The Perks Of Being A Book Lover Podcast

Our guest this week, Jeremy Hance, writes about 3 topics in his most recent book that we are always drawn to; mental health, travel, and animals. Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-trotting Hypochondriac is a memoir that uses humor to help readers understand what life is like for someone who has a mental health issue like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In Jeremy’s case, his anxiety is always worse wh...

In this week’s episode, we talk to our favorite bookseller, Sam Miller from Carmichael’s Books, about the holiday gift giving season. You’ve probably heard the warning to “shop early’ this holiday season because of shortages. So we are giving you the gift of new book ideas for all the booklovers in your life. We love inviting Sam on the show twice a year to tell us all about books to look forward...

This week we had a great time talking about book people problems with our guest Bailey, host of the To Read List Podcast. She doesn’t work alone on the podcast: her co-hosts include her brother Andrew, her friend Toby, and her husband Dillon who is the sound recordist. Through this podcast, they attempt to get through all the books on their shelves. Every other week they each read a book from thei...

Our guests this week are members of the same family. Jeremy and Hermione Tankard are a father-daughter duo behind the graphic novel series Yorick and Bones. Yorick, as any Shakespeare lover knows, is the skull that Hamlet speaks to in the play of the same name. In this graphic novel, Yorick is unearthed by a friendly dog, and they begin a series of adventures. In the second book, Yorick and Bones...

We are halfway through spooky October and maybe you are looking for a good scary book to read. Our guest today, Johann Trotter, can give you some tips. Johann lives in Northern Ireland and works as a scientific researcher. But her hobby gone wild is horror in all its forms. She is a self-professed horror junkie. She is a bit obsessed with Stephen King, but on her instagram page @ jobis89 , you can...

This week’s episode is for true crime enthusiasts. Every city has had murders that make the news, and Louisville is no different. Our guest this week, David Domine', adopted Louisville as his hometown and has a following here as an author, tour guide, and storyteller in the city. He has written a new book called A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City about a sensational murder that was discovered after...

We have a fondness for Appalachia and have had several guests on the Perks who hail from that area, including Alix Harrow, Ashley Blooms, and Annette Sanuooke Clapsaddle. But Appalachia is much larger than just the small slice that Amy and I often think of. Appalachia is really a huge area that encompasses a vast and diverse array of people. Today we talk to Kendra Winchester, the co-founder and e...

Society doesn’t really know what to do with older women. People give a lot of lip-service to the value of older women’s wisdom and experience but older women are often forgotten. As if they don’t have anything worth contributing once they hit a certain age. Our guest this week, Grace Sammon, has written a novel that tackles this modern dilemma for older women. Titled The Eves, it features a main c...

** We have a replay this week. We want our listeners to have a second chance to listen to our talk with author Farrah Alexander about her book, 'Raising The Resistance' about how to work social justice into our everyday lives. With some court cases on the horizon and strikes against women's rights in Texas, this seemed like a good episode to revisit. Farrah is working on her second book and has st...

Most weeks we talk about books and being a booklover in terms of exciting new releases or the ways in which writers create their imagined worlds and the characters who inhabit them. But today we are talking about how books can literally change lives because books are a business and can generate income. In this week’s episode, we speak to Elizabeth Senn-Alvey, executive director of Emerging Workfor...

Our guest this week is St. Clair Detrick-Jules, a Brown University graduate who is a filmmaker and a new author. Her book 'My Beautiful Black Hair: 101 Natural Hair Stories from the Sisterhood' debuts on September 28 and features essays by and photographs of Black women who have come to some deeper understandings about what their hair and how they wear it means to them. We talk to St. Clair about...

Lots of people travel around Labor Day and start thinking about fall break adventures so this week’s episode is jam-packed with travel writing. We chat with two guests this week. Our first guest is not a writer, but a graphic designer who began making cool illustrated posters of national parks on an Instagram account called Subpar Parks. Amber Share couples her illustrations with terrible one-star...

This week’s episode is a nod to back-to-school season when teachers can get books into the hands of kids after a summer of free days, endless video games, and probably too many popsicles. We are joined by Melissa Hart from Eugene Oregon. She is the author of 2 memoirs, a middle grade book, and most recently a great resource for teachers, librarians, and parents called Better with Books: 500 Divers...

