Another Book on the Shelf

Another Book on the Shelf

By Gen and JetteArtsBooks
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Another Book on the Shelf episodes

  • 058 - 2020 Holiday Wrap Up

    Gen and Jette talk about some of their favourite books of 2020. We chat about writing through the pandemic, reading slumps, and what we're looking forwards to in 2021. We know things won't magically be better on New Year's Day, but making it through the year still feels like a reason to celebrate!


    Thank you to all of our listeners! We hope you all have a wonderful holiday and Happy New Year! We'll be back in January, kicking off 2021 with a discussion of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. In the meantime, keep an eye out for our next blog post about our 2021 reading challenge.

    Show Notes:
    Whatever else happened in 2020, it was at least a great year for books.
    If we thought getting Kobos would reduce our book buying, we were very wrong!
    As Canadians we don't need beach reads. We have #snowdriftread instead! (We're going to make this hashtag trend, just you wait.)
    Check out the Creative Writing Program at Humber College.
    We love Barre3 and Yoga with Adriene!
    Definitely watch The Flight Attendant and His Dark Materials on HBO!

    Books Mentioned
    The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
    Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
    Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
    Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
    The Rural Diaries by Hialrie Burton Morgan
    Another Country by James Baldwin
    The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann
    If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
    Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer
    Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
    The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
    The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes by Elissa R. Sloan
    The Best of Me by David Sedaris
    The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
    The Guest List by Lucy Foley
    Mexican Gothic by Silivia Moreno-Garcia

    Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!




    33 min
  • 057 - Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

    Gen and Jette give all their love to Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas! We're shifting our Christmas tradition away from a certain wizarding series to talk about fantasy with incredible trans rep instead. We spend most of the episode gushing about how much we loved this YA paranormal debut, the magical world building, and loveable characters. Not to mention some quality pet content (we're looking at you Purrcaso, Donatello, and Michaelangelo).


    Show Notes:

    We battled with some technical difficulties, so apologies if some parts are a bit disjointed.
    You can read Daniel Radcliffe's full statement on The Trevor Project website.
    We are the most incoherent when we love a book beyond measure because all we want to do is shout about how good it is.
    Shout out to Bones for incorporating flower meanings into their episodes.
    Aiden Thomas' next book, Lost in the Never Woods, is a reimagining of Peter Pan and comes out March 23, 2021.




    48 min
  • 056 - NaNoWriMo 2020

    Gen and Jette talk all things writing for NaNoWriMo! We talk about books that inspire us, discovering what we like to write, and how making this podcast has helped us grow as writers. Congrats to the all the NaNo writers who hit their 50k word goals and to all those who didn't, but got some more words than that what they started with.


    Show Notes:
    Apologies if you can hear a dog barking in the background, Gen's room is not soundproof and one of her neighbours has a loud dog.
    Fun drinking game: take a shot every time we mention Paper Houses (we'll be talking about it forever).
    Gen mentions Supernatural, of course.
    *whispers* Jake Gyllenhaal
    If you have a journaling practice, please tell us about it. We don't know how to do this thing!

    Books and Authors Mentioned:
    Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
    The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes by Elisa R. Solan
    Paper Houses by Dominique Fortier
    Fauna by Christiane Vadnais
    You Are Not What We Expected by Sidura Ludwig
    Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
    In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
    The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
    This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
    Nocturnal Animals by Austin Wright
    Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
    Theft By Finding by David Sedaris
    Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
    Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
    Another Country by James Baldwin
    Toni Morrison
    Courtney Summers--Sadie, The Project
    Jedidiah Jenkins--To Shake the Sleeping Self, Like Streams to the Ocean
    Elizabeth Acevedo--The Poet X, With the Fire on High, Clap When You Land
    Chuck Palahniuk--Fight Club, Damned, Doomed, Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different

    49 min
  • 055 - Another Country by James Baldwin

    Gen and Jette read their first James Baldwin novel - Another Country - and they are in love. While Baldwin tackles tough themes that are still relevant today, he does it in the most beautiful of ways. This novel paints a picture of New York City in the 1950s through its characters, weaving their ways through life and trying to find themselves through relationships. The story touches on extramarital affairs, bisexualilty, and interracial couples.

    Show Notes:

    *whispers* Jake Gyllenhaal
    Jake Gyllenhaal and Colm Toíbín: In Conversation The Year of James Baldwin
    Paris Review Interview - James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78

    Other James Baldwin works mentioned:

    Notes of a Native Son
    Giovanni's Room
    Go Tell It On The Mountain
    If Beale Street Could Talk
    The Fire Next Time

    Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!

