Episode Summary:

This week we’re chatting about how books can help our mental health, the kinds of books that work best for us when we’re feeling anxious or down, and we’re discussing the practice of putting trigger warnings in books. Also, we have our RAD Reading Recs of the week plus a few bonus picks!

Spoiler Alert: Spoiler for the book The Push by Ashley Audrain at 42:55, skip ahead one minute to 43:55 mark if you don’t want a spoiler.

Highlights: 

• Roni got a puppy and is feeling loopy from lack of sleep
• Why waiting rooms can be a gift
• Reading and health
• Goat yoga but with teeth
• Calgon, take me away reading moments
• Dark stories in dark times
• Bibliotherapy is a real thing and a cool word
• Someone send Roni recs for dog-themed essay collections!
• That “this is me” feeling when reading
• How A Wrinkle In Time found Dawn at the exact right moment
• Romance, weirdness, and acceptance
• Thoughts on menage and laundry
• The beauty of the guaranteed ending
• Dawn throws shade at Nicholas Sparks (do people still say “throw shade”?)
• Romance vs. “a love story”
• Genre mystery vs. literary mystery vs. cozy mystery
• Dawn’s Apollo 13 anxiety
• Sometimes sad moods and happy comedic books are a bad mix
• What is a trigger warning? 
• Are trigger warnings spoilers?
• Transcending our GenX-ness (but Roni’s not giving up her Doc Martens)
• Our personal experiences with triggers in books
• Roni wants a “Does this book have…?” database
• Different ways authors handle trigger warnings
• Roni let Dawn down by not giving her a trigger warning for a movie
• Bonus books recs 
• The RAD Reading Recs of the week
• Stay tuned for bloopers!

Click here to get the full show notes, including links to all of our recommendations and anything else we mentioned in the show.

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Connect with Roni on her website or @roniloren on Instagram

Connect with Dawn on her website or @dawnalexanderbooks on Instagram

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