The mission of getting children to read more is – in my mind – probably one of the noblest ones out there.

That is exactly what my guest today does. Jessica Ewing is the founder & CEO of Literati, which she founded in 2016, after working at the White House and Google. Literati is based in Austin, Texas and it is a curated book subscription service which sends monthly book boxes to their members, depending on their age (from newborn to 12) & reading level. They also have Literati Book Fairs where schools can set up a curated physical library, easy to set up, for children to browse and be exposed to books. I was really excited to talk to Jessica to find out more about this business of how to get kids to read more. 

The books that Jessica mentioned were the following:

Favourite book I’ve never heard of: “The One Hundred Nights of Hero”, by Isabel Greenberg. (2016)

The book Jessica would take to a desert island: “Desert Solitaire”, by Edward Abbey (1968)

The book that changed Jessica’s mind: “Moonwalking with Einstein”, by Joshua Foer (2011)

Her literary hero: Joseph Campbell, the author of “The Power of Myth”

Find Jessica:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicarewing/?hl=en

Literati website: https://literati.com/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

Issues of race & race relations – in real life and in literature – are a difficult subject to broach. Depending on perspective, it can evoke trauma, pain, shame, embarrassment. But is race even the right angle with which to discuss some of these burning questions? 

My guest today belongs to a new generation of thinkers on the subject and has been an active contributor in the public debate. Thomas Chatterton Williams is an American author and cultural critic and visiting professor at Bard University. He’s written extensively - and some might say provocatively - on the subject of race, in numerous articles for the magazine The Atlantic, as well as a 2019 book “Self-Portrait in Black & White” in which he relates his own relationship with the subject of race

I found this book and this interview really enlightening, and I hope you do too.

Here are the books Thomas mentioned during the interview: 

Great books about the subject of race:

Find Thomas:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chattertonwilliams/

Website: https://www.thomaschattertonwilliams.com/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

Today’s episode is about quizzes, especially those that have a literary dimension to them. Today’s guest is Gary Wigglesworth who by day works as Sales and Marketing manager for British Library Publishing. But by night, once a month, he hosts London’s only monthly book quiz for literature lovers, on the first floor of the Betsy Trotwood pub, a charming Victorian establishment in Farringdon. You would not believe the lengths that Gary goes to in order to provide an extensive, detailed, and elaborate quiz that draws on literary knowledge, lateral thinking and above all, teamwork. His first book 'The Book Lover's Quiz Book' was published in 2020 - his second book will be published in October 2023.

Find Gary:

Website: https://www.gpwigglesworth.co.uk/

Twitter: @gpwigglesworth

Buy his book: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/gary-wigglesworth/the-book-lovers-quiz-book/9781472145291/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

The book “Savor: A Chef’s Hunger for More” is the story of Fatima Ali, a young Pakistani-American chef working in the US who was featured on the TV show Top Chef and who was set to become an influential voice in the world of gastronomy when she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. 

My guest today is Fatima Ali’s collaborator Tarajia Morrell who is a New York-based food writer, who’s written numerous food-related pieces for publications like the WSJ Magazine and Departures who was brought in to help Fatima express her story.

The book follows her life from her childhood in Lahore, Pakistan which was the beginning of her love affair with food, to working in leading restaurants in the United States. It's a really powerful book that packs an emotional punch, because it’s about dreams and ambition, love of food & family and how all of that is ultimately so fragile in the face of illness & death. 

Buy the book: https://amzn.eu/d/gH3F7NY

Find Tarajia:

Website: https://www.tarajiamorrell.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tarajiamorrell/?hl=en

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

My guest today is Bill Sherman, who is the director of the Warburg Institute since 2017, following a distinguished career in academia and museums, most recently at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he was director of Research and Collections and head of the V&A Research Institute. In today's episode, we explore how one man's true passion for books and deep sense of curiosity led to the creation of one of the world's most unique and influential libraries. In the late 1870s in Hamburg, Germany, a young boy named Aby Warburg was the heir of a wealthy and influential family of German-Jewish bankers who had built their bank over generations. But Aby Warburg didn't have a head for numbers in business, but rather for books. When he was barely a teen, he made a deal with his little brother Max that he would forfeit to him his right to manage the family bank if Max agreed to provide him with as many books as he wanted for the rest of his life. This deal and his extensive studies in art history and his research into indigenous tribes built the foundation for what would become the Warburg Library for Cultural Knowledge in Hamburg.

The library was moved from Hamburg to London in 1934 after the Nazis came to power in Germany. In London, it became the renowned Warburg Institute, which is located today in Woburn Square in London and is part of the University of London. It's a library with over 360,000 volumes, the largest collection in the world focused on the afterlife of antiquity and the transmission of culture, with a special emphasis on medieval and renaissance studies.

Visit the Warburg Insititute: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/

Find out more about Bill Sherman: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/people/bill-sherman

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

In today’s episode, we discuss the nation of Haiti, a small country in the Caribbean with a history that is equal parts heroic and tragic. It was the first country in the world to be established by a successful slave revolt, following a 12-year war of independence from France in 1804. But it has in recent years been in the news more for its political instability & economic struggles, not to mention a cataclysmic earthquake in 2010 which killed anywhere between 100,000 to 300,000 people.

My guest today is the Haitian author Dimitry Leger who wrote a novel based in the country called “God Loves Haiti” which was published in 2015 and revolves around a cast of characters on the island who are caught in the 2010 earthquake. The book examines the aftermath of this tragedy on the local population, with questions around fate & divine intervention arising from the rubble. There’s an absurdist, tragicomic but fundamentally human tale here which reflects the complex history & culture of Haiti.

