Off Subject Episode 7: Books About Books
- Fox and Heron
- Apr 22, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: May 3, 2021
Special Guest
This episode we welcomed our first guest to the podcast.
Josie's sister Kasey Decker to the podcast. Kasey is a huge fantasy reader from New York with a BA in Writing and a MA in English.
KASEY'S TOP THREE
Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab
The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman
BONUS: The Starless Sea by Erin Morganstern
JOSIE’S TOP THREE
I OWN lots of books about books, but I haven’t gotten to read them yet!
1. The Heroines by Eileen Favorite
A teenager named Penny and her mother, Anne-Marie, run a bed-and-breakfast, but their visitors are not regular tourists. They are the heroines from classic novels at the climax of each of their stories--Scarlett just as the Northerners have invaded Atlanta; Madame Bovary just as she has been abandoned. But Penny feels like her mother is paying more attention to her guests than to Penny’s needs.
2. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Writer Margaret Lea has been brought to an estate to write the biography of an enigmatic children’s writer--Vida Winter. Vida wrote a collection of stories; it was supposed to have 13, but it was only published with twelve, and Margaret has to uncover the mystery. There is so much to unpack in this book! A creepy house; a generational secret; the mystery of the missing story!
3. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The history of the Los Angeles Central Library, centering around the great fire that destroyed the place back in the mid 1980s.
BONUS: Top Three I Want to Read
1. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Basically a mystery surrounding a bookstore, and what they’re actually selling.
2. The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
A HEIST AT A LIBRARY. AT THE LIBRARY!!!
3. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
There are 8 novels in this series and I am SO EXCITED!! Rene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a shadowy organization that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. Most recently, she and her enigmatic assistant Kai have been sent to an alternative London. Their mission: Retrieve a particularly dangerous book. The problem: By the time they arrive, it's already been stolen.
CHRISTY’S TOP THREE or FOUR
Mention: Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount
1. Camino Island by John Grisham - Bay Books is my dream shop!
A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous monetary offer convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Cable’s circle of literary friends, to discover his secrets.
2. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop—the only bookshop—in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors’ lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence’s warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn’t always a town that wants one.
3. The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. He lives alone, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. But when a mysterious package appears at the bookstore, its unexpected arrival gives Fikry the chance to make his life over and see everything anew.
4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Death narrates this sad tale set in 1939 Nazi Germany. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who steals something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
BONUS: Currently waiting on my TBR Shelf
1. The Archivist by Martha Cooley
In the hushed world of a prestigious American university, Matthias Lane, 65, is the university’s orderly archivist. Graduate student Roberta Spire is determined to gain access to some of the collection’s sealed letters written by T.S. Eliot to his close friend Emily Hale. Roberta believes they hold the keys to Eliot’s religious conversion, his wife’s suicide, and his emotional detachment. As Matthias considers Roberta’s request, he is confronted with the eerie parallels between the poet’s life and his own.
2. Blue Hill Library cozy mystery series by Emily Thomas
Book one begins with Anne Gibson converting the Victorian home left to her by great-aunt Edie into a library. As Anne sets out to solve the mystery, she makes delightful new friends and runs into old ones - including a high school sweetheart.
3. The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
Nina Redmond is a librarian with a gift for finding the perfect books for her readers. But can she write her own happy ever after?
Tell us why you love to read books about books and bookstores. What are some of your favorites?
Book Report
CHRISTY
Of Blood and Bone by Nora Roberts
Dolly Parton, Songteller By Dolly Parton
JOSIE
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
KASEY
Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo (The Grishaverse in general)
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
You can also get involved in the bookish conversation here on our blog, or by following us on Instagram @foxandheronbooks, Facebook at The Fox & Heron Literary Society, and Twitter @foxheron.
To view or purchase any of the books we've talked about here, visit our Bookshop.org shop.
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