts

Ed's author recommendations: John Brunner, James Blish ('Cities in Flight' and 'The Seedling Stars' [with the puddle story 'Surface Tension'] among others), and Algis Budrys

So often in the reading world we are chasing the latest new release, so it was a great pleasure to interview Simon Thomas who specialises in seeking out books from the past. We explore his unusual take on a book club where he and like-minded book bloggers read and review books from a particular year in the last century. This interview is full of gems and some great book club suggestions, so have a pen ready at the end!

•

Next up for the Book of the Year Club is 1965 and it starts in April. Check out Simon's website www.stuckinabook.com for more info. You can also find him on Instagram @Simonedwardthomas and on Twitter @stuck_inabook. And finally we recommend curling up for a listen to Simon's own podcast, Tea or Books, available on iTunes, in which he and his friend Rachel (Book Snob) debate the difficult decisions of reading and books.

•

Books mentioned on this show: The Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield, Merry Hall by Beverly Nichols, Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym, Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, The Museum of Cheats by Silvia Townsend Warner, Little and Alva and Irva, both by Edward Carey and Simon’s top book club suggestion Another Part of the Woods by Beryl Bainbridge.

Catch up on what we've been reading outside of book club, the books we choose for ourselves. If you're looking for lockdown recommendations we've got a couple of brilliant suggestions here we think you'll love, plus one book we can save you the time of having to read. We also talk upcoming reads and our newly launched Bookshop on Bookshop.org.uk

Booklist: 

Intimations by Zadie Smith

A Start in Life by Anita Brookner

Trio by William Boyd

Memorial by Bryan Washington

The Moth and the Mountain by Ed Caesar

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

We also mentioned Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, Any Human Heart and Restless by William Boyd, Two Hours: The Quest to Run The Impossible Marathon by Ed Caesar and His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie

Enjoyed the show? Looking for more? Browse our complete archive of episodes at thebookclubreview.co.uk, from blockbusting bestseller Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens to life-changing non-fiction like Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. You can also follow us for daily book reviews and recommendations on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com

The London Metropolitan Archives was established to collect, preserve, celebrate and share the stories of London and Londoners. They also have a book club. We sit down with Claire Titley and Charlie Turpie to learn more about it in an episode chock-full of great reading suggestions.

If you’re interested in joining the London Metropolitan Archives book club you can stay up to date with all their events by following them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter @ldnmetarchives. And you can find Claire on Instagram @clairelouisetitley and Charlie @charliebooksandcoffee

Books mentioned in this episode were:

Penelope Lively’s City of the Mind

This is London by Ben Judah, and do check out our episode 9 for my book club’s spirited discussion of that book

Margery Allingham’s Campion Novels, including The Tiger in the Smoke

Mrs Dalloway and The Years by Virginia Woolf,

Mr Loverman and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

James Boswell's London Journal,

Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series

Next episode: Bookshelf, in which we discuss Exciting Times by Naoise Doolan, Early Riser by Jasper Fforde, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, The Hottest Dishes of the Tatar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky, Weather by Jenny Offill and Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. That episode is coming soon.

Next up for book club is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, a haunting tale of love and murder set in the marshland of South Carolina that has found millions of readers, topping bestseller lists around the world, but what did my book club think? Were they as ravished as Reese Witherspoon, who didn’t read the last ten pages because she didn’t want the book to end. Coming soon.

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. If you like what we do please take a moment to rate and review us on iTunes, we really appreciate it.

We also explore the delights of the Persephone publishing list with old favourites and some exciting new titles.

So listen in and share in the joy of giving ourselves permission to say when we don't like something, and turn instead to something we will love. Enjoy.

Booklist

The Pineapple, King of Fruits and Matrimony, Inc., by Francesca Beauman

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu 

As It Was by Helen Thomas

A Well Full of Leaves by Elizabeth Myers

The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Notes

Find out more about Francesca at her website francescabeauman.com, or head on over to persephonebooks.co.uk for a browse.

Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email us thebookclubreview@gmail.com and let us know what you're reading – we love to hear from you. 

Subscribe to us to be sure you never miss an episode, and if you like what we do please rate and review the show, it helps other listeners find us and we are eternally grateful.

Laura reports in on The Wych Elm by Tana French, The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne and The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman. Kate's stack consists of Love by Hanne Ostavik, The Anna Karenina Effect by Viv Groskop and Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Join us as we review them and figure out if there are any book club gems in there.

•

Drop us a line at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on facebook or instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast or on twitter @bookclubrvwpod. And if you enjoy the show do take a moment to rate and review us on iTunes, it helps other listeners find us and brings us joy.

This episode is all about finding the extraordinary in the everyday, in the little things that may pass us by if we don't pay attention. And so join us as we talk to Miranda Keeling about her book The Year I Stopped to Notice, a joyful, poignant and familiar portrait of everyday life that Neil Gaiman called 'beautiful' and Philip Pullman 'a delight'. Together with Miranda we also recommend six other books that tap into this spirit of observing and capturing moments.

Booklist 

Nobody Told You by Hollie McNish

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot (and we also mentioned her latest book, The Instant)

No-One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession 

The Year I Stopped to Notice is published by Icon Books and available to buy now. For more from Miranda you can find at mirandakeeling.com or go to the source and follow her on Twitter @mirandakeeling

Enjoyed the episode? Drop us a line anytime and let us know your thoughts at our website thebookclubreview.co.uk. There you'll find a dedicated episode page, full shownotes for all the books we recommended, a transcript and a comments section where we encourage you to let us know your thoughts. We love to hear from listeners.

You'll also find our archive of episodes to browse through, from Booker winners to little known gems from the backlist. Drop in on a spirited book club discussion or join us as we catch up on our recent reads. It's all there waiting for you.

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. 

And if you’re not already do subscribe, rate and review wherever you get your podcasts, which help other listeners find us and brings us joy. Do share with your bookish friends, we love to reach new listeners.

It's our latest Book Club episode, and we're discussing Rachel Cusk's latest novel, Second Place. It was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, but didn’t make the cut for the shortlist. Sally Rooney calls it ‘masterful’, saying it ‘achieves a kind of formal perfection’ while the Observer newspaper lauds it as ‘A landmark in twenty-first-century English literature.' But what did Laura’s book club make of it? And who would we rather have to dinner, Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy? Listen in to find out.

Book recommendations

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The Outline trilogy, by Rachel Cusk, read on audio by Kristen Scott Thomas

Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

The audiobook of Second Place by Rachel Cusk is published by Faber & Faber and narrated by Kate Fleetwood. It’s available for download now.

Listen to the Rachel Cusk interview Phil mentioned at the Edinburgh Literary Festival

Find our full episode archive and sign-up link for our newsletter at our The Book Club Review website. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what we do please help spread the word and tell a book-loving friend about our show. 

Today's episode is a celebration of the joy we find in Fitzcarraldo Editions, an independent publishing house that makes no concessions towards mass appeal but instead offers up books that are consistently ambitious, imaginative and innovative. Their hallmark is their plain typographic covers that allow the words inside to speak for themselves.

The editorial line maintained by publisher Jacques Testard since the beginning has reaped rewards and he now publishes four Nobel Prizewinning authors as well as Booker international and Pulitzer prize winners and shortlistees. Not bad for a small publishing house that was started in 2014 on a tiny budget with just one employee, Jacques himself.

Listen in to hear the story of Fitzcarraldo - named after a film that celebrates a seemingly impossible endeavour - and how in only his second-ever Frankfurt book fair Jacques found himself negotiating a 12-way bidding war for the English-language rights to Secondhand Time by Nobel winner Sveltlana Alexievich.

And, because it’s us, you’ll also get to hear about the books. What are our favourites? Which do we recommend? Why are so many of them sad? We’re joined by Sam MacAuslan, keen Fitzcarraldo reader, to uncover some gems from the list.

Like all good things, this episode has been a while in the making but with Fitzcarraldo recently celebrating publishing their 100th book it seemed the perfect time to release it out into the world, we hope you enjoy it, and feel inspired to try a Fitzcarraldo or two.

Books mentioned

Things I Don’t Want to Know Deborah Levy

Attention: A Short History by Joshua Cohen

Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures by Emannuel Carrère

Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich (Bela Shayevich)

Minor Detail by Adania Shibley (Elizabeth Jaquette)

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

Flights by Olga Tocarczuk (Jennifer Croft)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tocarczuk (Jennifer Croft)

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tocarczuk (Jennifer Croft)

Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tocarczuk (Antonia Lloyd Jones)

The Years by Annie Ernaux (Alison L. Strayer)

Exteriors by Annie Ernaux (Tanya Leslie)

Zone, Matthias Enard (Charlotte Mandell)

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (Sophie Hughes)

Paradise by Fernanda Melchor (Sophie Hughes)

The Netanyahus, Joshua Cohen

Septology, Jon Fosse (Damion Searls)

Notes

The film Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog

Deborah Levy interview in The White Review

New Directions in the US

Giramondo in Australia

As for us

Follow us on Instagram @BookClubReviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Find shownotes, transcript and comments forum over on our website https://thebookclubreview.co.uk and drop us a line, let us know your thoughts on this episode, or tell us about a Fitzcarraldo book you love. 

