Book Cougars Podcast: Two Middle-Aged Women on the Hunt for a Good Read

Welcome to Episode 238 which features an Author Spotlight with the wonderfully creepy Clare Beams! To clarify: it’s her work that’s creepy, in a good way. As you’ll hear in the interview, Clare is lovely, smart, feminist, and fun. We both enjoyed her latest book, THE GARDEN, which is part historical fiction, part ghost story, and part pregnancy horror story all wrapped up in a novel about a woman...

Welcome to Episode 237 where we DO NOT talk about the scheduled ghost story, “Thrawn Janet” by Robert Louis Stevenson due to human error. We’ll discuss it on the next episode along with “The Open Door” by Margaret Oliphant. Now, on to what we DID discuss. What we’re currently reading: THE GARDEN by Clare Beams, SILAS MARNER by George Eliot, and COOKING IN REAL LIFE by Lidey Heuck. What we’ve just...

Welcome to Episode 236, where we are both back at Book Cougars HQ and happy to be sitting across the table from one another again. We did some Biblio Adventuring since the last episode! Emily joined the Pride celebration in Middletown, CT which kicked off with Drag Storytime at Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore. She also had a lovely visit to Big Red Books in Nyack, NY. Chris was back in the Midwest whe...

Chris and Emily recorded Episode 235 over Zoom. Emily was holding down the fort at Book Cougars HQ in Connecticut and Chris dialed in from Pittsburgh, PA. She was on the road back to Connecticut from Illinois and had some fun Biblio Adventures to share including a visit to Van Wert, Ohio where she visited The Brumback Library and had lunch with Linda, the BC’s librarian. She also visited the Carne...

Welcome to Episode 234, featuring an Author Spotlight with memoirist Elissa Altman. We talk about her writing process, including the use of two particular desks that she sits at depending on the focus of her work. We also get into the specifics of journals vs. diaries and, of course, we asked her about writing implements! Her new book, PERMISSION: THE NEW MEMOIRIST AND THE COURAGE TO CREATE, is ou...

On Episode 233, we are thrilled to welcome back, MATTHEW GOODMAN! We are so grateful that Zoom and, before them, Skype (remember them?) opened up the world to conversations with authors. That said, there’s still nothing like sitting in the same room with other humans talking about books, ideas, and historic happenings. Matthew joined us at Book Cougars HQ here in Connecticut to discuss his new boo...

We were thrilled to talk with author Eowyn Ivey about her new book, BLACK WOODS BLUE SKY. During our conversation, Eowyn shared her writing habits, including a description of her writing cottage, and tells us about her reading life. Topics ranged from motherhood on the page and in real life, her family’s literary life in Alaska, and Proust vs Joyce. In our own reading lives, we both read and discu...

We were thrilled and a little nervous to sit down with Ruth Franklin to talk about her work and share our origin story. The Book Cougars may not have been born without Ruth Franklin. Or, come to think of it, Shirley Jackson. We were excited to talk with Ruth about her brilliant new work, THE MANY LIVES OF ANNE FRANK, and her previous biography, SHIRLEY JACKSON: A RATHER HAUNTED LIFE. You won’t wan...

Welcome to Episode 230 where we talk about some books. As this is another tenth episode, we are also hosting a giveaway! One lucky newsletter subscriber will win a paperback copy of our second quarter readalong pick, THE GOOD HOUSE by Tananarive Due. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered to win our recurring tenth episode giveaways. Chris unexpectedly read the surprise hot book of the s...

Welcome to Episode 229! We kick off this episode with the announcement of our second quarter readalong pick for our year of reading Ghost Stories. We hope you’ll read along with us! Speaking of which, we also have an in depth conversation about “What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien, the second story in the PENGUIN BOOK OF GHOST STORIES that we’ll be buddy reading throughout the year. Join us on thi...

Welcome to Episode 228! 2025 is the year of the Ghost Story. We’ve created a tab on the website to keep you up-to-date on our quarterly readalongs, the schedule for the year-long buddy read of THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GHOST STORIES: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce, and there is a downloadable Ghost Story Bingo Card; we would love for you to play along. Be sure to bookmark the page and check ba...

Welcome to Episode 227, featuring an author spotlight with Megan Marshall discussing her new collection of essays, After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart. Megan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who turns her writerly gaze and historical imagination on her own life, her family and friends, and the “after lives” of her biographical subjects. After Lives publishes the da...