    53 min
  • 054 - Another Cup of Tea - 2nd Anniversary Hangout
    It's our two year anniversary! It's hard to believe it's been two years since we sat at Page One cafe and decided we'd make a podcast. Since then, we recorded 53 episodes (almost 7 days worth of minutes) and had over 3500 listens in 52 different countries. We have a shiny new website with multiple blog posts every month. We've worked with wonderful publishers, like House of Anansi Press, Coach House Books, and Wattpad Books. We can't wait for what is next to come!
    Show Notes
    Jette is drinking Cinnamon Bun Chai from David's Tea and Gen is drinking Alpine Punch, also from David's Tea.
    We've both surpassed our Goodreads goals!
    Turns out that our most popular episodes are about non-fiction books. We can't wait to do more!
    How do you get listeners in Antarctica?
    We're loving our Kobo eReaders and learning to love audiobooks.
    *Whispers* Jake Gyllenhaal
    Our Favourite Episodes
    9: Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
    12: To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins
    25: Sadie by Courtney Summers
    40: Learn with SJP Interview
    41: Making A Routine of Writing
    43: You Are Not What We Expected - Interview with Sidura Ludwig
    44: Graphic Novels
    47: Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
    Books Mentioned
    Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
    The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
    Another Country by James Baldwin
    Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
    Gideon the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir
    The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
    The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
    The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
    Serpentine by Philip Pullman
    Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
    The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
    The Guest List by Lisa Foley
    Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
    Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
    Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
    Sea Wall/A Life by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne
    The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
    The Rural Diaries by Hilarie Burton
    The Secret History by Donna Tartt
    The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reid
    Consider This: Moments in my Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk
    My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
    The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
    Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!
    55 min
  • 053 - Extended Canon - New Stories in Old Universes
    Gen and Jette dive into the extended canon of some of their favourite series/universes. We crave more from the characters we love but do we really want more of their stories?
    Show Notes:
    Why is is that extended canon books never quite live up to the original books you fell in love with?
    Do you automatically read extended canon even if you know it might disappoint you? Yes… Yes we do.
    The series that we no longer speak of by the author we do not speak of has a very bad track record with extended canon - The stage play? Really? Yikes.
    What do you call a book series of 4 books - Quartet? Quadriology?
    Did y’all know there was a novella in the Twilight series?
    Jette was wrong - Doctor Sleep the NOVEL does follow the original novel. The film adaptation of Doctor Sleep is a blend of the new novel and the Kubrick film. The story of The Shining and Danny Torrance is so much bigger than the collective consciousness of us all!
    We LOVE our proper architectural blueprints and laid out timelines
    Check out our episode on The Rules of Magic.
    Comic books and superhero stories and grown into almost all extended canon at this point. We talked about this in our Graphic Novels episode too.
    Jette was right - the Batman films we grew up on were considered a series - Batman Forever is listed as a “stand-alone sequel” to Batman Returns (an obvious sequel to Tim Burton’s Batman). Batman & Robin is considered the 4th film in the Warner Brothers series, despite different Batmans and directors throughout.
    Looking back, our episode on The Shale Project is about extended canon too.
    All of the technology and firetruck noises in this episode - sorry!
    Gen doesn’t have self control when it comes to Maggie Stiefvater
    Star Wars has become the definition of extended canon. Films and novelizations and animated series Oh My!
    Authors Mentioned (too many books to list!):
    Stephenie Meyers (Twilight universe)
    Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games universe)
    Phillip Pullman (His Dark Materials universe
    Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle and more)
    Stephen King (All of the books)
    David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas etc)
    Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic series)
    Leigh Bardugo (The Grishaverse and more)
    VE Schwab (Shades of Magic and more)
    Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine series)
    Adaptations:
    BBC His Dark Materials
    The prequel films to the series that we no longer speak of
    Castle Rock
    All 3 Spider-man trilogies - Sorry Tobey and Andrew - Tom for the win
    All 3 Batman series’ (3rd one coming soon)
    Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!
    1 hr 6 min
  • 052 - WattPad Books New Releases

    In Episode 52, Gen and Jette team up with Wattpad Books to discuss two of their fall 2020 releases: Historically Inaccurate by Shay Bravo and The Bro Code by Elizabeth Seibert. Both are debut YA authors with large followings on Wattpad, an online community of writers and readers. Wattpad Books is combines the best of art and science to find new voices in storytelling and elevate their stories. We had a lot of fun talking about these two fall 2020 releases from Wattpad. Be sure to check them out!


    Show Notes:
    Wattpad is based in Toronto. This sends us off on a tangent about Schitt's Creek sweeping the Emmy's. If you haven't watched it yet, do it know. It's excellent. We promise. You can find it on Netflix and CBC Gem. Oh, and the actor who plays Ted is Dustin Milligan.
    Shay Bravo has connected with over 114, 000 followers on Wattpad and Historically Inaccurate won the 2019 Watty Awards.
    Reminder: we will never be spoiler free.
    It might be time to rewatch The Skulls (2000).
    Yes, of course Gen noticed the Supernatural reference in Historically Inaccurate.
    Elizabeth A. Seibert's stories on Wattpad have amassed over 30 million reads. Our minds are blown.
    It's been a very long time since we we've been in high school.
    It's also been a very long time since we thought about Nick Carter.
    If your high school had a pool, let us know!

    Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!




    47 min
  • 051 - Coach House Books Fall Releases

    Gen and Jette talk about Coach House Books' 2020 fall releases. First, The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann, translated by Jen Calleja. The reader travels with Gilbert on a pilgrimage through Japan. Then, The Imago Stage by Karoline Georges, translated by Rhonda Mullins, which follows the narrator as she negotiates between her virtual world and the real world. And lastly, Fauna by Christiane Vadnais, translated by Pablo Strauss. This work connects a series of stories about a climate-changed world. We love working with Coach House Books and had such a great time discussing these new fall releases!


    Show Notes:
    Aokigahara Jukai forest in Japan is more commonly known as the suicide forest.
    The Complete Manual of Suicide is in fact a real book. This is not a recommendation.
    You can read about more about Basho's travels in The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches.
    The 2019 Canada Reads selection translated by Rhonda Mullins is Suzanne by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette.
    Listen to our other Coach House Book Episodes: 36 - Disfigured by Amanda Leduc and 26 - Paper Houses by Dominique Fortier.
    Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859.
    Voyager I launched on September 5, 1977.
    Learn more about the polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba with Ewan McGregor.
    The tale of Daniel in the lions' den appears in Chapter 6 of the Book of Daniel. The painting that Gen was thinking of was this one by Peter Paul Rubens. 


    Books and Media Mentioned:
    The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 8, "Ice"
    Black Swan
    Annihilation and The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer
    Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
    Westworld

    Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!

    1 hr 1 min
  • 050 - From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle

    Gen and Jette discuss Jesse Thistle's memoir - From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way.

    Show Notes:

    • From the Ashes was a Canada Reads finalist. The winner of Canada Reads 2020 was We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib, which also sounds like an excellent read.
    • The term we couldn't recall for Thistle's family in Saskatchewan is Michif "road allowance" people, referring to their living on unused Crown land. 
    • The instances of Indigenous people freezing to do death after being dropped outside city limits by police in the dead of winter actually happened in Saskatoon, not Winnipeg. It's come be known as "starlight tours" - a term that sounds very benign for such a horrific practice. Neil Stonechild was one of these victims. He was 17 years old. 
    • A National Inquiry is looking into the high number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Learn more about these women here: https://www.cbc.ca/missingandmurdered/
    • Go follow Dani Roulette on Instagram @thunderbirdwomanreads for more incredible Indigenous lit content. The incident Jette mentioned that Dani spoke of recently was the death of Brian Sinclair 
    • Read Tracey Lindberg's (author of Birdie) review of From the Ashes
    • Read our September/October book club book, Another Country by James Baldwin.

      • Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!

      56 min
    • 049 - Whodunit - Trying to Solve the Mystery Genre

      Gen and Jette get our their magnifying glasses and trench coats and talk everything mystery. Did you know there are a bunch of different mystery sub-genres, including: bumbling detective, amateur detective, caper/heist, comedy detective, cozy/soft boiled, hardboiled, holmesian, whodunit, and even more? Who knew! 


      Show Notes:

      Agatha Christie has written 66 novels under her own name, 6 under a pseudonym, 14 short stories, and a handful of plays, which have sold over a billion copies worldwide.
      Read more about Agatha Christie in Publisher's Weekly: "In the Study, with a Typewriter"

      Books and Authors Mentioned
      Agatha Christie
      Dorothy L Sayers
      Elizabeth Daly
      Dashiell Hammett
      Raymond Chandler
      Sue Grafton
      P.D. James
      Robert Ludlum
      Tom Clancy
      Mary Higgins Clark
      Riley Sager
      Michael Crichton
      Kathy Reichs
      John Grisham
      Dennis Lehane's Kinsey and Gennaro Series
      Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Series
      Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Series
      Nancy Drew Series
      The Hardy Boys Series
      Dark Places, Sharp Objects, and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
      The Guest List and The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
      Joyland by Stephen King
      One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus
      Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
      I'll Be Gone In the Dark by Michelle McNamara
      The Witches of New York by Ami McKay

      TV Shows and Movies Mentioned
      Knives Out
      James Bond
      Pretty Little Liars
      Bones
      True Blood
      The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley
      Scooby-Doo
      Murder She Wrote
      Columbo
      The Baby-Sitters Club
      Supernatural
      Elementary

      Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! Sign up for our newsletter and add us to Pinterest!

      52 min

    About Another Book on the Shelf

    From the publisher's feed

    We started a book club but never actually talked about the books, so we started a podcast! And here we are almost a decade later.