And if you’re not already do subscribe in your podcatcher of choice and never miss an episode. If you like what we do please help us out by rating and reviewing the show, which helps other listeners find us. Better yet please do share on your social channels, we're so happy to reach new ears and like with a good book recommendation, word-of-mouth is the best way. 

Join us as we discuss the 2020 Costa Book of the Year, The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey. ‘A fishy tale of doomed womanhood’, even Margaret Atwood got excited about it, tweeting ‘Not your standard mermaid. No comb and glass, no Lorelei hair. No catch and release…’ This unusual novel weaves together sex, misogny and race with love, music, magic and myth, plus it throws in a few spliffs, a virginal mermaid, a crooked cop, and a chorus of vindictive women. All that in one book? Yes, indeed. Did it make for a good book club book? Listen in to find out.

Our book recommendations were Indigo by Marina Warner, Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo, The Left-Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, Kitsch by Anthony Joseph, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar.

Want to keep up with us between episodes? Sign up for our newsletter, or follow us for daily book reviews and recommendations on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Don't miss our website thebookclubreview.co.uk for our episode archive and library of book reviews and articles. Do subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and never miss an episode. If you like what we do please take a moment to rate and review the show, which help other listeners find us.

Our latest interview is with Tyona Campbell, owner of Barnabees, a very special secondhand bookshop tucked away in the small Suffolk village of Westleton.

Tyona tells us about how her shop is in a small way a protest against the data-gathering online giants, why in her shop you don’t so much find the books as they find you, and why books benefit from being coddled and canoodled. She also has a couple of great recommendations for your next book club read.

•

Follow Barnabees on Instagram @barnabeesbooks, and if you want to visit in person the shop is located on the Yoxford Road in Westleton, IP17 2AF. It's open Thursday–Sunday 11am–5pm.

•

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow BCRP on Instagram or Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you like what we do please do take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to us on iTunes, it helps other listeners find us and means you’ll never miss an episode.

Normal People was named Waterstones book of the year, was longlisted for the 2018 Booker Prize and most recently won the Costa Novel Award. Sally Rooney’s editor at Faber & Faber dubbed her a ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’, while praise has been heaped on the book by the critics. But did it make for a good book club read? Is the hype justified? Listen in to find out.

Proustian mediatation on love and desire? Atmospheric beach read? What did Laura’s book club make of André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name? First published in 2007 and recently made into an Oscar-nominated film, the story follows 17-year-old Elio’s obsession with charismatic houseguest Oliver. But were we carried away by Aciman’s evocation of one long passionate summer? Or did it leave us only with a feeling we should start planning our July getaways now? Our interview is with Kay Dunbar, founder of the Ways With Words literary festivals, who lets us in on the secret to running a successful bookclub for over twenty years. And we finish with some great recommendations for your next book club read.

•

Find out more about Kay Dunbar’s Ways With Words festivals at www.wayswithwords.co.uk

•

Episode booklist: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Barracuda by Christos Tsioklas, Olivia by Dorothy Strachey and At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill. Kay Dunbar mentions Patrick Gale, whose most recent novel is A Place Called Winter. And if you keep listening you’ll hear our extra bit at the end where we get into Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay, Hot Milk by Deborah Levy and Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels.

•

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast. Email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, find us on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or leave us a comment on iTunes. If you like the show then click subscribe and never miss an episode. 

What do we read when not reading book club books? Listen in to find out. This episode, we report in on non-fiction sleeper-hit A Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks, Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agalusa (winner of Kate's favourite prize, the Dublin International Literary Award), and read-of-the-moment Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. 

This episode features a rare falling out between Kate and her book club over Margaret Atwood's latest novel, Hag-Seed, while Laura's book club appreciate the captivating travel memoir Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Bulgarian emigrée Kapka Kassabova. We also chat with Michael Waldman, a documentary film-maker who tells us about a book so good it made a long journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway pass in a moment. And finally, as always, a few recommendations to help you decide your next book club read.

•

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod or leave us a comment on iTunes, we'd love to hear from you. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

•

Books mentioned in this episode: The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood, Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernières, From the Holy Mountain, William Dalrymple, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood, Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

•

For our next book club we will be reading and discussing The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon

It's part 2 of our end-of-year special, in which we look back over the books we read outside of book club, the ones we chose for ourselves, and pick out our favourites. And so listen in for more book recommendations than you can shake a stick a, plus recommendations from our book clubs and friends of the pod. We also look ahead to some new releases coming out in 2022.

Booklist

Kate's top three favourites from 2021

Don't Touch My Hair, Emma Dabiri

A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann ní Ghrí­ofa

Lean, Fall, Stand, Jon McGregor

Laura's top three favourites from 2021

A Life's Work, Rachel Cusk

Miss Iceland, Audur Ava Olafsdottir

Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese

Kate's longlist of favourite reads in 2021

The Moth and the Mountain, Ed Caesar

Writers and Lovers and Euphoria Lily King

Real Estate, Deborah Levy

The Library Book and The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean

All My Friends are Superheroes, Andrew Kaufman

Owls of the Eastern Ice, Jonathan C. Slaght

Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

Don't Touch My Hair, Emma Dabiri

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

Parisan Lives, Deidre Bair

Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

Early Morning Riser, Katherine Heiny

Love Letters, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (Alison Bechdel, ed.)

A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann ni Ghriofa

Re-Educated, Lucy Kellaway

Pew, Catherine Lacey

Happy All the Time, Laurie Colwin

Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri

Sorrow and Bliss, Meg Mason

Lean, Fall, Stand, Jon McGregor

Assembly, Natasha Brown

The Stranding, Kate Sawyer

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers

Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden-Keefe

Matrix, Lauren Groff

The See-Through House, Shelley Klein

Laura's longlist of favourite reads in 2021

His Only Wife, Peace Adzo Medie

Miss Iceland, Hotel Silence and Butterflies in November, Audur Ava Olafsdottir

Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar

No-One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood

Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

D: A Tale of Two Worlds, Michael Faber

Graceling, Kristin Cashore

A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

The Annals of the Western Shore, Ursula Le Guin

The Book of Hidden Things, Francesco Dimitri

Frederica, Georgette Heyer

Conundrum, Jan Morris

A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes

The Rules of Civility, Amor Towles

Chrissy Ryan's recommendations

Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson

Assembly, Natasha Brown

Detransition Baby, Torrey Peters

Elizabeth Morris' recommendations

Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

Book club recommendations

The Summer Book, Tove Jansson

The Mermaid of Black Conch, Monique Roffey

Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë

A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell

The Siege of Krishnapur, J. G. Farrell

The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst

Isaac Steele and the Forever Man, Daniel Rigby

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Albert and the Whale, Philip Hoare

Trieste or the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris

The Bass Rock, Evie Wyld

Autumn, Ali Smith

The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan

The Offing, Benjamin Myers

Circe, Madeleine Miller

Three Women, Lisa Taddeo

My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Upcoming books in 2022

We also discussed our inordinate desire for The Doors of Stone by Patrick Rothfuss to finally be published, and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Notes

Full details of all the titles discussed in this episode can be found in the shownotes on our website thebookclubreview.co.uk. 

Do keep up with us between episodes on Instagram and Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. We always love to hear from you.

Patreon

Want more from your favourite podcast? Want to support the person who makes it? Come and join Kate at Patreon.com/thebookclubreview where for a small monthly fee you'll receive benefits such as a weekly books dispatch, which you can read or listen to as a pod, occasional special episodes, and at the higher tier you can join our monthly book club for live discussions with Kate over Zoom. 

For the love of a good lamp: 

Visit seriousreaders.com/BCR for our special offer on any HD light – use the code BCR at checkout and if you're in the UK you can also benefit from free shipping. You get a month to try out the lights to decide if they're for you, if not you can return them. We seriously love them, and think you will too.

It’s here. After weeks of reading, tons of post-it notes and a WhatsApp group busy with thoughts flying back and forth we proudly present our 2021 Women’s Prize episode. We’re joined by returning podcast guests Elizabeth Morris and Sarah Oliver to review all six shortlisted titles. This is book club so expect the full range of opinions, find out what we loved, and what we didn’t, but we’ve also worked hard to keep the spoilers away so you can enjoy the show and still enjoy the books. Which are your favourites? Listen in and see if you agree with us as we attempt to pick a winner.

Booklist

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

How the One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

No-One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

Don’t miss Crib Notes, the newsletter by Elizabeth Morris for new and busy mothers – an essential monthly run-down of the very best books from the practical to the poetic. She includes just the right information about each, and offers different suggestions according to whether you want something to sink into, or you only have time to scroll.

