Book Club for Masochists: a Readers' Advisory Podcast

Battle of the Books 2020! It's the one time a year that we all read the same book! We each pitch a title and our listeners vote and decide on which it will be. Our possibilities include Pet by Akwaeke Emezi, Best of all Possible Worlds by Karen Lord, My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education by Jennine Capó Crucet, and An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Which book should we all read?

• Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (RJ's pick)
• Best of all Possible Worlds by Karen Lord (Meghan's pick)
• My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education by Jennine Capó Crucet (Anna's pick)
• An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (Matthew's pick)

• Vote for which book we all read! (deadline is July 1st)

Our Shortlists

• RJ
• • Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
  • Circe by Madeline Miller
  • The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
• Anna
• • Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman
  • Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
  • Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
• Matthew
• • Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
  • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
• Meghan
• • Normal People by Sally Rooney
  • The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
  • Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
  • Burnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
  • The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
  • Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
  • Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Other Media we Mentioned

• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (the 1000 page, one sentence book)
• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
• Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Links, Articles, and Things

• Episode 079 - Which Book Should We Read? (our "book pitch" episode from last year, includes shortlists)
• Episode 083 - The Fifth Season (our "we all read the same book" episode from last year)
• Domestic Fiction (encylopedia.com)
• A writer chronicles her "time among the whites" (Vox)
• Another Thing the Book Burning at Georgia Southern Reveals (Inside Higher Ed)
• Jennine Capó Crucet and Post-Trump Latinx Literature (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• Hark! (RJ's winter holiday music podcast)

Bingo sheets!

• The bingo sheets we made for episode 50.
• What should we add to updated bingo sheet?

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

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Join us again on Tuesday, July 7th we'll be talking about the genre of Entertainment (Non-Fiction)!

Then on Tuesday, July 21st we'll be discussing Summer Reading/Challenges!

This episode we're discussing Literary Fiction! We talk about books that win awards, writing as art, reading books because other people think they're good, whether YA literary fiction exists, literary fiction vs literary merit, real vs unreal reading, the pandemic allowing us to check out quick read books for months at a time, the BDSM awards, bookshelf bragging, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read This Month

• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
• • Spoilers for this book in the podcast!
• A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Other Media We Mentioned

• Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
• Us Conductors by Sean Michaels
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
• White Noise by Don DeLillo
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
• Loose Time by RJ Edwards (won the 2019 National Magazine Award for fiction)
• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
• The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

Links, Articles, and Things

• Literary Fiction Readers' Advisory with Meghan Savage
• • Literary Fiction guide
• Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction
• Is Literary Fiction Elitist?
• Forget Literary Fiction. Is Reading Anything Elitist?
• Yes, literature is elitist… thank God!
• Crepuscular (definition)
• Magic realism (Wikipedia)
• Speculative fiction (Wikipedia)
• Washoe (chimpanzee) (Wikipedia)
• National Geographic, June, 1980 (Living With Orangutans)
• Bookcase Credibility (@BCredibility) (Twitter)
• Lego Treehouse that Matthew and Anna built
• • Here's a photo of someone else's copy of the Young Animal poster that Anna mentioned

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, June 16th we'll each be pitching a book we think all of us should read and discuss on the podcast! You get to vote!

Then on Tuesday, July 7th we'll be talking about the genre of Entertainment (Non-Fiction)!

This episode we're talking about Comfort Reads! We discuss what makes something a comfort read, re-reading books, Animal Crossing, nostalgia, horror movies, problematic faves, listening to music on repeat, and more! Plus: Special guest stars galore!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Comfort Reads Discussed

• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
• Dear Prudence (and the other Slate advice columns)
• Captain Awkward
• Carolyn Hax
• Ask A Manager
• Dear Sugar
• Dumbing of Age by David Willis
• Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran
• YU + ME = Dream by Megan Rose Gedris
• Books by Tamora Pierce
• Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling
• The Others series by Anne Bishop
• Books by Mary Roach
• Books by Sarah Vowell
• Books by David Sedaris
• Get Fuzzy series by Darby Conley
• • Read online
• Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson
• • Read online
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• Tales from Another Mother Runner: Triumphs, Trials, Tips, and Tricks from the Road edited by Sarah Bowen Shea and Dimity McDowell
• Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
• • Desert Island Discworld podcast
• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
• Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce

Comfort Reads Mentioned by Our Guests

• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Batman: Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean
• Mountains and Rivers Without End by Gary Snyder
• • Includes Night Highway 99
• Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal
• Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
• Grease Bats by Archie Bongiovanni
• The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
• The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm, Rico Renzi, and others.
• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North and Erica Henderson
• Pastwatch series by Orson Scott Card
• Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card

• (Thank you to Inti, Kelsey, Helen, Jean, and Sam!)