In this interview, we talk about the country of Haiti, as seen through his book, what it means to be Haitian and what great literature Dimitry recommends.

Here’s a quick recap of the books that Dimitry mentioned:

Pico Ayer: The Half Known Life, by the British travel writer Pico Iyer

Soleil a Coudre by Jean d’Amerique

Edwige Danticat – Haitian American author

Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Find Dimitry:

Buy his book: https://amzn.eu/d/dKV3By0

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dimitryleger/?hl=en

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dimitryleger?lang=en

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

Sports writing is a genre that I find particularly thrilling because sports is the ultimate form of non-violent competition, and there’s always something at stake. But as many people will tell you, it’s not all about winning, it’s about taking part. My guest today has written a book which might even argue that it’s not about taking part, but that it’s all about the preparation and the extreme lengths some people go to, in order to gain an edge. 

Ed Hawkins is a sports writer who’s published numerous books including “The Lost Boys” a non-fiction exposé, for which he posed undercover to identify a human trafficking network bridging African & European football, and “Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy” which looks at the devastating effect of large betting syndicates in the sport of cricket. He’s also co-written the book “Why We Kneel, How We Rise” with the Jamaican cricket legend Michael Holding that looks at racism across various sports. 

But the book that caught my eye had a more unusual title “The Men on Magic Carpets”. It’s an examination of some fairly outlandish developments in sports training, starting in the 1960s and is inspired by hippyish philosophies around the paranormal abilities of elite athletes and how these could be enhanced and mastered. 

In this interview, we talk about the evolution of sports training, about the characters who devised some of these crazy methods and about the sports writing genre in general. 

In this interview, Ed mentioned the following books:

Jon Ronson – The Men who Stare at Goats which looks at the US Army’s attempts to channel the paranormal.

Will Storr – The Science of Story-Telling – by the British journalist 

George Orwell – Down and Out in Paris & London, 1984

Norman Mailer - The Fight -> about the Muhammad Ali – George Foreman fight

Dave Meghaessy - Out of their League

Find Ed Hawkins:

Twitter: @cricketbetting

Books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Journalist-Ed-Hawkins/e/B00EZZY6X8/ref=aufs_dp_ftatl_dsk

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

My guest today is Tom Ayling, a rare and antiquarian bookseller and cataloguer at Jonkers Rare Books. Jonkers was founded in 1994 and is currently located in Henley on Thames, an idyllic town in England. Their mission has been to source and locate rare and unique books for their clients, some of whom are foremost collectors and institutions in the world. So what makes a book rare? What factors might influence its value? How does one find a rare book? Those were all questions that I wanted to ask Tom and dive a bit deeper into this fascinating business which many book lovers dream about.

Find Jonkers Rare Books:

Website: https://www.jonkers.co.uk/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

In today's episode, I'm speaking to Matthew Campbell, the author of a book called Dead in the Water, which was published in 2022. It's a riveting true story investigation, weaving an unbelievable tale between Yemen, the city of London and Athens. It's a page turner which has the added bonus of making the world of oil shipping completely mesmerizing. For those of you that are yet to read the book, quickly provide you with some context.

In July 2011, an oil tanker called The Brilliant Virtuoso was attacked by a group of Somali pirates off the coast of Yemen, which is a fairly frequent occurrence in those dangerous waters. During the attack, the crew were evacuated off the ship and the ship was set on fire and eventually abandoned as part of the insurance claim process, which was being managed in London. A British investigator living in Yemen was dispatched to the ship to assess the damage, but he immediately detected that something about the pirate narrative rang false before he could investigate further. He was killed by a car bomb in Yemen. This left many questions unanswered, such as was his death connected to the attack or who might have been responsible for either event. In this book, Matthew Campbell tries to untangle a criminal web in an industry known for its secrecy.

Buy the book: https://amzn.eu/d/5Pjz8cX

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

Today’s guest is Elizabeth Semmhack, the director of a Museum, and not just any Museum but one that I hold particularly close to my heart: The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. 

The reason it’s close to my heart is because it was founded by my late grandmother Sonja Bata. In 1946, she married my grandfather who was rebuilding his family’s footwear business. Together, they travelled the world and through these travels, she developed a passion for collecting historic shoes that best represented their cultures and environments. After decades of travelling, she’d accumulated a collection of shoes and as one does, in 1995, she founded this museum.

If ever you’re in Toronto, I really recommend the Bata Shoe Museum, it’s an amazing institution and today the Museum has a collection of over 15,000 pairs, with footwear from all eras and regions. One of my grandmother’s passions was the Arctic regions of northern Canada, and so there’s an amazing collection of circumpolar footwear from local indigenous groups from that region, with whom the Museum works regularly to maintain, preserve and showcase that shoe-making heritage. 

Elizabeth Semmelhack has published several excellent coffee-table books that show the Museum’s collection. In this interview, I discuss with her the role of footwear in societies, as shown through the great books that she’s put together. In this episode, we discuss sneakers, circumpolar boots, virtual footwear and many others.

In this episode, we talked about the following books:

Out of the Box by Elizabeth Semmelhack

The World At Your Feet: Bata Show Museum, 2019

Future Now by Elizabeth Semmelhack

A Taste for China by Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins

Precious Bane by Mary Bane

Visit the Bata Shoe Museum: https://batashoemuseum.ca/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!