Follow us between episodes on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Were you jumping up and down with thoughts on any of the books we discussed today? Drop us a line and let us know, we always love to hear from you. And don’t miss our website, thebookclubreview.co.uk for our full archive of shows and to sign up to our weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and is full of reading inspiration for the week ahead.

Our bookshelf episodes are the ones where we get to let our hair down and talk about the things we're reading outside of our book clubs, the books that we get to pick and choose. So listen in as Kate is bewitched by the new Susanna Clarke novel Piranesi, charmed by Shirley Jackson's memoir of raising her children in Life Among the Savages, and has a guilty confession to make about To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek. In Laura's stack are supernatural thriller Himself by Jess Kidd, Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb and The Observations by Jane Harris. Not to mention some guilty pleasure reading of Georgette Heyer and Alison Croggon's fantasy series of Pellinor novels. It's a packed episode, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it.

For detailed notes on this episode, and over 70 other episodes of book club discussions, interviews and features you can find us at our new website: www.thebookclubreview.co.uk. Drop us a line there and say hello, we'd love to hear from you. Tell us what books are keeping you turning the pages right now?

If you've ever dreamed of switching everything off and being able to read for hours, then this is the show for you. Reading Retreats run holidays where people can rediscover their love of uninterrupted reading but what is the experience really like? Your intrepid reporter from The Book Club Review went along to Matlock in Derbyshire with a stack from the TBR pile to find out.

•

To find out more about Reading Retreats check out their website www.readingretreat.co.uk, or find them on facebook and twitter @retreatandread.

•

Books mentioned on this show were: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey; in Annie's stack were A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab, Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by Aisha Malik, Rosewater by Tade Thompson, Belonging by Umi Sinha and Among Others by Jo Walton; in Sheila's stack were The Only Story by Julian Barnes, Revenge on the Rye by Alice Castle, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan and Broken Ground by Val McDermid and A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert; Sarah Ward recommended The Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurdardottir and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters; and in my stack were Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, There There by Tommy Orange, Bad Blood by Jon Carreyrou and Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday.

•

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Can a sci-fi novel make for a good book club book? We find out with The Left-Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. Did Laura's book club, mostly sci-fi newbies, like it or loathe it?

From fantasy dystopia to the real world, we also tackle Second-Hand Time, Svetlana Alexievich's history of life in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. It's an emotionally challenging read on a difficult subject. But did Kate's book club think it worth the effort? Listen in to find out.

We also interview 88-year old Anne Thompson about her favourite literary discoveries thanks to her book club.

Books mentioned on this episode:

• The City and the City by China Mieville
• Kil'n People by David Brin
• The Complete Broken Empire Trilogy: Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
• Hyperion by Dan Simmons
• The Earthsea Quartet: Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atman, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu by Ursula Le Guin
• Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich

From no formal education before the age of seventeen to a PhD from Cambridge ten years later, Tara Westover’s transformation is the stuff of Hollywood. And that’s before you learn about the violence and brainwashing that tainted her upbringing within her Mormon survivalist family. Westover's 'remarkable memoir' made Barack Obama's summer reading list. But what did Laura's book club make of it? Listen in to find out. Plus we interview a book club who meet in the convivial surroundings of a seaside bakery. And we finish with some great recommendations for your next book club read.

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or leave us a comment on iTunes. Get in touch – we’d love to hear from you. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Books mentioned in this episode: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance, When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant, A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Crudo by Olivia Laing and The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson.

For our next book club we will be reading and discussing The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit.

The Happy Reader special: a celebration of Penguin's magazine that thinks it's a book club, and a live book club discussion of their Winter Book of the Season, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. We interview editor Seb Emina who tells us the secrets of how the magazine is put together, and has some great ideas for how to get through the TBR pile including 'speed-dating for books', the perfect suggestion for the enthusiastic but time-poor reader. And we finish with our usual round of recommendations you might like to try for your next book club read.

•

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod or Twitter @BookClubRvwpod, or leave us a comment on iTunes, we'd love to hear from you, and do subscribe if you like the show and be among the first to hear a new episode.

•

The Happy Reader magazine is produced biannually and can be found in good bookshops worldwide, or seek them out online at thehappyreader.com. Burley Fisher books are at 400 Kingsland Road, London E8, or online at burleyfisherbooks.com

•

Books mentioned in this episode: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1984 by George Orwell, Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, plus in our extra bit at the end we discuss Birds, Art, Life, Death by Kyo Maclear and Swing Time by Zadie Smith.

•

For our next book club we will be reading and discussing Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles and A Horse Walks Into A Bar by David Grossman.

•

And if you're still reading then you might be the kind of person who will want to stay tuned for our extra bit at the end where we discuss what we've been reading and find out how Happy Reader editor Seb Emina gets through the piles of books he fears he won't have time to read in his lifetime.

In this special episode, originally released for our Patreon subscribers, Kate celebrates the joys of the perfect notebook with fellow enthusiast and stationery shop owner David Frostick (Lift, Southwold). From the importance of flat-lay paper to the perfect pen we've got it all covered just in time for back-to-school season.

And then we turn to the art of notetaking. Kate and Laura discuss how they take notes on the books they're discussing on the show, and then we find out how the professionals do it, with friends of the pod, journalist Phil Chaffee and literary critic Emily Rhodes. We also hear from Bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud whose book, The Art of Mindful Reading, is full of great suggestions for how to get the most from your reading. 

If this whets your appetite come and join us at Patreon.com/thebookclubreview where for a small monthly fee (or you can sign up for annual membership if you prefer) you'll receive benefits such as Kate's weekly books email, occasional special episodes, and at the higher tier you can join our monthly book club for live discussions with Kate over Zoom. If you love the pod your support is helpng Kate make the shows, which means a lot, so thank you for considering it.

Discover David's store LIFT here.

For other things referenced in this episode here's an index to products with links.

For the love of a good lamp: 

Visit seriousreaders.com/BCR for our special offer on any HD light – use the code BCR at checkout and if you're in the UK you can also benefit from free shipping. You get a month to try out the lights to decide if they're for you, if not you can return them. We seriously love them, and think you will too.

We're joined by regular pod-listener Youssra, who gave us her insight into how the book has been received in her native Morocco.

And we've got our usual round of book recommendations to help you find your next great read.

Book recommendations

Une année chez les français by Foud Laroui

The Moor’s Account by Leila Lalami

This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun

All Men Want to Know by Nina Bouraoui

Year of the Elephant by Leila Abouzeid 

Notes

Have you read the book? Have an opinion on the show? Head to our episode page for full shownotes and episode transcript, and let us know your thoughts in the comments. They go straight to our inbox so we will respond – let's keep the discussion going.

https://www.thebookclubreview.co.uk/portfolio/items/the-country-of-others/

Follow us on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast

On Twitter @bookclubrvwpod

Next episode: Join us as we deep dive into the world of Fitzcarraldo with Jacques Testard, publisher of elegant blue and white books that keep winning awards. If you're looking to find books that will challenge you and broaden your horizons, don't miss it. 

The Inseparables is a novel that was never published in Simone de Beauvoir's lifetime. The story goes she showed it to Jean-Paul Sartre and he held his nose. It tells of the intense childhood friendship between Sylvie and Andrée, who were Beauvoir's fictional models for herself and her real-life friend Zaza Lacoin. The translation is by Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse, and the book comes with an introduction by Deborah Levy, and an afterword by Sylvie le bon de Beauvoir, plus a captivating selection of letters and photographs from the Beauvoir archive.

For this episode Kate was joined by Australian books podcaster Anna Baillie-Karas, in town taking short break from her own podcast Books on the Go. The perfect excuse, then, to read and discuss this powerful short book. But what did we make of it? Should you add it to your reading pile? And would it be a good one for book club? Listen in and find out.

Unusually for us this episode does contain spoilers, so if you don't know anything about Simone de Beauvoir and want to read this without any foreknowledge bookmark this show for later and come back to it when you've read the book.

We also have four book recommendations inspired by The Inseparables we think you will love.

BOOKLIST

Petronille by Amélie Northomb, translated by Amelia Anderson

At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell

Last Summer in the City by Gianfrarnco Calligarich, translated by Howard Curtis

Parisian Lives by Deidre Bair

NOTES

Don't miss the episode page on our website for full shownotes, a transcript and comments forum where you can let us know your thoughts on the episode or recommend us a book. Comments there go straight to our inboxes and we will read and respond so do drop us a line, we love to hear from you.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com

Listen to Lauren Elkin and Deborah Levy discuss The Inseparables for the London Review of Books

Listen to the Literary Friction podcast episode Kate mentioned, with Lauren Elkin

Olga Tokarczuk's haunting 'health resort horror story' may have wow-ed the critics, but how did it fare with Laura's book club? Phil, Sarah and Laura join Kate to discuss it. You'll also find out the books we've been reading lately, and our suggestions for follow-on reads if The Empusium leaves you hankering for more.

