Book Cougars Podcast: Two Middle-Aged Women on the Hunt for a Good Read

We talk about our Top Ten Books of 2020 with special guest Russell Gray of Ink and Paper Blog. There was only one duplicate, so that means 29 books to add to your reading lists! It is a wonderful, eclectic group of books including fiction, horror, memoir, nonfiction, thriller, and more! And we announce our next giveaway! Subscribe to our newsletter by January 10th to be automatically entered to win.

We had the pleasure of chatting with Bill Goldstein about his formative years as a reader, working at Publisher’s Weekly, meeting and interviewing authors, his writing process, and his bookshelves. Bill is a legend in the book industry and we are thrilled to have had the chance to speak with him. Chris is reading about productivity techniques as well as Daring Greatly with Brené Brown. Emily read Olive, Again and then, not wanting to leave the world of Crosby, Maine and Olive Kitteridge behind, managed two Couch Biblio Adventures with the author, Elizabeth Strout.

We are excited to celebrate our 4th Anniversary or Birthday!? So many amazing years of books and biblio adventures. In this episode we chat about a Brexit romance, eel behavior, female hysteria, poetry, serial killers, white advantage vs. white privilege, wintering, and more.

We talk with Patrick Sweeney to learn more about EveryLibrary and what they are doing to help build support for libraries in the United States. We share a multitude of Couch Biblio Adventures including the Charleston to Charleston Literary Festival, National Book Awards Ceremony, and the Texas Book Festival. And we were pleasantly surprised to discover that we both read Emma Donoghue's newest book, The Pull of the Stars.

We discuss our readalong of Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi. She is the first Omani woman to have a novel translated into English and it is the first novel originally written in Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize. Lots of firsts for Alharthi! We also chat about a big stack of books, virtual biblio adventures galore, and a surprise upcoming joint read of Emma Donoghue’s newest book, The Pull of the Stars.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Hank Phillippi Ryan who has won 37 Emmy awards for her investigative reporting! She brings this knowledge to the table when she sits down to write her Charlotte McNally Mystery series, Jane Ryland Thrillers, and multiple stand-alone books, including her most recent, The First to Lie. We also discuss the importance of starting your holiday shopping early this year and share our 2020 Holiday Gift Ideas including a chat with the owner of Bookplate Ink, Karen Gardner. Hold on for the ride, this episode is loooong, put packed with goodness!

Chris and Emily share admiration for the poet Mary Oliver and suggest a hack for getting more poetry reading into your life. They both did quite a bit of reading and chat about a lot of books! Authors mentioned include V.E. Schwab, Deesha Philyaw, Jennifer Risher, Kim Powers, P. Djèlí Clark, and Joseph O' Connor, to name a few.

On this episode, we bid a bittersweet farewell to our first recording studio. We also chat about a handful of virtual literary events including a joint jaunt via The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s literary festival. The event was titled Audre Lorde and Political Warfare and featured Roxane Gay, Mahogany L. Browne, Tracy K. Smith, and Salamishah Tillet. Chris began reading a memoir about wealth and Emily escaped into the world of Addie Larue.

Chris finished All the Devils Are Here, the newest book from Louise Penny in her Inspector Gamache Series.  Emily is reading the soon-to-be published Magic Lessons, by Alice Hoffman, her prequel to Practical Magic and Rules of Magic. They both talk about their affinity for these two authors and what it is like to meet someone you greatly admire, and try to find words to say, when your knees are knocking together from nerves!

We chat about the BIG BOOKS we have been reading and announce our upcoming readalong, Celestial Bodies, by Jokha Alharthi. Chris took a drive through Glastonbury where she discovered three libraries. Emily listened to the Quarantine Tapes with Paul Holdengraber and his guest, Min Jin Lee.