Other Media we Mentioned

• Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake
• Anne of Green Gables (1985 film) (Wikipedia)
• Jack Reacher series by Lee Child
• Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
• Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
• Diablo (Wikipedia)
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Wikipedia)

Books We Discovered Because of the Podcast

• Red Spider White Web by Misha
• Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
• Your Republic Is Calling You by Young-Ha Kim
• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Links, Articles, and Things

• ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response) (Wikipedia)
• HEA stands for "Happily Ever After"
• Audio Cassette Tape Open Close Play Stop by Bertrof
• Episode 089 - Other People's Faves (that we do not like)
• The Besties Podcast: Animal Crossing New Horizons will save us all!

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Send Us Your Comfort Reads!

• Email them to [email protected]!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, June 2nd we'll be discussing the genre of Literary Fiction.

Then on Tuesday, June 16th we'll each be pitching a book we think all of us should read and discuss on the podcast! You get to vote!

This episode we're discussing non-fiction Library and Information Studies books! We talk about how useful we find webinars, reading things for our jobs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, comic books, digital preservation, difficulties accessing digital material through libraries, feminist pedagogy, debunking misinformation, how we track articles and things we want to read, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Recommend

• "Smelly Knowledge": An Information Audit of the Sunnydale High Library in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Rebecka Sheffield
• • "Computer's don't smell"
• Comics and Critical Librarianship: Reframing the Narrative in Academic Libraries edited by Olivia Piepmeier and Stephanie Grimm
• The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation by Trevor Owens
• Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction by Maria T. Accardi
• The Debunking Handbook by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky
• • Download

Other Learning Objects We Mentioned

• Jbrary
• Storytime Underground
• Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out edited by K.R. Roberto
• Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front edited by K.R. Roberto
• Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning: Instructional Literacy for Library Educators by Char Booth
• In the Library with the Lead Pipe
• Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves by Fobazi Ettarh
• New Librarians and the Practice of Everyday Life by Alison Elizabeth Skyrme and Lisa Levesque
• The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness: An Empathy-Driven Approach to Solving Problems, Preventing Conflict, and Serving Everyone by Ryan J. Dowd
• • Website
• Reading Picture Books With Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See by Megan Dowd Lambert

Links, Articles, and Things

• Library and information science (Wikipedia)
• Matthew's Google Scholar account
• Matthew's ORCID account (lists more publications than Google Scholar)
• GNCRT / ALIA Crossover Event: Comics Librarians Talk Shop Across the World (Webinar Matthew was in)
• Literary Fiction Readers' Advisory with Meghan Savage at RA in a Half Day 2014 (preview for next month's episode)
• BCLA Readers' Advisory Interest Group
• Library Juice Press
• critlib.org (Critical Librarianship)
• Various superhero characters (all Wikipedia)
• • Tyroc
  • Blade
  • Storm
  • Batgirl
  • Barbara Gordon
  • Gwenpool
  • Gwen Stacy
  • Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider
  • Deadpool
• FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) (Wikipedia)
• Feminist pedagogy (Wikipedia)
• ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education
• GLAM (industry sector) (Wikipedia)
• Episode 054 - How We Ended Up Working in Libraries

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, May 19th when we'll be talking about Comfort Reads!

Then on Tuesday, June 2nd we'll be discussing the genre of Literary Fiction!

We're talking about Books and Stuff! Yes, it's time for one of our occasional "media we actually enjoyed" episodes. We talk about baking, sentient suits of armour, short stories, webcomics, podcasts, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things we Recommend

• The Space Traders by Derrick Bell (archive.org link to story)
  • Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora edited by Sheree Thomas
• Delicious in Dungeon, vol. 1 by Ryoko Kui
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman
• The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
• On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
  • Webcomic version
• Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer
  • Webcomic version
• The Sandman, vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III, and Todd Klein
• Saturday by Oge Mora
• À qui la frite ? by Chloé Varin
• A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark
• Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
• Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen
• Simon and Martina (YouTube)
• Reply All, episode 158, The Case of the Missing Hit
• 99% Invisible, episode 389: Whomst Among Us Let The Dogs Out
  • Who Let The Dogs Out documentary trailer
• Mango Languages (check for access through your local library's website!)
• Super Fun Sexy Times by Meredith McClaren
• When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll
• Mis(h)adra by Iasmin Omar Ata
• Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers edited by Cat Fitzpatrick and Casey Plett
  • Download a free PDF!

Other Media we Mentioned

• Get Ready For This by 2 Unlimited
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Wikipedia)
• I Tried Making DOOM Armor Out of Foam (Doom X Animal Crossing cosplay)
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (Wikipedia)
• Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
• Second Life (Wikipedia)
• Scott Pilgrim, vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Links, Articles, and Things

• Dark dining (Wikipedia)
• Martian Manhunter (Wikipedia)
• Kill Bill Ironside Siren Sound
• Best Graphic Novels for Adults Reading List
  • Submit a nomination
• Folk games in Animal Crossing (Twitter thread)
• Shing Yin Khor's Animal Crossing art installations
• Marina Abramović's "The Artist is Present"

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, May 5th it's our 100th episode when we'll be discussing the non-fiction genre of Libraries and Information!