Books mentioned

The Sewing Girl’s Tale by John Wood Sweet

Two Step Devil by Jamie Quattro

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Strange Beach by Oluwaseum Olayiwola

The Fizcarraldo poetry subscription

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk

Sanatorium by W. Somerset Maugham

The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft

The Paper Hound bookshop

The Plague and I by Betty Macdonald

Backlisted episode #138

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Schwärmerai

NOTES

Support the show and get exclusive subscriber benefits

On Patreon: weekly-ish minisodes, chat groups, special feature episodes, War & Peace readalong, and at the higher tier join the monthly book club

Or via Substack: weekly-ish minsodes and special feature episodes

Booklist

4,000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman

No Touching by Ketty Rouf

The Magician by Colm Toíbín

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Laura also mentioned Savage Tongues by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Little by Edward Carey and Secrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza Reid.

Get in touch with us and tell us what you’re reading or recommend us a book on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Find our full episode archive at thebookclubreview.co.uk and don't forget to like, subscribe, tell a friend, share on social media – it helps us reach new listeners and we really do appreciate it :)

A special episode this week as we’re joined by comedian, actor and author Rob Delaney to talk about his book A Heart That Works. As so often with books that pack a powerful emotional punch this deals with a difficult subject as Rob tells the story of the death of his young son Henry, and considers his own journey through the grieving process. It’s also a deeply moving, funny, thought-provoking and altogether wonderful read. Listen in as Rob and Kate share their stories, which to forewarn you, touch on the topics of death, still-birth and suicide, as well as joy and love and the importance of books as places of emotional refuge, sources of wisdom and pleasure.

Booklist

A Heart that Works by Rob Delaney

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Lucia Berlin, try A Manual for Cleaning Women

One, Two, Three, Four by Craig Brown

Also mentioned

Thunder Road by Jim Cummings

The Beatles: Get Back

Notes

The Rainbow Trust

Noah’s Ark Hospice

Rob Delaney’s website

Have thoughts on this episode? Whenever you listen you can always leave us a comment over at the episode page on our website, where you’ll also find a transcript and full show notes. You can also sign up to our bi-weekly-ish newsletter for book recommendations and what we’re reading between episodes.

You can also find us on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast and Twitter @bookclubrvwpod

We love books, we love book clubs, and so we created a show dedicated to both. We review the books read most recently by our own book clubs. We interview people about their book clubs to get tips and tricks. And finally we pull together great recommendations to make your next book club book your best yet.

Join us as professional book-recommender and Bibliotherapy queen Ella Berthoud helps us figure out how to overcome life’s essential problems (if you’re a reader, that is), namely how to cope with all the books there are in the world, what to do when you feel stuck in a reading rut, and the ultimate question, if you’ve started a book you’re not enjoying, should you finish it?

We’re also diving into Ella’s latest project, Fiction Prescriptions, a pack of cards with reading recommendations to soothe your soul and offer a cure for modern life, from Ageing through to Boredom via Hangovers and Procrastination. 

Booklist

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

The Last Passenger by Will Dean

Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce

The Dream Job by Kiersten Modglin

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

The Overstory by Richard Powers

And if you want more from the source do seek out The Novel Cure, co-written with Susan Elderkin, and Ella’s own books The Art of Mindful Reading, and Fiction Prescriptions.

If you want to find out more about Ella’s bibliotherapy sessions or any other aspect of her work the link to her website, Ellaberthoud.com, is in the show notes.

About us

We hope you enjoyed this episode. For our full archive of nearly 150 shows, plus how to sign up to our bi-weekly-ish newsletter and how to support us on Patreon head over to our website, www.thebookclubreview.co.uk, where you'll also find full show notes for this episode and a transcript.

Leave us a rating

If you enjoy our shows and want to do a nice thing in return please do leave us a quick star rating and review. Wondering how to do that? From apple podcasts click the '...' next to the episode title (under the square graphic) and choose 'go to show'. From there scroll down past the episodes till you find 'Ratings & Reviews'. Tap the stars to add a star rating, tap 'write a review' slightly further down to add a comment. Thank you!

Connect with us 

Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast

Newsletter sign-up: https://substack.com/@thebookclubreview

Patreon: Details coming soon…

We discuss The Memory Police, a haunting dystopian novel that explores questions of power, trauma and state surveillance written by Yoko Ogawa, one of Japan's leading contemporary novelists.

Set on an unnamed island, the narrator of The Memory Police describes how every so often something in the inhabitants' lives will disappear. Birds, roses, books, one by one these things vanish overnight and the next day people wake up to find they have lost the memory of them. The Memory Police then arrive to enforce the disappearance, rounding up and destroying all evidence of the disappeared thing. They are also on the hunt for those few members of the population who have the ability to retain their memories, something hard to disguise. These people too must disappear, but what happens to them? The narrator tries to save her friend, R, by hiding him in a concealed room. But as more and more things disappear it starts to become unclear what she is saving him for.

An uncomfortable read that provoked mixed feelings among Laura's book group, but which, on reflection, we think could have been one of the best book club books we have ever done. Listen in to hear more, why Yoko Ogawa is the Georgette Heyer of Japan, and how Laura is about to become a disappeared thing herself. Plus our recommendations for your next book club read.

Books mentioned on the show: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Never Let Me Go and The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and The Happy Reader magazine.

Find full show notes, plus our archive of over 80 episodes, book reviews and articles on our new website:  thebookclubreview.co.uk

Curious about the 2024 Booker Prize? Wondering if the shortlisted novels live up to the hype? In this latest episode Kate and Laura are joined by returning guests Phil, Sarah and Martin to dive deep into this year's shortlist bringing you their usual frank, honest opinions in true book-club style. 

This isn’t your typical review show — you get real, unfiltered thoughts from book lovers who tell it like it is. From literary brilliance to unexpected twists, find out which books wowed us, which ones left us wanting more, and whether this year’s Booker picks truly deserve the spotlight. Plus of course our guesses as to which one might win.

Notes

Check out Martin's brilliant blog Eyes on the Prize for a fantastic look back through Booker Winners past, including his 'worst to best' ranking.

Other books mentioned

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

The Trees by Percival Everett

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

My Friends by Hisham Matar

Subscribe

Want more from The Book Club Review? Want to help support it financially? Come and join Kate at Patreon.com/thebookclubreview where for a small monthly fee you'll receive benefits such as a weekly books minisode, occasional special episodes of the podcast made just for Patreons, and at the higher tier you can join our monthly book club for live discussions with Kate over Zoom. If you’re a Substacker you’ll also find extra content from The Book Club Review there – check thebookclubreview.co.uk/bookspodcast/subscribe for more details.

For the love of a good lamp: 

Visit seriousreaders.com/BCR for our special offer on any HD light – use the code BCR at checkout and if you're in the UK you can also benefit from free shipping. You get a month to try out the lights to decide if they're for you, if not you can return them. We seriously love them, and think you will too.

"Ashto" and "Jonesy" are two Australians who devour books on everything from self-improvement to business and marketing for their weekly podcast, What You Will Learn. They’ve recently launched their own book, The Sh*t They Never Taught You. They joined Kate to discuss what books have taught them, and provide her with some personal bibliotherapy to kick her out of her counter-productive ways. Listen in to find out what you can learn.

Looking for something a little off the beaten path for your reading pile? Join us as we discuss Like A Sword Wound by renowned Turkish writer Ahmet Altan. It's the first volume in a quartet and traces not only the social currents of the final years of the Ottoman Empire but also the erotic and emotional lives of its characters. Like A Sword Wound has been described as the Turkish War & Peace. Did Laura's book club agree? We're joined by journalist Philippe Chaffee to discuss it.

Like A Sword Wound is translated by Brendan Freely and Yelda Türedi

Book recommendations

The Passenger magazine on Turkey

Beyond the Walls by Nazim Hikmet

My Name is Red and The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

Laurence in Arabia by Scott Anderson

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

We also mentioned authors Elif Batuman and Elif Shafak.

For full show notes go to www.thebookclubreview.co.uk where you can also sign up to our bi-weekly newsletter, which has reviews, links and plenty of bookish inspiration to keep you going between episodes.

Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or drop us a line at thebookclubreview@gmail.com.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what we do please do take a moment to rate and review the show, it helps other listeners find us.

Join me (Kate) and Laura as we go through our bookstacks and discuss our recent reads. Find out what why Laura can’t put down The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Meanwhile I’ve discovered Mrs Miniver, a comfort read from the 1930s that still has a message for us today, Laura’s made a discovery of her own – that there’s more to Anita Brookner than Hotel du Lac, with her 1988 novel The Latecomers. We go from one good book club read to another with The Fraud by Zadie Smith, and Laura reports in from the recent backlist past with How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang. I take a detour through a ring of enchanted toadstools with Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, and Laura confesses to having spent a weekend lost in the pages of Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. She's only interested in the dragons, mind.

