Booktails Podcast

Local Voices 2 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 This summer we are delighted to be bringing you some more interviews with local writers! 📝  The Scottish literary scene has never been stronger, and these writers are some of the most exciting working at the moment! 📚 For this week’s episode we had so many laughs chatting to Andrew Meehan about his newest book, Hey Man. 👬 This little gem of a book is the story of a frien...

Local Voices 1 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 This summer we are delighted to be bringing you some more interviews with local writers! 📝  The Scottish literary scene has never been stronger, and these writers are some of the most exciting working at the moment! 📚 We are starting off with someone familiar- Chris Brookmyre joins us to discuss his newest book, Quite Ugly One Evening.🩸 Jack Parlabane is back again, a li...

Pride Stories 4 🏳️‍🌈💖 Voulez-vous to come on a coming of age journey with us from 80s Blackburn to the Australia of today and back again with a little help from Bollywood, musical theatre and ABBA? Gimme gimme gimme! 🎶 That’s the name of the game and we will be thanking abba for the music, both metaphorically and as actual characters in the book, examining the tragic music teacher who shows Raf...

Pride Stories 3 🏳️‍🌈💖 Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today for the third  instalment of this year’s Pride Stories season, and it’s time for the wedding of the year! 💒 When the groom’s best friend and bride’s brother are sent ahead to prepare for the happy day they initially think the trip will be a nightmare, but soon sparks fly and their time trapped together will seem much too short…🎩...

Pride Stories 2 🏳️‍🌈💖 Once upon a time there was a princess, 12 identical huntsmen, a wicked stepmother, a talking lion and some magical teeth. And that’s only the half of it. 👑 We are so excited to be joined by this book’s author, Ry Herman, today to discuss familial and romantic love, imposter syndrome, the enduring appeal of fairytales and many new LGBTQIA+ picks to add to our TBR! 🧚 So, ma...

Pride Stories 1 Happy Pride month Book Besties! 🏳️‍🌈💖 We are starting off STRONG with the wonderful tale of a lesbian retirement community in the apocalyptic near-future. Resident Hannah is ill and has decided to end her life on her own terms and is celebrating with the party to end all parties! But will the long lost love of her life reply to the invitation before time runs out for good? 👩‍❤️‍...

Bookshop Pick 2 We are continuing our Bookshop Picks this week! We found ourselves with a couple of episodes to fill before our next theme so we decided to have some fun!🕶️ Rachel and Serena set off to their local bookshop and decided to choose each other a random book!📖 But it wasn’t quite that simple! They had to choose two prompts from a hat to dictate their choice and had only ten minutes to...

Bookshop Pick 1 It’s a bit of a different one for us this week! We found ourselves with a couple of episodes to fill before our next theme so we decided to have some fun!🕶️ Rachel and Serena set off to their local bookshop and decided to choose each other a random book!📖 But it wasn’t quite that simple! They had to choose two prompts from a hat to dictate their choice and had only ten minutes to...

Recent Adaptations 4 Blessed be the fruit 🍈 This week we are returning to Gilead to meet Agnes and Daisy and see a whole new side of a certain aunt we thought we knew. 🤫 Expect discussions on the differences in style between the Testaments and the Handmaid’s Tale, insights into entirely new factions of Gilead society and beyond, changes between the book and the adaptation and how scarily the Tes...

Recent Adaptations 3 This week we are blasting off to a whole new world of entertainment! We are donning our spacesuits and checking our astrophage levels because it’s time to save humanity with Ryland Grace and Project Hail Mary! 🚀 Expect discussions on the obsession with space spiders, whether Ryan Gosling is too hot, why we cried at alien friendship and whether it matters if the science makes...

Recent Adaptations 2. Dearest gentle readers,  We have some urgent information that we believe to be of the utmost interest to discerning members of the Ton’s reading contingent.  You read it here first that the next in our Recent Adaptations series ‘An Offer from a Gentleman’; Bridgerton book 3 (season 4)! 🎭 is available now!  Expect scintillating conversation on Benedict’s rakish ways, the adap...

New Adaptations 1. 📖🎬 Okay we give in. It’s time to join the locker room and google what the NHL is. That’s right, we are reading Heated Rivalry!🏒 This ice hockey romance has taken the world by storm so come with us to sip an Ilya & Shane inspired ‘Skating on Thin Ice’ cocktail ⛸️and delve into this spicy sports romance, including discussions on the real life professional hockey rivals who...