In this week’s episode, we chat with Sanjay Saverimuttu. He is a ballet dancer with the Louisville Ballet and a choreographer who grew up in South Florida. Sanjay attended college at Stanford and studied Biology but decided dance was really his passion. His other passion is reading and he is the leader of the Louisvile LGBTQ book group sponsored by the Louisville Pride Foundation. Sanjay talks abo...

This week we talk with Heather Lennon, the Sales and Marketing Director at Arctis Books, a new publisher of books in translation for middle grade and young adult audiences. I first encountered Arctis books when I saw an instagram post about a middle grade book called Memento Monstrum originally published in German that will be in US bookstores in October. I liked the book so much I messaged Heathe...

This week we talk with Brooke Lauren Davis, a debut author whose YA book The Hollow Inside offers some unique characters. There’s Phoenix, the protagonist whose mother, Nina, has led them away from Phoenix’s father and towards a man from Nina’s past named Ellis, a successful and charismatic man who Nina believes ruined her life. It’s a story about truth, trust, family, revenge, and what lengths pe...

Today our episode feels a little bit like show and tell or career day at school. We are finding out all about what a literary agent does. Our guest this week is Alice Speilburg, the founder of and one of the literary agents at Speilburg Literary Agency in Louisville, Kentucky. She learned her trade working with both publishers and a literary agency in New York City and then Hurricane Sandy happene...

Today on the show we feature The Blue Marble bookstore which is in Ft. Thomas KY, just a skip across the river from Cincinnati, OH. It is a bookstore that serves children from birth to young adult. I first heard about The Blue Marble in an article about their Great Green Room. If you have had children or grandchildren in the last 70 years, you have most likely read the bedtime classic, "Goodnight...

Today we chat with author Melonie Johnson. She is the author of the “Sometimes in Love” romance series but her newest release which hit bookstores last week is a little bit of a departure; it is a romantic comedy called Too Good To Be Real. Melonie said she strived to write something light and fluffy that would take her and other people’s minds off the hard year that was 2020 and the pandemic. She...

We are excited to open up Season 5 with suspense writer David Bell. He is the USA Today bestselling author of 11 books and his most recent offering hit the bookshelves yesterday. His newest Kill All Your Darlings is the interconnection of all kinds of hot topics; showing the dark side of academia and what happens when plagiarism makes you the prime suspect of a murder. Plus add some professor icki...

What books do you think about when you hear the term Banned Books; do you envision classics like Huck Finn or The Catcher in the Rye? Or books that you wanted to sneak to read when you were a kid because it had swearing, magic, or sexual content? In fact a book series that has been arguably one of the most beloved in modern history, the Harry Potter series, is still high on the list of Banned Book...

When it comes to Native American heritage, most Americans have woefully inadequate knowledge. They may have heard of Squanto or Sacajawea, but that is the extent of their understanding. A 2018 research project conducted by The First Nations Development Institute and Echo Hawk Consulting found that most Americans think there aren’t many Native Americans left in the country, which just isn’t true. T...

This episode marks the end of Season 4, and new episodes will begin airing on July 7th. We’re closing Season 4 with Ben Self, who is a teacher and contributor to Mockingbird, an organization that describes itself as being “devoted to connecting the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life.” It’s a progressive group and Ben runs their new online book club which focuses more on spiritual...

It goes without saying that you can be a book lover whether you read 1 book a year or 200. But those book lovers who consume books like the potato chips no one can resist, reading over 100 books a year, are a little unique. We couldn't be happier to welcome Jacqui Daves Isser to the show. Jacqui is a middle school librarian who lives outside Austin TX but she is also a "super reader". She read 168...

This week we are focusing on butterflies and biking in book form. Sara Dykman is an adventurer and wildlife biologist whose focus is primarily amphibians. Several years ago, however, she felt a calling to bring awareness to the plight of the Monarch butterfly. So she took her adventurer spirit and migrated on her bike along with the Monarch from Mexico to Canada and back again. Her 10,000 mile jou...