Books mentioned

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther

The Latecomers by Anita Brookner

The Fraud by Zadie Smith (UK paperback out in June)

How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

UK listeners can find all the books listed above at our Bookshop.org.uk bookshop, if you purchase them there you'll be supporting independent bookshops and your favourite indie podcasters.

Find out all the details of what we're offering on our Patreon here, including a weekly book recmomendations newsletter from Kate, occasional extra bits and bobs plus access to our pod book spreadsheets, and at the higher tier you can join our bookclub and talk books with Kate in person once a month.

And come and find Kate on Instagram or Threads, or drop us a line at thebookclubreview@gmail.com and let us know your thoughts on the books discussed here anytime.

A special episode with historian, academic, documentary maker, journalist, cultural polymath and keen fiction reader Simon Schama. Listen in to find out what sends him to sleep happy, how his reading informs his writing, his favourite bookstores, his views on the pleasure of imperfect books, and best of all a ton of book suggestions and a brilliant book club recommendation just for us.

Books by Simon Schama include:

• Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
• Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
• The Embarrassment Of Riches: An Interpretation Of Dutch Culture In The Golden Age
• Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900

Books mentioned on this episode:

• War and Peace, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
• A Sentimental Education Flaubert
• In the First Circle by  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
• The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa
• Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
• The General and His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez
• Memoirs of Hadrian and That Mighty Sculptor, Time by Marguerite Yourcenar
• 'Don't Look Now' and  'The Birds' Daphne du Maurier
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
• The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books by Edward Wilson-Lee

A magazine that has always been dear to our hearts is Penguin's Happy Reader, an occasional publication that takes inspiration from the idea of a book club. In the early days of the podcast we were delighted to interview its editor Seb Emina. To celebrate the launch of The Happy Reader's latest edition we're releasing that interview again. From the thinking that goes into every issue, from treasure hunts to the perfect way to drink your tea, from book recommendations to unusual ideas for book club meet ups, this episode has it all. 

Booklist

So many books are mentioned in passing in this episode, but in particular Seb talks about 

The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (and listen in to episode 9 of the pod for our full book club discussion on that one)

Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard

You can find out more about The Happy Reader, buy the latest issue or subscribe at their website thehappyreader.com. You can also sign up to their newsletter, Happy Readings, where once a month you’ll get a little dose of Happy Readerness in your inbox. Seb is on Instagram and Twitter @sebemina

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Don’t miss our website, thebookclubreview.co.uk, where you can find our archive of almost 100 shows to browse through and sign up for our weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays, and it full of reading inspiration for your week ahead.

Join Kate in the historic market town of St. Albans, home to a cathedral, some impressive Roman ruins and one of Kate's favourite independent bookshops. Books on the Hill is owned and run by a mother and daughter duo who launched it just before the pandemic. Listen in and find out what makes it so special, their book club recommendations and discover Kate and Antonia's choices as they each pick three books from the shelves, from new releases to classic gems.

Books mentioned:

The Wild Places by Robert McFarlane

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Femina by Gina Ramirez

The Scent of Flowers at Night by Leila Slïmani

Ross Poldark by Winston Graham

Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey

The Joy of Small Things by Hannah Jane Parkinson

Why Women Grow by Alice Vincent

Find Books on the Hill at https://www.books-on-the-hill.co.uk

We cross the Atlantic to catch up with Claire Handscombe, presenter and producer of BritLit, a fortnightly podcast that tracks what's going on in the British publishing world.

We talk about Claire's novel Unscripted, which she highly recommends as a beach read, whether you're able to go to an actual beach or just have to make do with a deckchair in your garden.

Claire also gives us a shelf's worth of great book recommendations, plus some top tips for anyone thinking of making a books podcast of their own. 

•

Books mentioned in this episode: 

Unscripted by Claire Handscombe

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Little Fires Everywhere by Celest Ng

The Roxy Letters by Mary Pauline Lowry

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Rules for Being a Girl by Candice Bushnell and Katy Cotugno

What You Wish For by Katherine Center

Head over Heels by Hannah Orenstein

The Book of Hidden Wonders by Polly Crosby

•

For more details on Claire, check out her website Britlitblog.com. We also love her Twitter feed @britlitpodcast, which is regularly updated with great links from the book world.

For any Wingnuts out there who might be listening, you can also check out Claire's book Walk With Us: How the West Wing Changed Our Lives.

•

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Do subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and take a moment to rate and  review us, it helps other listeners find us and means you’ll never miss an episode. Plus we love to hear from you.

Wondering what books 2022 has in store for you? What will be your next great read? We're joined by industry insiders Chrissy Ryan, of dream bookshop Bookbar, and Elizabeth Morris of the Crib Notes newsletter to talk what's hot and what to look forward to. We've got your #tbr future-proofed.

Book list: 

Beautiful World Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades

The Heavens and The Men by Sandra Newman

A Little Life and To Paradise by Hanya Yanigahara

Violets by Alex Hyde

Love, Marriage by Monica Ali

House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas

Lapvona by Otessa Moshfegh

Free Love by Tessa Hadley

Salt Slow and Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

Wahala by Nikki May

Check out the episode page on our The Book Club Review website for more.

If you like this show please take a moment to rate and review, it really helps us reach new listeners. Tell your friends, share on social media, it means so much to us when you do.

Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com.

When in Vancouver, run to the coolest bookstore you can find and interview the owner. Such is the busman's holiday I've recently been enjoying on a visit to Laura's hometown. It also fits nicely into a new series we've been cooking up where we get to indulge our love of independent bookshops. First up is The Paperhound, owned by Kim Koch and Rod Clarke, which offers a fine selection of used and rare, new and notable books. Join me as I chat to Kim and learn about the joys of book collecting and the time she found a signed first edition of Borges' Ficciones in a box of books left on the street. We'll be pulling out some treasures from her shelves and chatting about life in the strange and wonderful world of used-books.

Book list

A Little Book of Pussy Cats by Louis Wain

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

Aphrodisiacs in your Garden by Charles Connell

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit

The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns

Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

The Paperhound

For full shownotes and episode transcript head to our website: The Book Club Review podcast

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or get in touch at thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you enjoy our shows one other way to support us, as ever, is to tell your bookish friends and help us find new listeners.

If you've been wondering whether or not to tackle the work of Nobel-prizewinner Annie Ernaux, and in partiular The Years, generally considered to be definitive, listen in and find out what Laura's book club thought (you might be surprised).

We're also generally delighted by how interesting the life of 17th-century poet John Donne is in the hands of Katherine Rundell, and her Baillie-Gifford prizewinner Super-Infinite. But were Kate's book club unanimous in their praise?

Discover more great reads as we delve into our recent reading piles. Find out the hits and misses, plus the books we've got on the go right now.

Booklist

The Years by Annie Ernaux

Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell

The Banished Immortal by Ha Jin

Grey Bees by Andrei Kurkov

Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb (and we also mentioned the film Turn Every Page)

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Watch us Dance by Leila Slimani (and we also mentioned her other books Lullaby or The Perfect Nanny, and The Country of Others)

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (and we also mentioned her previous book The Luminaries)

Monsters by Claire Dederer

The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tocarczuk

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor

Leave us a rating

If you enjoy our shows and want to do a nice thing in return please do leave us a quick star rating and review. Wondering how to do that? From apple podcasts click the '...' next to the episode title (under the square graphic) and choose 'go to show'. From there scroll down past the episodes till you find 'Ratings & Reviews'. Tap the stars to add a star rating, tap 'write a review' slightly further down to add a comment. Thank you!

Notes 

Website: https://www.thebookclubreview.co.uk

Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast

Kate's Threads reading log: @bookclubreviewpodcast@threads.net

Newsletter sign-up: https://substack.com/@thebookclubreview

Patreon and book club: We're cooking up a pod bookclub, launching September, as part of our Patreon account. You'll be supporting our show, and once a month on Sunday nights (UK time) you'll also be able to join Kate for an online book-club, to be held over zoom. We'll put all the details on our Patreon soon, and hope you'll sign up as we can't wait to talk books in person.

In this episode Kate makes a serious confession, and we try to figure out if The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon is set in an avenue or a cul-de-sac. We also tackle the more important question of whether it made a good book club book. In our interview Kate is put through her paces on a windy Hampstead Heath chatting to Emily Rhodes about her Walking Book Club. We end with some recommendations for your next book club read.

•

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod or leave us a comment on iTunes, we'd love to hear from you.

•

Books mentioned in this episode: The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson, West with the Night by Beryl Markham, All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West, The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee, Someone at a Distance, Dorothy Whipple, Beware of Pity, Stefan Zweig, Brodecks Report, Philippe Claudel, Westwood, Stella Gibbons, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, The View from the Harbour, Elizabeth Taylor, Hot Milk, Deborah Levy, Breakfast with the Nikolides, Rumer Godden, The Summer Book, Tove Jansson

•

We recommend any branch of the Daunt bookshops, which can be found in Hampstead, Cheapside, Chelsea, Holland Park and Belsize Park.

