The Book XChange Podcast

Short fiction fans, here's another episode tailor-made for you. Jude and John sit down and discuss some of our personal "unforgettable" short stories - not necessarily our all-time favorites, but the ones that we just can't get out of our heads... sometimes years or even decades after having read them. A few classics are discussed here (Bierce, Lovecraft, Poe, Wharton, O'Connor) - but for the most...

Welcome to the Book XChange's Science Ficiton Xtravaganza, wherein your humble twin hosts line up and discuss a plethora of science fiction titles we've read, remembered, and want to recommend. Science fiction is SUCH an incredibly broad genre to cover, and we don't even try to survey it all - rather, we list books we've read over the years that have really stayed with us for one reason or another...

According to our personal (and this podcast's) annual tradition, brothers and co-hosts Jude and John Lovell list their favorite reading experiences of the year that was 2023. Then we choose a few titles each to dive into at greater length, titles that didn't come up or weren't discussed in depth in any of the episodes recorded in the past year. We hope listeners discover some interesting books the...

John delivers a quick update on Episode 64, which was accidentally uploaded out of order. Tune in so you can figure out which Episode 64 is the right one to listen to/download. Thanks for supporting the show, folks. More great content coming!

IMPORTANT: The editing on this version of Episode 64 was messed up, sadly, and the audio was accidentally uploaded in a jumbled order. We apologize for the screw-up. If you want to hear the Episode as it was originally intended, and we hope you do - please download the "FIXED Episode 64" version of this show, which will appear in the feed very soon.  Full title of the CORRECT version of Episode 64...

This time out, you're listening to the BookXXChange podcast... get it? We're focused on characters bearing the XX chromosome in Episode 63, wherein Jude and John choose their most memorable FEMALE characters in fiction. It's quite a diverse list as we cover everything from literary classics to Westerns, fantasy epics, immigrant stories, and even strange Japanese tales in which women fall in love w...

"The Rabbit Hutch" by Tess Gunty is a debut novel by a young writer from Indiana that has taken the literary world by storm, winning the prestigious National Book Award last year and garnering ecstatic praise far and wide. But what did America's favorite book nerd twins think of this buzzy, socially conscious novel? That question gets answered in episode 62 of the Book XChange podcast, as we dive...

Well Constant Readers... one week later, we have made good on our promise (against all odds!) and we present to you Part 2 of our Stephen King extravaganza. We begin with an in-depth take on King's 2022 novel Fairy Tale, which we both enjoyed - and then, John lobs several King-related questions at Jude (the more experienced King reader) that are designed to get listeners thinking about their own f...

Episode 61 of everyone's favorite twin-led book podcast is so big, it had to be split into two parts! But, when your subject is the all-time legend and prolific writer STEPHEN KING, well, then it makes sense. This double-barrelled episode has been a long time coming for your fraternal hosts, as we are of the generation that has literally grown up reading King. But how do you take on so massive a s...

What exactly is it about memoirs that make them so widely read and discussed, and so compelling? What distinguishes a good memoir from one that becomes a classic in the genre? What makes a person's experience or ordeal worth sharing with a wider audience, and what value can another person's trauma/survival story/struggle impart to a reader? For our 60th episode, Jude and John dig in and examine wh...

In our second "Read Around the World" episode (the first being Episode 55), we turn our focus to our neighbors just south of us... the rich, fascinating, troubled and beautiful mystery that is Mexico. We touch on famous Mexican writers such as Paz, Fuentes and Ruflo, but also recommend titles in different genres (comic novels, crime novels, thrillers, reportage, histories) in our effort to cover a...

One of our "!" episodes (after "Thriller!" and "Monsters!," check the archive for those) which, we think, means a wide-ranging and rollicking ride through a popular genre of books. In this case, spectral encounters and paranormal activity... from dusty old classic haunted house tales to meta/modern freakouts that play with cliches and conventions, we do our best to cover it all. Do your hosts beli...

