Book Dreams

We're finally able to tell you our grand opening date! (Spoiler alert: It's October 25. Come visit!) Press play to hear what we've been doing to get everything ready for you. We talk, too, about the upcoming movies and shows based on books that we're excited about, and we play a game where we each come up with the weirdest possible book pairings and then challenge the other person to figure out ho...

The store is almost ready! We're just waiting (and waiting and waiting) on a new entrance before we can start putting books on the shelves. Find out our latest news, victories, and frustrations and hear about what we're reading now and what we're excited to read next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We (authors Eve Yohalem and Julie Sternberg) are opening a bookstore called Books & Cake in Hillsdale, New York! Renovations are underway--take a listen to hear how they're going; how we decided to take this step together; what's surprised us along the way; our unusual plan for organizing the books in the store; a few book recommendations; and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphon...

Julie and Eve have big news! Find us on⁠ ⁠⁠Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast)⁠, or email us at ⁠contact@bookdreamspodcast.com⁠. We encourage you to visit our ⁠website⁠⁠ for information about our episodes, guests, and more. Book Dreams is a part of ⁠Lit Hub Radio⁠ and the ⁠Podglomerate network⁠, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate t...

Why, oh why, does Eve make Julie take on questions that no person on the planet wants to be forced to think through out loud on air? (Three guesses who wrote this description.) The question this time: Is there free will? Julie's answer: ....  Never mind. Skip Julie's answer and go straight to Eve's discussion of what professor of biology and neuroscience Robert Sapolsky has to say on the topic in...

Our theme for this episode is book connections—times when one book leads us to thoughts of another or inspires us to read further. It’s one of our very favorite aspects of reading: escaping into the world of one book, then tying it together with the world of another. Eve talks about two pairs of books—one of her all-time favorites, one a new discovery, and two that are “absolutely delicious”—all c...

It's been a long time since you've seen an author interview here on Book Dreams, but we were recently given the chance to interview Roz Chast, and who could possibly say no to that?! Roz is a beloved New Yorker cartoonist with a style all her own, and Eve and Julie have both been big fans of her work for decades. She is as funny, insightful, and distinctive in person as she is in her drawings, and...

“This is so bad that I feel like I'm in a Stephen King novel where there's just one thing off about my familiar world, but that one thing is a living nightmare.” In a Book Dreams first, Eve and Julie disagree wildly about a book. Can they resolve their differences? Find out in this episode where they talk about books they’ve both read, with the exception of one novella that Julie says is “definite...

Eve read so much during the weeks since our last episode, she gave herself a repetitive reading injury. But it was worth it! In this episode she shares thoughts about books with mesmerizing voice, memorable characters, sweeping scope, and poetic brilliance. Meanwhile, Julie--who has managed thus far to avoid reading-related injury--talks about a critically acclaimed novel set in Berlin around the...

What have Julie and Eve been reading lately? Find out in this new bonus episode, in which Eve talks about the legacy of her dad, a constant reader, the brilliance of Helen Dewitt (again), the searing poetry of Louise Glück, and a light and highly readable beach read. Meanwhile, Julie’s been pursuing a reading vision, discovering the propulsive, mind-expanding books—and book recommendations—of S. A...

What have Julie and Eve been reading lately? Find out in this new bonus episode where we talk about loving old favorites even more the second time around, lessons Julie gleaned from a book about life in a picturesque German village during the Nazi regime, discovering an author whose novel is “dazzling,” and the joy and abundant rewards of overcoming a fear of poetry. Find us on Twitter (@bookdream...

We’ve all been there: one of those tough times in life when it’s hard to get your mind to settle enough to escape into a good book. Yet that’s when we need books more than ever. Eve and Julie have both been going through rough patches recently. Here are the books that have been helping. Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast...

Welcome to our last regularly scheduled episode of Book Dreams. We started the podcast because books, more than just about anything, bring us joy. So we thought, what better way to end the podcast than to spread that joy and talk about how to make great book recommendations for other people? Our guest, James Gilbert, is a bookseller at the Heywood Hill bookstore in London, which runs, in its words...

In this episode, Book Dreams producer and guest host Gianfranco Lentini takes us on a journey to a real-life literary paradise—a thin barrier island just 50 miles east of New York City—that has been a haven for authors, especially queer authors, for more than a century. Author and scholar Jack Parlett joins Gianfranco to discuss the subject of Jack’s latest book, Fire Island: A Century in the Life...

In this episode, we talk to author Angie Cruz, whose latest novel is the widely acclaimed How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water. This irresistible book inspired a conversation about a myriad of topics: how the unconscious mind influences the creative process, the lengths women will go to escape a dangerous situation, invisible labor as it pertains to women–especially immigrant women. Friendship, pa...

What do family secrets show us about the times we live in, and how do they impact the people who safeguard them? These are questions that sociologist Margaret K. Nelson explores in her most recent book, Keeping Family Secrets, a study of more than 150 memoirs involving families hiding something of consequence during the 1950s. In this episode of Book Dreams, we talk to Margaret about a host of fas...

Welcome to our 2022 end-of-year holiday extravaganza! In the spirit of holiday giving, we have a present for you, which, if we’re being honest, is also a present for us: BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS. Two dozen of them, in fact! At the end of almost all the interviews we conducted this year, we asked our guests, “What’s one book you love and why do you love it?” We held back the recordings of their answers...

Why, exactly, do we feel so shattered when someone we love leaves us? What is the science behind the physical changes we experience during heartbreak, such as weight loss and anxiety, and why do so many of us stop behaving rationally? In this episode of Book Dreams, we talk with acclaimed science writer Florence Williams about her latest book, Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey, in whic...

What is it like to create a modern, feminist retelling of an ancient, foundational text? Vaishnavi Patel–author of the instant New York Times bestselling novel Kaikeyi, a reimagining of the Hindu epic the Ramayana–paints a vivid picture in this episode of Book Dreams. Vaishnavi’s novel “tells the story of the evil stepmother character [Kaikeyi], who sets off the whole epic by exiling Rama, and the...

What are the raw materials of our lives? Who are the authors, the singers and songwriters, the actors and artists whose work resonates with each of us and makes us who we are? It’s a question that is brilliantly and masterfully explored by arts critic Margo Jefferson in her new memoir, Constructing a Nervous System, in which she weaves her personal history with those of the artists who are part of...

How can reading a novel become an act of political rebellion? This is one of the important questions we take up with Azar Nafisi, author of the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran. Azar’s latest book is Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. In it, she focuses on the parallels and connections between the totalitarian mindset in Iran and totalitarian tendencies in the U...

If we want to understand America today, we must first understand the South. This is both a central premise of Imani Perry’s latest book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, which is a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and a proposition she explores in depth in this episode of Book Dreams. During her conversation with Eve and...

“I think the narratives about capital are an even more fundamental myth in America than those about the frontier.” Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Hernan Diaz takes on nothing less than American capitalism in his latest novel, Trust. In this episode of Book Dreams, he speaks with Eve and Julie about why he chose Trust’s innovative and surprising structure, and how that structure first reinforces a...

“A monk asked, ‘What is meditation?’ The Master said, ‘It is not meditation.’ The monk said, ‘Why is it “not meditation”?’ The Master said, ‘It’s alive, it’s alive!’” –Chao-Chou, 8th century Buddhist master How can traditional psychotherapy, with its emphasis on the self, work with Zen practices like meditation, with their de-emphasizing of the ego, to make us feel better? In this episode of Book...

An exciting announcement from Eve and Julie about the past, present, and future of humanity! (And also a small schedule change.) Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com. We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more. Book Dreams is a part of Lit H...