•

For our next book club we will be reading and discussing The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine.

Salman Rushdie's most recent novel Victory City was published in February 2023 to much critical acclaim but, as ever here at the Book Club Review, we’re interested in what Laura’s book club made of it. Our friend and pod regular, journalist Philip Chaffee is here to report back, along with first-time guest, avid reader and keen book clubber Charlie Chichester. Listen in for our full and frank discussion, plus our recommendations for follow on reads, and the books we've currently got on the go.

Book list

Baudolino by Umberto Eco

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

How Westminster Works and Why it Doesn’t by Ian Dunt

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Revolutionary Spring by Christopher Clark

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley

Enjoyed the show? Want to express your thanks? Here's how:

From apple podcasts click the '...' next to the episode title (under the square graphic) and choose 'go to show'. From there scroll down past the episodes till you find 'Ratings & Reviews'. Tap the stars to add a star rating, tap 'write a review' slightly further down to add a comment. Thank you!

It’s a slight volume, but packs a powerful punch. Each of its short essays was smuggled out of the prison where Altan serves – and continues to serve – a life sentence.

The book has been championed by author, international human rights lawyer and general real-life Mark Darcy figure Philippe Sands, while writer A. L. Kennedy said ‘Read this – it will explain why you ever read anything, why anyone ever writes.’ But what did Kate’s book club make of it?

Listen in to find out. Plus our usual range of recommendations for your next book club read.

•

Books mentioned on this episode:

• A Strangeness in my Mind by Orhan Pamuk
• A Day in the Life of Yvan Denisovich by Alexander Solyenitzhn
• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
• Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

•

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're joined by author Phyllis Richardson to discuss Golden Hill, Francis Spufford's rollicking historical novel. It has plot full of more twists and turns than a slide at Centerparcs so we've split the episode into two; the first half is the safety zone where we won't spoil the plot for you, but if you have read it and want to dive deeper listen on for part two. Come back to us at the end for our recommendations and to hear more about Phyllis's wonderful book about authors and their houses, House of Fiction. 

•

Books mentioned: The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine (discussed in full detail in episode 6 of the pod), The Sealwoman's Gift by Sally Magnusson, The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey, Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.

•

House of Fiction by Phyllis Richardson is published by Unbound.

Six books, four readers and, as always, plenty of opinions. Join Kate, Laura and guests Sarah Oliver and Nina Davies as they dive into the 2023 Women's Prize shortlist. But will they be able to second-guess the judges? As ever, we talk about these books in some detail but we won't spoil the plots for you, so listen in if you want to hear more and find out all the reasons why these are six books you won't want to miss.

UPDATE: Keep listening at the end for our reaction after hearing the winner's announcement.

Booklist

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber & Faber)

Pod by Laline Paull (Corsair / Little Brown)

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury)

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (Duckworth)

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks (Jonathan Cape / Penguin)

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell (Tinder Press / Hachette)

The Women's Prize website

The prize is announced on 14th June 2023

Leave us a rating

If you enjoy our shows and want to do a nice thing in return please do leave us a quick star rating and review. Wondering how to do that? From apple podcasts click the '...' next to the episode title (under the square graphic) and choose 'go to show'. From there scroll down past the episodes till you find 'Ratings & Reviews'. Tap the stars to add a star rating, tap 'write a review' slightly further down to add a comment. Thank you!

Notes 

Website: https://www.thebookclubreview.co.uk

Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast

Newsletter sign-up: https://substack.com/@thebookclubreview

Patreon: Details coming soon…

It’s Bookshelf time here at The Book Club Review podcast, when we talk about the books we’re reading outside of book club, the ones we get to pick and choose for ourselves. And so listen in to find out what Laura thought of The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd, a lesser-known backlist gem, A Place of Greater Safety, Booker-winner Hilary Mantel’s immersive doorstop about the French revolution, and The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison’s blend of court intrigue, goblins and steampunk. Meanwhile I’m reporting back on Babel by R.F. Kuang, the bestselling fantasy epic set in 19th-century England, Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller, and Either / Or by Elif Batuman, the follow-on from her first novel The Idiot. It’s the continuing adventures of her protagonist, Harvard student Selin, and has been described as ‘a second year of love, sex, and books’.

Whenever you listen to this episode if you have thoughts on it we’d love to hear them. Comment anytime on the episode page on our website thebookclubreview.co.uk, where you’ll also find full shownotes, book recommendations and a transcript. Comments there go straight to our inboxes so drop us a line, we’d love to hear from you. You can also sign up for our bi-weekly-ish newsletter for extra reviews and recommendations.

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or get in touch at thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you’re not already do subscribe to us and take a moment to rate and review the show in your podcatcher of choice – it helps other listeners to find us and is a great way to support us.

Feeling quizzical? Missing your favourite festive pub quiz? Compete along with us as Gary Wigglesworth, author of 'The Book Lover’s Quiz Book', puts us through our literary paces in another seasonal special. Will you beat us? 

For detailed show notes and links to all the podcasts we’ve mentioned today, visit our website thebookclubreview.co.uk. In the UK and Australia, you can order a copy of The Book Lover’s Quiz Book online from your favourite local bookshop, or on bookshop.org. And it’s currently available in Canada and the US as an e-book.

You can find out more about Gary and his quizzes at gpwigglesworth.co.uk, including his ready-made answer sheet to print out and use. And you can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @gpwigglesworth.

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what we do please do take a moment to rate and review the show, we hugely appreciate it and it helps other listeners find us.

In real life, Bill Clinton asked Hillary Rodham to marry him three times before she finally said yes. The rest is history. But in Sittenfeld’s alternative world, Hillary says no, and their lives diverge from there. Hillary is alone and heartbroken, but she’s also free to pursue her own political ambitions – and free from the humiliating sexual scandals that will plague Bill’s political career. 

Sittenfeld deftly mines the ‘What if?” possibilities of her premise, but does the novel live up to the hype? Or is it just literary fan fiction? An exercise in wishful thinking? 

Journalist Phil Chaffee joins us to give Rodham the full book club treatment. It’s a no holds barred discussion as we try to figure out whether the novel is an ingenious yet plausible glimpse of an alternative reality, or just a writer capitalising on a famous name. 

What is your book club reading next?

At the end of the show, keep listening for our follow-on recommendations, all inspired by Rodham. In this episode, that includes:

• American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
• ‘Up, Simba’ from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace 
• Political Fictions by Joan Didion
• Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Other books mentioned in this episode:

• Prep, Sisterland and You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Our most demanding, but possibly also our favourite episode of the year as we're joined by Chrissy Ryan of Bookbar and journalist Phil Chaffee to discuss and debate this year’s six shortlisted books.

Although we might rail at this much required reading all in one go, the truth is we love tackling the Booker shortlist, which expands our horizons and stretches us as readers like nothing else. So listen in to find out which books we loved, which ones we wished we could have avoided, and which one we think should win the 2022 Booker Prize.

Booklist

The Trees by Percival Everett 

audiobook read by Bill Andrew Quinn (Tantor Audio)

Oh, William by Elizabeth Strout

Audiobook read by by Kimberly Farr (Penguin Audio)

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo 

Audiobook read by Chipo Chung (Penguin Audio)

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Audiobook read by Aiden Kelly (Faber audio)

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

Audiobook read by Robert Powell (Fourth Estate)

–– Other books mentioned were

Spoons Carpets: An Appreciation by Kit Caless 

Car Park Life by Gareth F. Rees

Erasure by Percival Everett

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Open Water by Caleb Azumah-Nelson

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Lanny by Max Porter

Follow us on instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast to keep up with us between episodes, or head to the episode page on our website thebookclubreview.co.uk for full show notes, transcript and comments forum - let us know your thoughts on the Booker shortlist and winner.

We've shaken the sand from our flip-flops and put our suitcases away. Now it's back to business as Kate and Laura catch up on their recent reads, everything from this year's Booker International Prize winner to a fantasy romp about teenage wizards.

Booklist

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

Mud and Stars by travel writer Sara Wheeler

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Re-Educated by Lucy Kellaway

We also discuss the property website themodernhouse.com

if you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes check out the website at www.thebookclubreview.co.uk, find us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Drop us a line and tell us what you’re reading, we always love to hear from you.

Next episode: Book club on Second Place by Rachel Cusk

What do you do when your small start-up book club is so popular that you quickly become overwhelmed with new members? For Eléonore Pratoussy of the Lesbian Book Club East London, it signalled a need for more lesbian book groups. Happily she has a plan to expand. Eléonore and fellow bookclubbers Caroline and Carina joined Kate in the studio to talk Angela Carter, Reni Eddo-Lodge, and a ton of great book recommendations in-between.

