Send us a text Elizabeth just got back from a trip that included a day in the Original Book Town, Hay-on-Wye in Wales in the UK. It was adorable and she went to more bookstores than you can shake a stick at. It also made her wonder what other bookish vacations she could go on. When we started to dig into this idea for this episode, we found out that the answer is: a lot! Join us in daydreaming about bookish trips to literary festivals, literary museums, bookish hotels, famous libraries,...

Send us a text Have you heard about the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) in the news lately? An Executive Order in mid-March ordered it be "eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law" and there has been a lot of conversation about it since. But this agency was relatively low profile politically until recently, so many people might not know much about it. On this episode we talk about what the IMLS is, what it does (and what it does not do), its histor...

Send us a text Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work in a bookstore? According to Rebecca, bookseller and events manager at the independent bookstore Fireside Books, who we interview for this episode, it's a lot like playing a video game! Join us to find out what she means by this, and also hear her talk about so many other interesting parts of her job, including how her work affects her reading, what it's like managing a book club, how her store and other indies are deal...

Send us a text We were planning to talk about our reading habits and rituals in this episode...but then Elizabeth heard an NPR podcast about how no one reads anymore, at the same time as Martha read multiple articles about how more people bought Rebecca Yarros' latest book than any adult book since records began and that thanks to TikTok, Barnes & Noble is opening more stores this year. We had to ask ourselves: how could both of these things be true? Join as we try to sort fact from moral...

Send us a text Have you ever wondered what it takes to be an audiobook narrator? Or is it perhaps your dream job like it is for Martha? In this episode, we interview audiobook narrator extraordinaire Laura Horowitz. Laura tells us how she got into the business, what a day in the life for an audiobook narrator looks like, how she connects with authors and fans, and what the rise of AI might mean for audiobook narrators like her. This interview was so fun and informative! It’s one you won’t wa...

Send us a text [Apologies, listeners! We're re-releasing this one because there was an audio glitch in the original episode. If you've already downloaded the episode from Wednesday, try this one instead!] Happy New Year! There are some beliefs, truisms, urban legends, myths, whatever you want to call them, about books and reading that seem like they just won't die. Do audiobooks really count as reading? Are all readers introverts? Has reading education in schools really gone downhill? ...

Send us a text Happy Holidays! We're bringing back our year-end reading round up. Join us as we talk about our year in reading, our favorite books of 2024, and what we're looking forward to reading in 2025. We also talk about how our conversation about goal-setting in January of this year impacted our years in reading (spoiler: profoundly and in a good way!) ----------------------- Books we talk about in this episode: Books we're reading now: The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong...

Send us a text Romantic fantasies have taken the book world by storm in recent years, but fantasy stories that allow us to break free of the rules and limitations of our own world and reality are as old as human history. We wanted to learn more about the genre's history and its variations and sub-genres. What's the difference between fantasy and science fiction? Between high fantasy and low fantasy? What about all the sub-genres? Are Romantasy really something new or are they just a ma...

Send us a text Whether or not you'll enjoy a book club depends a lot on your reading style, habits, and preferences. But if you're interested in joining a book club, there is truly one out there for everyone - different types, communities, themes, modalities, and more. Join us as we talk about our own experiences with book clubs (as both participants and moderators), the history of book clubs (which includes a lot more social activism than we expected!), celebrity book clubs, and how to find...

Send us a text Season 2 is here and our first episode is a big one! In some ways, we have been building up to this moment since the podcast began: we finally chat with Elizabeth's librarian inspiration and the All Books Aloud unofficial mascot, Nancy Pearl. Nancy has had a storied life and a career about as influential as a librarian could hope for, and she shares so much of it with us during this hour. We talk about how her difficult childhood led her to the library, how the librarian...

Send us a text In our season finale we talk with author Sarah T. Dubb about her debut novel, Birding With Benefits. It's a fun, flirty, sexy, and touching fake-dating romance novel featuring two protagonists in their 40s who fall in love while - you guessed it - bird-watching together. But Sarah hasn't always been a romance reader (or writer). In fact, her reading journey started solidly in literary fiction, but she fell in love with romance during the pandemic (like someone else we know...ah...

Send us a text Is the book always better than the movie? If you had asked either of us before this episode, we both would have said unequivocally 'yes!' But our discussion showed us that this topic might actually be more nuanced than we realized. Join as we talk about nearly every Jane Austen adaptation ever made (don't worry, we also talk about other adaptations...a little), ponder whether we enjoy watching screen adaptations of our favorite books even if they're not perfect, daydream about ...

Send us a text Two very special guests joined us for this episode - the other half of our sibling quartet, Bekka and Mike. Listen in as we talk about our early experiences with reading, the similarities in how our reading journeys started, where our tastes differ, and how we took different paths based on our personality traits. We really enjoyed reminiscing with our siblings and reflecting on some childhood nostalgia, and we hope you'll enjoy it, too! ----------------------- Books we're read...

Send us a text The topic of this week's episode is one of the few book-related topics we've found where we disagree! Martha loves to re-read her favorite books, whereas Elizabeth thinks life is too short to re-tread old ground. Martha begins the episode by setting herself the challenge of changing Elizabeth's mind...listen to find out if she's successful! ----------------------- Books we're reading in this episode: The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (The Cazalet Chronicles #1) Ne...

Send us a text We have explored a lot of different components of the book publishing industry on the podcast, but neither of us know much about the work of literary translation. So, we were thrilled to get the chance to talk with Polly Mackintosh about her work. Polly is Commissioning Editor and in-house translator for Gallic Books, and is the translator of the forthcoming novel, Clara Reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier. We chatted with Polly about how she got started as a translator, wh...

Send us a text This episode was recorded in-person and on location during our sister vacation on the Big Island of Hawaii! We kept our reading choices for the trip a secret from one another and did a live reveal, then we talked all about vacation reading while getting a little tipsy on tropical fruit juice and rum cocktails. Among and around several digressions, we discuss questions like, what types of stories do you like to read on vacation? How many books do you bring? What format of...

Send us a text Even if you don't use TikTok, you've likely at least heard of the phenomenon known as BookTok. Individual videos sometimes get millions of views, and the combined hashtags for these videos on TikTok have had hundreds of billions of views. The publishing industry is paying attention - and so are we! Is BookTok really driving book sales? Or is it just creating yet another thing for people to envy online and feel bad about in their real lives? Is it lowering the quality of ...

Send us a text What do you do with books that you're finished with? Books you've read or don't want anymore or spilled coffee on? In this episode we discuss what makes a book valuable - to individuals and to society - and why this can sometimes result in anxiety about how books are disposed of. We dig into the work libraries do to preserve books and the “weeding” they have to do to stay functional for the communities they serve. Elizabeth goes on a teeny-tiny rant about the controversy...

Send us a text Romance novels generate over $1.44 billion (with a 'b!') in revenue and are highest-earning, biggest, and fastest growing genre of fiction in the book industry. And yet, if you're a romance reader, you've probably had to defend it to someone at some point or maybe you've even been embarrassed of your reading. Why are these books that so many read still so fraught? We talk about our personal experiences with reading romance, the history of the genre, and discuss questions like,...

Send us a text If you're a reader, you know the feeling: you turn the last page of a book and want to cry that it's over. You immediately feel bereft. You can't stop thinking (and even talking) about the characters, the story. You wish you could turn back time to when you were still reading or somehow enter the pages of the book and live in the world. No other book appeals to you, and you might even start and then abandon books trying to move on. You have a book hangover! In this episode, we...