BookLovers: A Podcast from Spartanburg County Public Libraries

Fall is in the air and Halloween is only two months away, so that means it's the perfect time to talk about horror fiction and horror movies. While we start with a general discussion of the scary stuff we love (or appreciate at a safe distance), we then turn to the author Stephen Graham Jones and discuss his award-winning novel "The Only Good Indians" and his latest book, "My He...

One of the things all three of us have noticed over time is that a lot of readers have a question about audiobooks: Is it really reading if I’m only listening to it? Audiobooks are a format that tends to have its own stigma—that listening to a book instead of reading it with your eyeballs is somehow a lesser effort, one that takes something away. But we’re here to say that is patently untrue: for...

In the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, Westerns proliferated across film, television and books. Oh, the books, with their staunch brown covers, gunslingers and paint ponies, staring down the reader as though they were coming directly for us. But since then, the Western—especially the Western novel—has taken a backseat to other genres of exploration, especially other types of historical fiction and science f...

If you listened to our previous episode, during which we discussed Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House , then you’ve heard us talk about the importance of preserving stories, both good and bad, especially about the LGBTQ+ community. And The Prettiest Star holds a similar place in queer literature, telling the uncomfortable but important story of a young man who returns home to his sma...

After extricating herself from a psychologically abusive relationship that lasted over a year, Carmen Maria Machado went in search of the kind of book we talk about a lot on this podcast: one that would help her process what she had experienced. But instead of finding a sea of options, as there would be for the loss of a parent, joining a new community, or raising a child as a single parent, she f...

In July of 2020, we were all struck by Bryan Washington’s short story collection Lot , which takes readers deep into the Hispanic and Black neighborhoods of Houston, describing the lives of apartment complexes and storefronts via the people who occupy and care for them. So to prepare for Summer Reading and our kickoff event with the man himself, we’re reading and discussing Washington’s novel Memo...

What does it mean to be a person? What does personhood mean? What about humanity? You might think you know, but Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Borne and its titular character are here to test what you think you believe. After finding a small pulsating blob on the side of a tremendous sleeping bear, scavenger Rachel brings it home in hopes that her partner Wick will be able to make use of it. But when the...

In 2013, SCPL’s Downtown book club, Booklovers, read George Saunders’ short story collection Tenth of December , which was considered one of the best books of the year by a number of outlets, including the New York Times , and was widely heralded as a masterwork of the format. Saunders is considered one of our greatest living American writers, and his talent as a writer and creative thinker seems...

When Thomas Hardy wrote his final novel, Jude the Obscure , a reader wonders what may have been going through his head. After writing Tess of the d’Urbervilles , which shocked the Victorian England countryside, Hardy released Jude in 1895 in a serialized format. While Jude was a hit, it was also breathtakingly scandalous, earning the nickname “Jude the Obscene” and causing some booksellers to sell...

Music is the oldest type of media we have, both in terms of when it was probably created ( 40,000 years ago ) and when it was first recorded ( the late 1800s ). Music is in the background of our lives from beginning to end: from birdsongs and train whistles to lullabies and symphonies. And as tricky as it may be to write about music , that hasn’t stopped critics, analysts, theorists, biographers,...

To say that true crime is popular is to say that ice cream is popular. Sure, it’s true, but that doesn’t really cover the scope of its popularity: there are different flavors and styles that broaden its reach to just about anyone who wants a taste. In this episode, we’re discussing true crime and why readers, listeners and watchers love it so much. We discuss how true crime came to be, and Jess st...

The topic of this episode, James McBride’s stellar novel Deacon King Kong , explores a rara avis among book club reads: it’s funny . Not just amusing or humorous, but laugh-out-loud, tears-in-your-eyes kind of funny, and thanks to McBride’s skills as an author, Deacon King Kong is also full of heart and hope. Following the misadventures of neighborhood drunk Sportcoat after he shoots the community...

