Behind the Bookshelves

Sherlockian is the American term for someone who is devoted to Sherlock Holmes. We interview Denny Dobry from the Beacon Society – an organization dedicated to providing educational resources about Sherlock Holmes to schools and libraries. We discuss Sherlock’s first appearances in print, why Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories are still relevant today, and how the stories have remained popular thanks to Hollywood, television and Sherlockian societies like the Beacon Society.

We speak to Peter Robinson from the University of Saskatchewan about how his team has just launched an app that brings us Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original colloquial Middle English. The free app is the first edition in a planned series. It features a 45-minute audio performance of the General Prologue from the Tales along with the digitized manuscript and supporting content. We discuss Chaucer's influence on the English language, his social status in the 14th century and his other writing work.

We are joined by bookseller David Abel who owns Passages Bookshop in Portland, Oregon. David discusses his life in bookselling from being a book scout to running bookshops in New York, Albuquerque and now Portland. We also learn how a break-in recently affected Passages Bookshop and how a famous bibliophile offered to help.

Bestselling author David Baldacci speaks to us about the Amelia Island Book Festival, which occurs in February. David, honorary chair of the 2020 festival, explains the appeal of Amelia Island, why he supports book festivals, and reveals the most unusual question that he's been asked at a festival.

If you like pubs and literary history then you will enjoy this podcast. We interview Eric Chase. His company offers literary pub crawls and walking tours around New York's Greenwich Village and Brooklyn too. We discuss Dylan Thomas and the White Horse Tavern, Washington Square's long history, and numerous authors from Edith Wharton to Jack Kerouac. We also discover who is most likely to over-indulgence on a literary pub crawl. Buckle up for a books and beer podcast.

We are joined by Erik Kwakkel, a professor in book history at the University of British Columbia. Erik explains the commercial trade behind medieval manuscripts, including the role of scribes in the period before the invention of movable type. We learn how these tradesmen advertised their services, where you'd find them, and about their customers.

We're talking about mountaineering books with Eric Rueth, the library manager of the American Alpine Club in Golden, Colorado. The library has more than 50,000 books covering mountaineering history, mountain culture, and climbing routes. We discuss George Mallory, Everest, Into Thin Air, and the origins of mountaineering books.

We are joined by Aimee Peake, who is the owner of Bison Books in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. This antiquarian bookshop opened in 2000 and Aimee took over the business in 2010. It offers around 20,000 books for sale. We discuss Aimee’s start in bookselling aged 19, her mentor, the infamous Winnipeg winters, her bookstore dog-in-training, and the joy of Kitchen Confidential.

We are joined by author & bibliophile Stuart Kells, who has written a book called Shakespeare’s Library. He investigates the mystery of what happened to Shakespeare’s library. For centuries, people have searched for it – but there has been no trace of the Bard’s manuscripts, books, or letters. We also touch on booksellers, fraudsters, actors and the vital question of who actually wrote the Shakespeare plays.

We are joined by William Kalush, who is the director of the Conjuring Arts Research Center in New York. The Center is dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of performance magic, including the history of playing cards, ventriloquism, juggling, deception, and sleight of hand tricks. The Center offers an extensive library of books and periodicals. and aims to provide the world’s most expansive collection of material relating to conjuring. We discuss Ricky Jay, Tommy Cooper, Houdini, the history of conjuring books, and how the Center was created.