Blind Date With a Book

Today, we're setting up Mariah Oller! Mariah is a cell biologist turned tarot reader, artist, and educator. Her clients include celebrities, surgeons, therapists, professors, attorneys and more. Her work has been featured in Bustle, Oprah Daily, and the Today Show. Mariah is Gemini Sun / Libra Moon / Scorpio Rising, and loves to garden in the spring. She’s a self-proclaimed snob about textures and loves the show Broad City. She recently read and loved Circe and The Cloisters, and doesn’t like books with disempowered women.

Bookstore

Wordsworth Bookstore in Little Rock, Arkansas

Books Mentioned

Today, we're setting up Ellpetha Tsivicos, a Cypriot-American artist, performer, director, author, filmmaker, and singer, who says her home is on stage. Her production company, One Whale’s Tale, creates maximalist work that blends music, dance, film, food and narrative storytelling — turning plays into multidisciplinary performances. Two recent books she loved were Song of Achilles + Island of Missing Trees, and she’s down for classic or modern books.

Books we recommended (and please support ⁠East Bay Booksellers⁠)

Today, we're setting up Sarah Cady. Sarah is a nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopist at a university, who also is a partial owner of a plant store. She recently read and loved The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter and The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow. She’s a big fan of farmers market shopping on a Saturday morning, and ending the day with grilling and beers on the porch at home. She’s a gemini who likes Classic books and could give an on the spot ted talk about superconducting magnets or grief. She’s impressed by people who remember to send thank you notes, and loves both the Colin Firth and Matthew MacFadyen P&P. A quote from her survey is that “there is just something so comforting to me about Regency era lady problems.”

Winning bookstore

Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans

Our picks

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock

Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark

Heartbreaker by Sarah MacLean

Today, we're setting up Victoria Leandra, an award winning journalist who covers food, identity, travel and music for places like HuffPost, VICE, and more. She’s also a content creator and podcaster, well known for her El ADN podcast, listed as one of Spotify’s favorite podcasts of 2022. She considers herself romantic, but likes the random kindness kind of romance, but also is a sucker for the drama of Love is Blind. She admits that she becomes very basic in the fall (apple picking, pumpkin pie, and all of that) but has no apologies for that. She wants a tattoo of Puerto Rico, and is so impressed by stories of mothers thriving. She recently read and enjoyed Where the Crawdads Sing and Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and wants to read more fiction.

The winning bookstore

Garcia Street Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Book picks

Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

Lucie Yi is Not a Romantic by Lauren Ho

Today, we're setting up Gurki Basra. Gurki is a thought leader with an MBA from UT Austin and currently enrolled in Pepperdine’s psychology masters program. She has worked in the fashion and retail industry, having worked at Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus, and numerous other companies as a jewelry buyer. She writes the newsletter Happily Ever Single, and was a reluctant TV reality star for Netflix’s first dating reality show, Dating Around. She recently loved and enjoyed Lori Gottleib’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman. She loves hiking and sleeping in on Saturdays, and is a total summer person. Her on the spot ted talk would be about how going on a reality TV show showed her how complicated humans are, and she thinks everyone should watch Insecure. Gurki, welcome!

The winning bookstore

Greedy Reads in Baltimore, MD

Book picks

Ghosts by Dolly Alderton

Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones

Seek You by Kristen Radtke

How to Be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky

August Blue by Deborah Levy

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

We're setting up Seth Rubin, a queer, trans, and nonbinary Los Angeles-based comedian and writer. Seth’s writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Onion, Reductress, McSweeney’s, and more. They currently write full-time for Jackbox Games and they were named one of Gold Comedy’s 22 Comedians to Watch in 2022. With a PhD in geology up their sleeve, Seth’s on the spot TED talk would be about volcanoes. They’re a snob about ice cream and movies, and they don’t consider themselves a romantic. A perfect Saturday for Seth includes waking up late, brunch and the Saturday crossword, and going to the movies or a bookstore. Seth has twenty tattoos, but would love to add one of a sandwich. Seth recently read and enjoyed Bunny by Mona Awad and Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. Seth, welcome!

The winning bookstore: Marble City Books

The picks

Outline by Rachel Cusk

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

Mrs. S by K. Patrick

People Collide by Isle McElroy

Where to find us:

Find our show online at blinddatewithabookpod.com and @bookmeetcute on Twitter and Instagram. Please follow and tell us all the books you've fallen in love with recently.

For our first episode of Season Three, we're setting up Julio Alvarez, creator of the Let’s Go with Julio podcast and founder of Out in Tech, the largest LGBTQ+ tech networking community in the world.

After working at several Silicon Valley companies, Julio struck out on his own to become a coach and speaker. Julio recently read and enjoyed The Garden Within and The Way of Integrity, but shies away from books that are too analytical. He wants to relax. His dream Saturday is a bike ride around Central Park, scrambled eggs and salmon on toast, followed by a low-key afternoon.

His karaoke go-to is “More than Able”, and he thinks everyone should watch Titanic and used to have it in the background every night for years before bed.

The winning bookstore

The Boerne Bookshop in Boerne, Texas

Our picks

How to be an Adult in Relationships by David Richo

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Family Meal by Bryan Washington

The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter

The Book of Love by Kelly Link

Congratulations, the Best Is Over! By R. Eric Thomas

Looking to cozy down with a book this winter? In this episode, we discuss the definition of a "winter read" (and if there is one), and share our picks for books to read this season.

Books Mentioned

On this special bonus episode of Blind Date With a Book, we sit down with Meghan Phillips to discuss our favorite boarding school novels. Meghan is the author of the upcoming flash fiction chapbook Abstinence Only. Titles mentioned include:

Bonus picks

On this episode, we're setting up Sterling Melcher. Sterling is an multidisciplinary artist who lives in Philly. His work investigates the connections between performance, absurd philosophy, hard sciences, and the political landscape. He also manages a restaurant, so his weekends and nights are usually busy. Sterling’s favorite season is fall, for its mood lighting and perfect wardrobe options, and his dream vacation would be backpacking in Scandinavia, then skipping over to St. Petersburg before flying back to the US. He’s a self proclaimed movie snob, especially in that he believes movies should be experienced in a theater with others, and his perfect double feature is watching the slasher film Mandy, starring Nicholas Cage, leading into the 2019 film version of Cats.

The picks

Open Me by Lisa Locasio

The Seventh Mansion by Maryse Meijer

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton

Stay and Fight by Madeline Ffitch

An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie

Where to find us:

Find our show online at blinddatewithabookpod.com and @bookmeetcute on Twitter and Instagram. Please follow and tell us all the books you've fallen in love with recently.