We’re shaking things up with this episode: rather than highlight a specific title or genre, we’re taking a closer look at one of very few literary awards given with the reader in mind. Every January, the American Library Association holds its Youth Media Awards, which include eighteen individual awards : fifteen awards for excellence in writing for youth, two for lifetime achievement in writing an...

In 1993, Octavia Butler published Parable of the Sower , a work of speculative fiction that takes place in 2024. The main character, Lauren, lives in California in carefully cultivated safety with her family in a walled-in cul-de-sac while the ravages of climate change, severe poverty, robbery and drug addiction rage outside. After a major tragedy forces Lauren and the rest of the neighborhood out...

Lord of the Flies is considered one of the most well-loved titles assigned in school, according to a survey done in the United Kingdom in 2016 . William Golding’s classic novel of deserted island survival, first published in 1954, is a striking tale of young boys left to their own devices on an island with only nature and each other to keep them company—or to tear them apart. Expanding on the them...

2020 was hard, but it had some bright spots. Among those was the release of Brit Bennett’s widely anticipated second novel, The Vanishing Half , which explores the inner lives and decisions of light-skinned Black twin sisters who grow up in a small town in Louisiana where marrying light is marrying right. After both sisters flee the town for New Orleans, seeking new lives for themselves, one disap...

Spy novels are driven by a set of interrelated questions: Who or what is really in charge? What is the true mission? And how will they get out of this one? On this episode, we discuss two novels with entertaining responses to these questions. Both Who is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht and This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone offer surprising twists on the spy novel...

Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse digs into one family in one place over a span of two very different days, a decade apart. As the Ramsay family spends its day at the blustery northern shore of Scotland, family friend Lily Briscoe attempts to capture the family via painting. Ten years later, what remains of the family returns to the same place, and Lily attempts to complete her painting, al...

51 years after its publication, Ursula K. LeGuin’s masterwork, The Left Hand of Darkness , continues to inspire and open minds across the globe for its frank explorations of gender, friendship, loyalty and patriotism. If you didn’t think all that could happen in a science fiction-adventure novel, then it’s time to pick up The Left Hand of Darkness yourself, then listen to this episode. We discuss...

There’s no questioning the tremendous impact that Kurt Vonnegut has had on writing. The inimitable author penned dozens of novels, short stories, essays and more over his life, and none is better known than Slaughterhouse-Five , the rare beloved school-assigned novel once described to Jess as “World War II, but with aliens”. At 51 years old, Slaughterhouse-Five is still as relevant, biting and com...

In this episode, we’re looking at two stories of Vietnamese families who immigrate to America, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. While the families are pressed into change by the Vietnam War and its impact on the country, the war itself lingers at the very edges of both books, which are centered primarily around relationships between children who c...

It’s our tenth episode! We’re celebrating by discussing Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. We focus on the in-over-their-heads heroes of both novels, Lionel Essrog and Oedipa Maas, as they try to do right by people who had past impact on them. Despite seeming disparate at the outset, both novels feature mysteries and seedy underbellies, big city semi...

Sometimes a book comes along that defies comparison. On the podcast we often discuss two books in tandem, but in this episode, the Booklovers team discusses the singular experience of reading Dan Chaon’s 2017 novel Ill Will . In Ill Will , the Tillman family, primarily family patriarch Dustin, grapples with the release of Dustin’s stepbrother Rusty from prison after his exoneration from guilt for...

Romance as a genre of pleasure reading has always been looked down upon as lesser when compared to lofty genres like literary fiction and classics, but make no mistake: romance is the bestselling pleasure reading genre in publishing, and in times of crisis—from the Great Depression to the COVID-19 pandemic—book sales overall may drop, but romance sales go through the roof. Why is this? What makes...

On this episode we discuss Trust Exercise by Susan Choi and New Waves by Kevin Nguyen. This pair of seemingly disparate titles—one about a performing arts high school, the other about a tech startup—seem like they have little in common, but beyond having striking covers, they both explore what it means for the reader to be able to trust a narrator in contemporary reading. We also talk about our on...