The Lesbian Book Club on meetup.com

Books mentioned on this episode:

• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
• The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
• Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Edo-Lodge
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• What Is Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

The New York Times called it a 'powerfully expansive novel' and it was shortlisted for the Booker, but what did Laura's book club make of 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' by Madeleine Thien? For our regular book club interview we get radical with London's Radical Reading Group and we finish as always with some fresh recommendations for your next book club read.

•


Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or leave us a comment on iTunes. Drop us a line – we’d love to hear from you. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

•

Books mentioned on this episode were 'The Concubine’s Children' by Denise Cheong, 'The Noise of Time' by Julian Barnes, 'The Rest is Noise' by Alex Ross, 'Ru' by Kim Thuy and 'Brother' by David Chariandy. Terri Jane of the Radical Reading Group talked about 'Close to the Knives' by David Wojnarowicz, 'Your Silence Will Not Protect You' by Audre Lorde and 'Too Much and Not in the Mood' by Durga Chew-Bose. To find out more about the Radical Reading group find them on facebook under Radical Reading London. And if you keep listening to our extra bit at the end we discuss 'Children of Blood and Bone' by Tomi Adeyemi, 'Bleaker House' by Nell Stevens and 'Cartes Postales' by Victoria Hislop.
•

Next up on The Book Club Review is A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark

Join us as we discuss The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a modern classic, 1989 Booker Prize winner and the author is also the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature but none of this led Laura to hold back, calling it 'dull' and incredibly slow reading. But, of course, hers is not the only voice, so listen in to find out what Kate thought, and what Laura's book club thought. We've also got some book recommendations for your next book club read.

Booklist

Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Amsterdam and On Chesil Beach by Ian McKewan

Staying On by Paul Scott.

If you enjoyed this show check out our website, www.thebookclubreview.co.uk where you can find our archive of shows to browse through. You can also explore our library of book reviews and articles. If you’d like to hear more from us sign up for our weekly newsletter which comes out on Sundays and is full of reviews and recommendations to top you up with bookish inspiration for the week ahead. Sign up via the shownotes, our website or at the link in our Instagram bio.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, and on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or why not get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com – we always love to hear from you.

And if you’re not already, why not subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and never miss an episode. If you like what we do please do take a moment to rate and review the show. It helps other listeners find us, so we really appreciate it.

Whether you're after fly-through-them page-turners or immersive long-reads, or perhaps you're after a challenge, or the perfect discussion book, we've got the list for you. Find out our expert picks from indie-bookshop Bookbar's Chrissy Ryan, a woman at the centre of a hub of reading recommendations from authors, customers and booksellers alike. Kate is swapping notes and sharing her own summer reading pile. Plus just to pack in even more book tips we've got a few extra recommendations from Chrissy's Bookbar team. And so sit back and let us give you books to inspire, inform, amuse and entertain as we see out the summer and anticipate our Autumn reads.

Booklist

The Guest by Emma Cline

Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang

The Centre, by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqui,

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson,

Time’s Shelter by Gyorgi Gospodinov,

Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan

How to Read Now and America is not the Heart by Elaine Castillo

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Tom Lake, and These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

Read This: Handpicked Favourites from America’s Indie Bookstores, compiled by Hans Weyandt (Coffee House Press)

Roman Stories and Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

Notes

Visit Bookbar online

The indie publishing mavericks shaking up the UK book world (The Guardian)

The Book Club Review's Fitzcarraldo episode

Join us for this 'bookshelf' episode as we discuss the books we've been reading outside of book club. In this episode Kate gets tied up in existential knots over House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas and we consider the parallels between this 800-page fantasy bonkbuster and War and Peace. We explore the idea of ‘reading offsetting’ whereby we balance our guilty pleasures with books more worthy of our time. We rediscover the Queen of Fantasy Ursula Le Guin and remember why we think her books are so amazing. Kate pronounces ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ by Emma Dabiri her new favourite book of the year. And we end with an excursion into Arctic landscapes and consider moving to Svaallbad where apparently you don’t need a visa! 

Books mentioned:

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

A Fall from Grace and Philippa Holds Court by Jennie Goutet

The Western Shore trilogy by Ursula L. Guin

Don’t Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie

A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter

Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler

Want to keep up with us between episodes? Sign up for our newsletter, or follow us for daily book reviews and recommendations on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. Don't miss our website thebookclubreview.co.uk for our episode archive and library of book reviews and articles. Do subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and never miss an episode. If you like what we do please take a moment to rate and review the show, which help other listeners find us.

The short story. Sad sister to the novel? Or pinnacle of the literary form? In this episode, Laura sets out to persuade Kate, self-professed short story sceptic, she’s got it all wrong. 

Since the Covid Crisis went global, Laura’s book club has been working their way through That Glimpse of Truth: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Written selected by the late literary agent David Miller. One short story, once a week, with a Zoom chat every Monday to discuss it. 

Listen in to hear the standout stories – and if Kate is convinced.

*

Books mentioned on this episode:

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munroe

The Tenth of December by George Saunders

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, which we discussed in detail on episode 63.

*

Laura’s book club read:

That Glimpse of Truth: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Written, selected by David Miller

Stories from the collection mentioned on the show:

‘Mr Know-All’ by W. Somerset Maugham

‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe

‘The Children Stay’ by Alice Munro

‘D’Accord Baby’ by Hanif Kureishi

*

Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReviewPodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. 

Subscribe to us and never miss an episode. And if you like what we do please take a moment to rate and review us! It helps other listeners find us.

Irish author Claire Keegan is generally considered to be one of the finest writers working today. ‘Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving’ said Hilary Mantel, of her work, while for Colm Toiíbín ‘Claire Keegan makes her moments real – and then she makes them matter.’ Praise indeed, but what did our brand new podcast book club make of So Late in the Day, her most recently published short story? We’ll be reporting back.

And we’re also rounding up a few stand-outs from our recent reading piles, from J. L. Carr’s meditative classic A Month in the Country to V.E. Schwab’s latest fantasy novel The Fragile Threads of Power.

Book list

So Late in the Day and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt,

The Road to the City by Natalia Ginsberg in the Storybook ND series

Tom Lake, Bel Canto and The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy by Julia Quinn

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

A Month in the Country, by J. L. Carr

Soldier, Sailor by Claire Kilroy

The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab

Join us on Patreon

Here's the link for all the details, find out what extras you'll receive.

Connect with us

Find us on Instagram or Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast

On X at @bookclubrvwpod

or email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, we love to hear from you

We read all six Booker shortlisted books, now join us as we evaluate them and try to second-guess the Booker judges, before finding out the winner - don't miss our hot take.

'A novel is a mirror carried along a high road' says Chair of the Booker judges Esi Edyugan, quoting Stendhal. ‘Year after year’, she continues, ‘the Booker Prize encourages us to take sight of ourselves in the lives of others, to slip for the length of a story into different skins, to grapple with unfamiliar worlds that allow us to see our own afresh.'

Unsurprisingly, seeing the world as it is right now has led to the most downbeat shortlist in our collective memory, but that doesn't mean these books don't make for fantastic discussion. As ever, we won't spoil the plots we'll just give you a sense of what we thought of them.

Join me, Kate, with Laura, our regular guest Phil Chaffee, and first-timer, book blogger Martin Voke, as we talk through 

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (audiobook narrated by Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, Ciaran O'Brien, Lisa Caruccio Came and published by Penguin Audio)

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (audiobook narrated by Gerry O’Brien and published by Bolinda Audio @bolindaaudio @borrowbox)

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (audiobook narrated by Torian Brackett and published by Fourth Estate)

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (audiobook narrated by Maya Saroya and published by Picador)

This Other Eden by Paul Harding (audiobook narrated by Eduardo Ballerini, and published by Penguin Audio)

and

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (narrated by Sarah Bernstein and published by Granta)

And for a deep dive into the winner and all fifty-seven previous winners of The Booker Prize don't miss Martin's website On the Prize

In which Kate and Laura have wildly differing opinions over Kim Leine's historical novel The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (nominated for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award) but discover a shared distaste for the word 'greasy'. 'My front teeth are quite fallen out but for five that dangle like scoundrels of the night from a gallows' complains the main character, Morten Falck, as we follow his experiences attempting to convert the Inuit to Christianity in late-18th-century Greenland. Did this make for a great book club book? Listen in to find out. We also interview Frances Ambler, features editor of Oh Comely magazine about championing new books by women writers and we have some great recommendations for your next book club read.

•

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod or leave us a comment on iTunes, we'd love to hear from you. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

•

Books also discussed in this episode include: The North Water, Ian McGuire, Days Without End, Sebastian Barry, The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald, The Lucky Ones, Julianne Pachico, The Idiot, Elif Batuman, The Forever War, Joe Haldeman and To The Ends of the Earth trilogy by William Golding.

We're joined by friend and journalist Phil Chaffee to discuss FREE by Lea Ypi, a memoir of her Albanian childhood and of life amid the collapse of Communism. The book won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize and was on many a best-book of 2022 list. Both our book clubs read this one, but what did they make of it? We'll be reporting back.