Books We Love to Hate 4 For the final book in this series of divisive books you asked and we answered! November 9 by Colleen Hoover is a romance with a classic premise: our protagonists vow to meet only on one day per year: April 17th. Nah, just joking, on November 9th obviously. Grab an autumnal cocktail and join the conversation as we discuss the meta nature of the book, the lack of events on th...

Books We Love to Hate 3. If your sexual awakening was the beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast then all we can say is clearly you were not alone! Beauty and the Beast has led to MANY romantasy Retellings and this Why Choose is no exception. We’re talking four (or five!) different flavours of Fae prince, small provincial town, endearing servants, eccentric outcast father and that all important cu...

Books We Love to Hate 2 It’s our 50th episode babyyy! 🎉🎉🎉 Whether you love it or hate it this book is a global phenomenon and we want hear your thoughts on the Housemaid! 🥜 Grab your pepper spray 🌶️an impractical white dress and come on up to the attic, it’s time to get deadly. It’s time for us to discuss creepy children, creepy mothers, creepy (but sexy) gardeners…🤷‍♀️ We will dive into all...

Books We Love to Hate 1 “And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.” 🦁🐑 And with those words a fandom was born that overtook teenagers everywhere, and we were no different! If you were also Twilight obsessed, or still are, this episode is for you!  🍎Alternatively if you think one hundred year old vampires watching young women sleep is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this book’s pr...

BONUS International Women's Day interview “I don’t read detective novels. I have no interest in crime.” 📌🐦‍⬛ Beloved Glasgow figure Rilke returns in The Cut Up with a new mystery to solve! When he finds a body outside the auction house with a hat pin through the eye Rilke’s troubles are just the beginning. Many familiar faces return as Rilke scrambles to save his friends before time runs out. W...

International Women’s Day 4. Brace yourselves, because we’re about to ruffle some feathers here. 😬 In this series celebrating strong female characters and writers we wanted to include some Romantasy, so Throne of Glass was the obvious choice! 🧊 Come with us to Erilea and we will discuss the deadly competition narrative and how it does not live up to its full potential 🏹,whether Chaol is as chao...

International Women’s Day 3: Rachel’s Recommendation Imagine you’ve been raised imprisoned in an underground bunker for as long as you can remember with 39 older women who aren’t allowed to touch you. Imagine you’ve been given the bare minimum and never told where you are or why. Now imagine you suddenly have the chance to escape- to discover the outside world for the very first time. Things are b...

International Women’s Day 2: Serena’s Recommendation The day of the girls is here… ⚡️If you’ve ever wished you had Palpatine level zapping powers to use on men who told you you’d be prettier if you smiled, then this one is for you. And with this power comes the strangely intoxicating smell of bitter oranges and in this case, the Mother Eve cocktail! 🍊 Join us to get tipsy and discuss electric ee...

International Women’s Day 1 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a book podcast in possession of an International Women’s Day theme must be in want of Pride and Prejudice. It is the classic romance, classic strong female heroine, the classic novel in every sense! Whether you’ve read it twenty times or you thought about watching the Keira Knightley adaptation once, this is for you. Join Sere...

Interspecies Valentines 4. It’s time to get squeaky… but not squeaky clean. Squeaky dirrrrrtyyyyy! 🎈 Join an aspiring artist who meets a balloon seller and his boyfriend and ends up falling for them both. Just one catch- they are secretly balloon animals under a spell. And the sorceress who cast it wants them back… ✨ We are channelling all the fun of the fair with our nostalgic sweetie cocktail...

Interspecies Valentines 3. Rawr. 🦖If your innocent dinosaur-obsessed inner child is ready to be traumatised, read on. Ready? Okay. It’s Dino Smut. And yes, some would say it’s deeply disturbing. But some people are into it (apparently!). And one thing is for sure, it’s a silly, tongue-in-cheek romp through prehistory so let’s just have a laugh about it, right? Riiiiight?!  Grab yourself a Palomas...

Interspecies Valentines 2 Okay readers, let’s get weird 🕷️😈🔥 If you thought Ice Planet Barbarians was too strange you won’t believe what we’re talking about for our second book in our interspecies valentines series! Yup, it’s a spider romance. Kind of. We still don’t fully understand it. Ketahn is a vrix, an alien with armoured skin, mandibles and many legs. The queen of his community has been c...

Interspecies Valentines 1 TW: This series features non human romance and questionable consent. Strap on your space belts because this is going to be a wild ride! Take a journey with Serena and Rachel to an icy far off planet full of VERY friendly locals! Grab a Big, Blue and Horny frozen cocktail and let’s get into it! For the first book of our alternative interspecies romance this Valentine’s mon...