Another episode-length discussion of a single novel we've deemed worthy of extra attention! This time around, the lads discuss an American classic neither of us were at all familiar with, Joseph Heller's world-famous debut novel Catch-22. We share our own personal impressions, talk about the impact it has had on the culture, compare and contrast it to other war novels, and debate whether or not it...

We're a bit late here as far as the calendar goes, but the subject of fathers and fatherhood will never get stale. We had intended to publish this episode to align with Father's Day, but... June got away from us a little bit. That said, Jude and John talk about some of their most notable father figures in literature, and recommend books that explore the mystery, challenge and promise (broken or un...

This time out, the BXC brothers begin their new occasional series, "Read Around the World," and set their sights on books from/about Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. These episodes will be your literary "travel guides" to places we may never get to visit in person, but have indeed visited in our imaginations and reading lives. We had a blast touring this region, and recommend quite an array of...

Our occasional "BXC Reviews" series returns with an in-depth discussion of the TWO new novels from the highly regarded American writer Cormac McCarthy. Since our show's inception we've been looking for a chance to discuss McCarthy's work, and while this episode isn't a deep dive into his whole catalog, it is an extensive (and spoiler-filled) discussion of the pair of novels he released at the end...

We are thrilled to be back, after a long hiatus, with a brand new episode in which your co-hosts Jude and John discuss some of the best books we read while we were on break. A little bit of Irish writing, poetry, a few science fiction selections, ancient civilizations, some social satire... there's quite a variety of titles here as regular followers of the show have come to expect. We know that th...

After an extended hiatus due to technical challenges, Jude and John Lovell tease the return of the Book XChange podcast. Readers and book lovers around the world, buckle up! We hope to start bringing you new episodes very soon... Want to suggest a topic for an upcoming episode? Please do email us at bookxchangetwins@gmail.com. We're eager to get The Great Conversation going again!

We've been forced to take an indefinite hiatus from recording, but hopefully this is NOT the end of the BXC podcast! John Lovell delivers an explanation of why we haven't recorded new episodes in a little while. Thanks for listening, and stay with us! -The BXC Twins

This time around, the Book XChange looks forward to the rest of 2022 - and discusses books we haven't read, but hope to soon once they hit the shelves. We've loaded up the current episode with titles we are most anticipating as the rest of the year unfolds, and why we're looking forward to them. Fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, graphic novels... it's all fair game here. In some cases, we are looking...

The great and unclassifiable American novelist and journalist JENNIFER EGAN takes center stage in Episode 51 of the Book XChange podcast, and this is an episode co-hosts Jude and John Lovell had been looking forward to for a long time. Her 2010 novel 'A Visit to the Goon Squad' won the Pulitzer Prize, and now 12 years later Egan returns to some of the same characters in this follow-up she terms a...

Poetry is on the menu for this milestone 50th episode of the Book XChange - and why not? The world's only double-barreled bibliophile podcast takes on the challenge of reading poetry in our hyper-fueled, attention-challenged 21st century: is reading poetry worth the struggle? What is the value of slowing down, focusing one's attention and taking on poets and poems you've never tried before? And of...

In this (quite literally) world-spanning episode, Jude and John look at books that dare to confront one of the most vexing and critical issues of our time: the impact our race is having on the physical environment. Our "common home" (in the phrase favored by Pope Francis) literally hangs in the balance due to a whole series of choices we've made as a species, and we wanted to read more from both t...

In the 16th century, Michel de Montaigne created a new form of literary self-expression. He called these short pieces "essays," from the French verb "essayer" - "to try." In Episode 48 of everyone's favorite literary podcast hosted by genetic duplicates, Jude and John "try" to explain the appeal of essays to them, and why they find it to be one of the most satisfying and thought-provoking of all l...

This time around, the brothers are looking at novels with overt spiritual themes - novels in which the main character, or characters, undergo some type of transformation or evolution (or devolution?) in what they believe and how they look at life. As we say in our introductory comments, the "Big Questions" and spiritual themes are something we've never shied away from on this podcast. Now, these t...