We’re also discussing THE SNOW BALL by Brigid Brophy, a swirling, sensual feast that takes place over one night at a New Year’s Eve masquerade ball. The novel was published in 1964 and was something of a scandalous sensation at the time. It has recently been re-released to much acclaim, but what did Kate's book club think of it?

We’ll also have some trusty follow-on recommendations to help you find your next great read.

Booklist

BORDER by Kapka Kassabova

SECONDHAND TIME by Svetlana Alexievich

HOMELAND ELEGIES by Ayad Akhtar

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY by Winifred Watson

50 GREAT WORKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE WE COULD DO WITHOUT by Brigid Brophy, Michael Levey and Charles Osborne.

Let us know your thoughts, we love to hear from you. Find us on Instagram @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email us at thebookclubrevew@gmail.com. You can also check out the episode page on our website, thebookclubreview.co.uk, where you'll also find full shownotes and a transcript.

If you enjoy our shows please support us by telling your bookish friends – we love to reach new listeners.

What we've been reading outside of book club – the books we get to pick and choose. On the list: Things I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton, Mrs Gaskell and Me by Nell Stevens, I Am I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell, Billie by Anna Gavalda, A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, The Last Samurai by Helen De Witt, and Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

It came highly recommended, and so with anticipation Kate's book club read All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West. We knew she was good at gardening, but what did we make of Sackville-West as a writer? Listen in to find out. In our regular interview we explore just how heated book discussions can get when you have a pair of knitting needles to hand, with London's Kniterati book club member Maeve O'Sullivan. And we have some new recommendations for your next book club read including some from friend-of-the-pod Emily of the Walking Book club who returns with some great choices to follow on from Vita Sackvlle-West. 

•

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast. Email us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, or leave us a comment on iTunes. If you like the show then click subscribe and never miss an episode. 

•

Find out more about the Kniterati at their Facebook page: https://en-gb.facebook.com/Kniterati/

Details of Emily's Walking Book Club can be found at her website: https://emilybooks.wordpress.com/the-walking-book-club/

•

Books mentioned in this episode: Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, Orlando by Virginia Woolf and The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster. Emily recommended A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, Lolly Willows by Dorothy Whipple and Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. We also discuss The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.

•

For our next book club we will be reading and discussing Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles.

•

If you have read this far then you're probably the sort of person who might want to keep listening for our extra bit at the end, where we talk about what we've been reading outside of book club. In this episode Laura confesses she's moved on from Georgette Heyer and is now hooked on Enid Blyton.

In celebration of our 100th episode we turn the spotlight on ourselves a little more than usual to answer listeners' questions. From our favourite childhood reads to the books that shaped us as adults, from books which kept us up all night to books we disagree on (with a shocking mid-show revelation from Laura that threatens to derail the whole discussion), listen in to learn more about us as readers and how we came to make the podcast. 

Find our full show notes for this episode plus archive of all our past shows on our website, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast or Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or drop us an email at thebookclubreview@gmail.com and tell us about a book you love.

Booklist

Childhood reads

The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

The Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent Dyer

The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower and Little Plum by Rumer Godden

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien

Dark Canyon by Louis L’Amour

A Devil to Ride by Patricia Leitch

Cobbler’s Dream by Monica Dickens

Howl’s Moving Castle and other books by Diana Wynne Jones

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

White Boots, Ballet Shoes, Theatre Shoes, Hollywood Shoes by Noel Streatfield

Transition books

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

General books

Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden

Normal People by Sally Rooney

The Moth and the Mountain by Ed Caesar

The Time-Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenneger

Watership Down by Douglas Adams

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W. E. Bowman

Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante

The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Parisian Lives by Deidre Bair

The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross

West With the Night by Beryl Markham

Travels by Michael Crichton

On the one hand 'bleak, meandering and depressing' on the other a beautifully written book that has touched the hearts of its readers – but what did Kate's book club make of Douglas Stuart's 2020 Booker winner Shuggie Bain? We're joined by friend and journalist Phil Chaffee to discuss it. Has Laura managed to make it through more than the first sixty pages? Listen in to find out, plus our usual recommendations for follow-on reads.

Books recommended

Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijnveld

Follow us for daily recommendations and reviews on Instagram or Facebook @bookclubreviewpodcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or check out our website thebookclubreview.co.uk for our archive of over 80 episodes plus reviews, articles and reading guides. Drop us a line and let us know what you're reading for book club or any thoughts you have about the show. We love to hear from you.

Ever dreamed of owning a bookstore? How about one a stone's throw from the beach? When she realised the British seaside town of Margate didn't have a bookshop for new titles, Francesca Wilkins realised it would be the perfect place to realise her lifelong ambition and launch her own store. Listen in for the behind-the-scenes story, some great book recommendations and the secret, in a nutshell, to running a successful bookshop. 

We discuss South Korean author Han Kang's short novel about a troubled woman who decides to stop eating meat.

We also look at international bestseller of yesteryear The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, which found fame in the author's native Germany before making its way onto Oprah Winfrey's book club list, and becoming an Oscar winning film starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. But twenty years on, does the book still hold its appeal? And more to the point, were either of these books good book club books?

We also interview science journalist Sue Nelson about starting her book club in a small village where she didn't really know anybody.

Books mentioned on this episode:

• Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
• All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski
• The Tobacconist and A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler

Wondering which of the Booker shortlisted novels to read? Look no further, we've got the rundown of all of them in our Booker Prize special. We're joined by previous podcast guests Phil Chaffee and Sarah Oliver to discuss the six titles. Due to Covid we weren't able to be in the same room, but that didn't hold us back. It's book club, so whether we loved them or loathed them, you'll get to hear what we really thought. Plus we play a game of 'Snog, Marry, Avoid' with Booker books, and offer up our favourite reads from past years.

•

Find full show notes including extra links on our website www.thebookclubreview.co.uk

We discuss Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology, whose compelling book offers us the chance to be more attractive, slimmer, happier and healthier, all thanks to a good night’s sleep. Critics have called this international bestseller 'accessible', 'compelling' and 'enlightening', but what did Kate's book club make of it? For us was it electrifying or soporific? Listen in to find out.

•

If you’d like to see what we’re up to between episodes follow us on Instagram or Facebook @BookClubReview podcast, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod or email thebookclubreview@gmail.com. And if you're not already, subscribe to us and never miss an episode.

A Far Cry From Kensington has many fans amongst the critics but what did Kate's book club make of it. Did they fall in love with Muriel Spark's genteel farce set in the postwar London publishing industry? Or did they need more convincing of Spark's genius. For an informed opinion we interview Hannah Griffin of the Spark Challenge Book Group, and find out what it's like being part of a book group who only read a single author's work. We finish with the usual round of recommendations to help you find your perfect book club read.

Get in touch with us at thebookclubreview@gmail.com, follow us on Instagram @thebookclubreviewpod, on Twitter @bookclubrvwpod, or leave us a comment on iTunes. Get in touch – we’d love to hear from you. Subscribe and never miss an episode.

Books mentioned in this episode: The Driver’s Seat; The Girls of Slender Means and Robinson, all by Muriel Spark, Amsterdam by Ian McEwan, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Terson,  Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adoyemi, The Possessed by Elif Batuman, The Unseen by Roy Jacobson and Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi.

What did our podcast book club make of Mild Vertigo, Japanese author Mieko Kanai's 1997 novel, recently translated into English by Polly Barton. A 'modernist masterpiece' written in sentences that go on for pages with hardly any paragraph breaks might not seem like an obvious book club winner; listen in to find out if we were won over.

To discuss it Kate is joined by Yuki Tejima, also known as @booknerdtokyo, and Shawn Mooney, aka Shawn the Book Maniac. Listen in for their thoughts on Mild Vertigo, their current reads and our book recommendations for anyone wanting the inside track on great Japanese fiction.

Book list

A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata (trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter) 

Home Reading Service by Fabio Morábito (trans. Curtis Bauer)

Woman Running in the Mountains by Yūko Tsushima (trans. Geraldine Harcourt)

Also Territory of Light and Child of Fortune by Yoko Tsutshima

Grass for my Pillow by Sayiichi Maruya (trans. Dennis Keene)

The Little House by Kyoto Nakajima (trans. Ginny Tapley Takamori)

There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuo Tsumura (trans. Polly Barton)

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

Porn: An Oral History by Polly Barton

Butter by Asako Yuzuki (trans. Polly Barton)

Follow us on Instagram and threads @bookclubreviewpodcast

Support the show and get Kate's weekly book-recommendations email, access to our book spreadsheets, connect with fellow readers and join our book club: find all the details on our Patreon page.

If you enjoyed the episode, please share it, rate and review us on your podcast app, which helps other listeners find us.

Find full shownotes and our episode archive at our website thebookclubreview.co.uk