Behind the Bookshelves

Medellee Antonioli is part of the new generation of booksellers. The 34-year-old is now the proud owner of a used bookstore after buying the Used Book Emporium in Bozeman, Montana. She joins us to discuss the joys and challenges of buying a bookshop, and fulfilling one of her dreams. If you’ve ever wanted to own a bookstore, then this podcast interview is for you.

A bestiary is an encyclopedia of animals, both real and mythical. Popular in the Middles Ages, these books often featured beautiful illuminated illustrations of unicorns and other fantastic beasts. The Getty Museum in LA is currently staging an exhibition called 'Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World', and Larissa Grollemond, from the Getty, joins us to explain the significance of these remarkable books.

Our is guest is Matthew Budman, the author of Book Collecting Now: The Value of Print in a Digital Age. His book is a complete guide to collecting in the modern world. We discuss the new generation of young book collectors and the rise of female collectors.

Author Jen Campbell has numerous strings to her bow. She's written non-fiction, poetry, short stories and children's picture books, as well as being a book reviewer and a podcaster. Jen's love of books, fairy tales and storytelling shines through in her writing. We discuss dragons, bookshops, bookselling, and how villains have been traditionally portrayed in fiction.

We interview Ciara Farrell who is the Library and Collections Manager at the Kennel Club, the UK’s largest organisation dedicated to protecting and promoting the health and welfare of dogs. If you have almost any question about a dog, then this specialist library, founded in 1873, has the resources to answer it.

We interview Carly Maris, the founder of the Pinup Book Club, a community dedicated to reading the books from Marilyn Monroe’s personal library of 400+ titles, and also appreciating pinup culture.

We interview Nicole Kilburn, who is an anthropologist at Camosun College in Victoria, BC. Nicole is the author of a book called The Future has an Ancient Heart: Southern Italian Food Traditions in a Modern World. So that means we are talking about Italy, food and history.

We interview Anthony Casillo who repairs, collects and sells vintage typewriters. He is the author of a book called Typewriters: Iconic Machines from the Golden Age of Mechanical Writing, which features 80 machines from his personal collection. We speak about Tom Hanks, Ian Fleming, carrying typewriters on the subway, repairs and the dusty typewriter that started Anthony's interest in these machines.

Our guest is British author and journalist Alex Johnson, who has written about garden sheds, book lists, and book towns. The interview ranges from George Bernard Shaw's writing shed to the books that Ikea use in catalog photography and Scotland's beautiful book town.

Should be simple? But there’s a whole world of jargon to understand. From foxing to marginalia, we attempt to explain the terminology of the used book business and offer some golden rules to remember when buying a secondhand copy.