Then on Tuesday, May 19th we'll be talking about Comfort Reads!

This episode we're talking about Historical Fiction! We discuss how far in the past something has to be before it counts as historical fiction, whether reading fiction is supposed to be enjoyable, anachronisms and inaccuracies (both purposeful and accidental), and historical pandemics. Plus: Someone's power goes out half way through the recording!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read

• The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
• • Review in The Guardian
• Stage Dreams by Melanie Gillman
• An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole
• Cut to the Quick by Kate Ross
• Tom Thomson, esquisses du printemps by Sandrine Revel
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
• A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
• Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
• • Lavinia (Wikipedia)
• Tidelands by Philippa Gregory

Other Media We Mention

• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
• Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon
• After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson
• Yes, Roya by C. Spike Trotman and Emilee Denich
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (Wikipedia)
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
• The Sky Is Falling by Kit Pearson
• The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
• The Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell
• Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
• Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game) (Wikipedia)
• Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary M. Talbot, Bryan Talbot, and Kate Charlesworth
• The Witches of New York by Ami McKay
• HHhH by Laurent Binet
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
• Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
• Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen

Links, Articles, and Things

• Why people are turning to pandemic fiction to help process the Covid-19 crisis
• Crash Course in Historical Fiction (Webinar)
• • Webinar Slides
• Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction (Coursera course)
• Historical Novel Society - Defining the Genre
• COVID-19 Myths, Debunked (comics!) by Whit Taylor and Allyson Shwed
• Why historians should write fiction

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, April 21st when we'll let you know about Other Media We've Been Enjoying!

Then on Tuesday, May 5th it's our 100th episode and we'll be discussing the non-fiction genre of Libraries and Information!

This episode we're talking about Objectifying Books! We discuss how books make the places we live feel like homes, how and when we give away books, paperbacks vs hardbacks, judging books by their covers, book smells, arranging bookshelves, fake books, books as design elements, what we use as bookmarks, the underpants of a book, and more.

Plus: What we do with books that misbehave!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Media We Mention

• Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men (podcast)
• X-Statix Omnibus by Peter Milligan, Mike Allred, and others (Amazon says it's 3.5 Kg / 7.8 pounds)
• Books on my shelf that I have not read by Anna Ferri
• Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions by Alberto Manguel
• The Wild Swans by Thomas Aquinas Maguire (blog post)
• • The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen (Wikipedia)
• Chainmail Bikini: The Anthology of Women Gamers
• The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O'Neill
• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
• Runaways, Vol. 8: Dead End Kids by Joss Whedon, Christina Strain, and Michael Ryan
• • A different cover
• The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Links, Articles, and Things

• Todd Klein talks about lettering Sandman and other Neil Gaiman comics
• In Defense of Dots: The lost art of comic books (original comic colours vs reprints)
• Colour In Reprints (more about comic colouring and reprints)
• Filling up the tower of books - Rintala Eggertsson's 'Ark' book tower
• Book and Bed Tokyo
• Books published per country per year (Wikipedia)
• Dust jacket (Wikipedia)
• With Romance Novels Booming, Beefcake Sells, but It Doesn't Pay (article about romance novel cover models)
• How Publishing's Floral-Print Trend Came to Rule the World's Bookshelves
• Design: Don't judge a book by its cover, particularly in France
• Bare Necessities: The Tale of the French Cover

Questions

• Do you keep books after you read them?
• Do you buy books to give to people?
• How do you organize your bookshelves?
• What do you do with dust jackets?
• Will you write us a rap to perform in episode 100? Please do!

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, April 7th we'll be discussing the genre of Historical Fiction!

Then on Tuesday, April 21st we'll be talking about recent media we've read, watched, or listened to.

In this episode we're talking about Climate Change and Climate Crisis Non-Fiction! We talk about being depressed, capitalism, actions individuals can take, and more! Plus, we ask the important question: Are scientists people?

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Helen Brown

Things We Read

• Un autre regard sur le climat by Emma
• On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal by Naomi Klein
• The Climate Report: National Climate Assessment-Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States by US Global Change Research
• UN's IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees of Global Warming
• SOS: What You Can Do to Reduce Climate Change by Seth Wynes
• Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich
• History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times by Mary Francis Berry
• UN's IPCC Climate Change and Land report
• Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health by Jay Lemery, Paul Auerbach

Other Media We Mention

• When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink
• Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall
• The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
• The 2019 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Ensuring that the Health of a Child Born Today is not Defined by a Changing Climate
• The EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health: Reports on global food resources and the planetary health diet
• Science Council of Canada reports:
• • Report no.16: It Is Not Too Late Yet
  • Report no. 27: Canada as a Conserver Society: Resource Uncertainties...