This is a book-packed episode! Because we had not recorded a regular episode in a month due to our annual top ten with Russell (see Episode 225), we had a pile-up of books to discuss. But first, we share our LISTENER TOP TEN reads of 2024. There were several ties, so we had a top fourteen list. The first three books were not tied, and each received a substantial number of votes to place them in th...

Welcome to Episode 225, featuring our Top Reads of 2024 with Russell from Ink and Paper Blog. This is an annual tradition, and we’ve been doing this long enough that we think we know that someone else will put a particular book on their list so that we can include some other book on our own list. It came down to the wire this year for one particular book that we all loved! As much as we try to “ga...

We are thrilled to feature Dr. Pamela D. Toler who joined us to talk about her new book, THE DRAGON FROM CHICAGO: THE UNTOLD STORY OF AN AMERICAN REPORTER IN NAZI GERMANY. In a time when women were a rarity in the field, Sigrid Schultz was a print and broadcast journalist and the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin office bureau chief. She covered news from Europe and Germany from WWI through WWII and post-w...

The Holiday Season is upon us! In Episode 222, we continue our annual tradition of sharing bookish holiday gift ideas. We’ve given these items to loved ones or treated ourselves to them (or received them as gifts!). We hope you find our ideas helpful. Since our last episode, we’ve had some fun biblio adventures. Two highlights: Chris took a leisurely drive through the back roads of Connecticut to...

We had the good fortune to talk with Marcia Clark and John Valeri about TRIAL BY AMBUSH, Marcia’s first foray into the true crime genre, for which John served as her researcher. TRIAL BY AMBUSH is an investigation into the 1953 trial of Barbara Graham, a petty criminal whose life took a hard turn the night of a home burglary that ended in murder. Graham’s trial was sensational, and the press cover...

Welcome to Episode 220 – It’s another 10th episode, which means it’s giveaway time! One lucky newsletter subscriber will win copies of The Gardener’s Plot: A Mystery by Deborah J. Benoit and The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White. We send one newsletter per month, and it is free. Sign up on our website, and good luck! We also announce our Patreon giveaway...

Welcome to Episode 219! In this episode, we recap some exciting Biblio Adventures, including trips to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, the Montague Book Mill, the Montague Center Library, and an author event at RJ Julia Booksellers with Betsy Lerner. Chris talks about a handful of picture books she read: The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs – wr...

Welcome to Episode 218, featuring a Playwright Spotlight with Laura Thoma about her new Christmas play, MISS MARGARET’S BARTON COTTAGE CHRISTMAS SURPRISE, coming this December to Drama Works Theatre in Old Saybrook. We made up for lost time with a slew of Biblio Adventures, starting with a discussion with James R. Benn at the Mystic & Noank Library, after which we dashed over to see the new home o...

We are thrilled to welcome James R. Benn, author of the Billy Boyle World War II mystery series. The nineteenth book in the series, THE PHANTOM PATROL, is out today! It’s Winter 1944, and Boyle is on a mission that takes him from the beleaguered art world of Paris to the front lines of the Battle of the Bulge. Some of the novels we discuss in this episode include THE MOST by Jessica Anthony, THE G...

Emily is back in Connecticut, which means she and Chris were able to record this episode together at Book Cougars HQ. We are grateful for long-distance recording technology, but talking about books in person is much more fun! Our special guest is Michael Kelleher, Director of the Windham Campbell Prizes. Mike explains that these awards are given to writers, not for a particular book, but in four c...

We’re calling this episode “The Midwest Episode” because we recorded it while both of us were visiting the Midwest. Emily is spending time with her daughter and granddaughter in Michigan, and Chris was visiting her mom in Chicago. Newer listeners might not realize that although we both now live in Connecticut, we are transplants from the Midwest. Emily is originally from Ohio, and Chris is from Il...

Welcome to Episode 214! This episode contains a lot of biblio adventuring. Emily is in Traverse City, Michigan, helping her daughter, getting to know her new granddaughter, and discovering the many excellent Little Free Libraries in the area. She also shopped at Horizon Books and has been spending time at the Traverse City Library. Meanwhile, back in New England, Chris and “Colleen from Chicago” h...