Links, Articles, and Things

• Helen's Climate Change and Climate Crisis Reads spreadsheet
• Global Weirding by Katharine Hayhoe
• • Helen says : "I should have mentioned these videos created by a climate scientist that are actually really nice and not depressing to watch. Watching Dr. Hayhoe is a very nice, friendly way to absorb climate science. She also does many interviews, writes articles, and is very active on Twitter."

Suggest new genres or titles!

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Join us again on Tuesday, March 17th we'll be talking about Objectifying Books!

Then on Tuesday, April 7th we'll be discussing the genre of Historical Fiction!

This episode we're discussing Ratings, Reviews, and Tags! We talk about subject headings, our most used tags, malicious metadata, how we use star-based rating systems, the value we see in bad reviews, art styles that are morally wrong, and more!

Plus: A data-driven analysis to find the most unfinished book on Goodreads!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Media We Mention

• My Ideal Bookshelf edited by Thessaly La Force
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• Guillermo del Toro's Penguin Horror line
• Yotsuba&!, Vol. 11 by Kiyohiko Azuma
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Links, Articles, and Things

• Folksonomy (Wikipedia)
• Tag (metadata) (Wikipedia)
• Library of Congress Subject Headings (Wikipedia)
• BiblioCommons (Wikipedia)
• OverDrive (Wikipedia)
• Hoopla (Wikipedia)
• BoardGameGeek's list of top games
• Scarleteen | Sex Education For The Real World
• Spider Reviews by Jenny Nicholson
• Bic Pens 'For Her' Get Hilariously Snarky Amazon Reviews

What are the most unfinished books according to Goodreads?*

1. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
2. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
5. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
6. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
7. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
8. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

*Based upon the top 50 most tagged titles from these shelves. Data taken on 2020-01-20.

• abandoned
• couldn't finish
• did not finish
• didn't finish
• dnf
• gave up
• gave up on
• never finished
• unfinished

(I missed "not finished".)

Here's the spreadsheet if you want to see the other titles.

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Join us again on Tuesday, March 3rd we'll be discussing Non-Fiction Climate Change books!

Then on Tuesday, March 17th we'll be talking about Objectifying Books!

This month we're reading the genre of Chick Lit Romance. Does it exist and if so, what should it be called? Plus: The poor portrayal of library jobs in fiction, not being able to connect with people in novels who are desperate to get married, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), World of Warcraft romances, post-feminist fiction, picking books based on the cover, and more!

(Our apologies for use of the word "real" in relation to biological families in this episode. Adopted families are real families too.)

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read

• Dear Emma by Katie Heaney
• When Katie Met Cassidy by Camille Perri
• • 'When Katie Met Cassidy' Is The Lesbian Chick Lit Romance Of The Summer
• The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai
• Lost and Found Sisters by Jill Shalvis
• Nappily Ever After by Trisha R. Thomas
• Almost Single by Advaita Kala
• • India's Cheeky 'Chick Lit' Finds an Audience
• Tall, Dark & Dead by Tate Hallaway
• The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
• Under the Table by Stephanie Evanovich

Other Media We Mention

• Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory
• The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
• The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
• The Boy Next Door by Meg Cabot
• Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
• Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros
• Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
• The Red Satin Collection by Giselle Renarde
• Casper Gets His Wish by R. Cooper (gay elf romance)
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• • "Laura was, is, a lawyer, although when I met her she was a different kind of lawyer to the one she is now: then, she worked for a legal aid firm (hence, I guess, the clubbing and the black leather motorcycle jacket). Now, she works for a City law firm (hence, I guess, the restaurants and the expensive suits and the disappearance of the spiky haircut and a previously unrevealed taste for weary sarcasm) not because she underwent any kind of political conversation, but because she was made redundant and couldn't find any legal aid work."
• Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Links, Articles, and Things

• Romance is publishing's most lucrative genre. Its biggest community of writers is imploding (article about RWA/Romance Writers of America)
• Readers' Advisory for Library Staff (Facebook Group)
• Chick Lit (French Wikipedia)
• Smart Bitches Trashy Books - Bookfinder results for Chick Lit
• Collection Development "Chick Lit": Hip Lit for Hip Chicks (Library Journal)

• What Was Chick Lit? A Brief History From the Inside by Lucinda Rosenfeld

• Drunk Booksellers Podcast: Ep 13: Bea & Leah Koch, The Ripped Bodice
• New adult fiction (Wikipedia)
• Sexy Lamp Test

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, February 18th we'll be talking about ratings, reviews, and tagging systems for books.

Then on Tuesday, March 3rd we'll be discussing Climate Change Non-Fiction!