A books podcast made by readers
Welcome to The Book Club Review, the independent podcast about the books that get people talking, hosted by Kate and Laura. From literary prize shortlists to book club favourites we’re always on the hunt for those books that provoke conversations, the ones we can’t wait to share, the ones perfect for book club. With our cast of regular and special guests, we promise you honest opinions and lively debate. As featured in Vogue, Stylist, the iPaper, Waitrose Weekend and BBC Radio 5 Live. Listen via your favourite podcast player or browse our archive for back episodes full of book recommendations. If you want to find your way to some really good books, there’s no better place to start. Wondering if we’ve covered one of your favourites? Type the title into the search tab to find out.
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The best summer reads? Kate is joined by Laura and Phil to rate books from summer reading lists chosen by The New York Times, The Times, Lit Hub and The Booker Prize as beach reads, suitcase books or airport leave-behinds. Plus the books we have packed for ourselves. Listen in the media player above or head to the episode page for full shownotes and book links.
Discover the hidden stories inside secondhand books as Kate talks to W. B. Gooderham, author of Dedicated To, and celebrates the joy of book hunting. Kate and Laura are also sharing their favourite places to shop secondhand, and some of their most treasured discoveries. Listen in the media player above or head to the episode page for full shownotes and book links.
George Saunders’ new novel Vigil puts mortality, morality and climate change under the microscope, but does it make a great book club book? Kate is joined by Jenny and Sarah from The Bookcast Club podcast to find out. Listen in the media player above or head to the episode page for full shownotes and book links.
It’s time for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction and Kate is joined by Amanda Moulson of Curious Readers to discuss the shortlist. Which one is their pick to win? Listen in the media player above or head to the episode page for full shownotes and book links.
When the Guardian newspaper drops a list of the 100 Best Novels of All Time it’s time to drop everything to talk about it. Pod-regular guest, journalist Phil Chaffee and Joseph Dance, host of the Curious Readers podcast, join Kate to discuss the hits and misses of the list. Listen in the media player above or head to the episode page for full shownotes and book links.
What makes a bestseller? Is it the quality of the writing, or just the right book at the right time? This week Kate is joined by co-host Laura Potter and returning guest Phil Chaffee to find out. Listen here or head to the episode page for full shownotes.
We’re celebrating the end of the year with a look back over our favourite reads of 2025. With Phil Chaffee and Sarah Oliver. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for the booklist and full shownotes.
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Reviews, recommendations and more.
Book of the day is SPADEWORK FOR A PALACE by Laszlo Krasznahorkai. I’m recording a subscriber episode of the pod on novella’s tonight, and as a result spent the morning reading this 96 page novella by the Nobel prizewinning Hungarian writer. It’s published by New Directions, who launched their Storybook ND series to give readers the pleasure of reading a great book, cover to cover, in an afternoon - or in my case, a morning. If I’m honest, it wasn’t the easiest of reads and I did have to pay attention and look a few things up – subjects cover Herman Melville (and his unrecognised genius), Malcolm Lowry (and his self-destructive genius), Lebbeus Woods (and his visionary architectural genius), and Béla Bartók (ended his days in New York, only 10 people attended his funeral, despite being one of the 20th-century’s greatest composers) and the AT&T ‘long lines’ building on Thompson Street in New York – but it was also incredibly entertaining, as it’s the story of a disaffected New York public librarian with flat feet (he would say collapsed arches) who dreams of establishing his own library, a serene paradise of knowledge, with himself as the keeper guarding the door to make sure no-one ever goes in and disturbs the books. It’s written in a single long sentence, because Nobel-prizewinners do that sort of thing, but don’t let that put you off. Reality is no obstacle, says the epigraph at the front of the book, and this might be my new mantra from now on.
I’m recording with @philip_chaffee and @archivist_reader tonight, both phenomenal readers of books both long and short. That episode will be for subscribers only (check out the Patreon link in the bio if you want too hear it) but there is also a new episode of the pod, free to all, coming out this weekend. All good things…
#novellas #shortreads #laszlokrasznahorkai #readanobelwinnerinanafteenoon #baskinintellectualglorywithminimumeffort
BOOK OF THE DAY today is this one I just recommended on Naga Munchetty’s Radio 5 live show, and that is Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. It’s one of the funniest books ever written and tells of 19 year old Flora Poste who is orphaned suddenly, but that’s ok because she was fairly distant from her parents anyway. What she doesn’t have, however, is any means of support and so she sets off to live with her distant relations, The Starkadders, who live in the Sussex village of Howling, and who refer mysteriously to some wrong done to her family in the past that must be righted. She finds herself living among an extremely eccentric cast of characters who are all dominated by the fearsome Grandmother Ada Doom, who never emerges from her bedroom on the first floor because she once saw something nasty in the woodshed. It’s a book that never fails to make me smile, but more than that I love Flora’s ability to sort things out and make everything in life better, and there’s nothing nicer than to spend time with someone who does that.
You can listen again to Naga’s show where I was joined by the brilliant @simondavidthomas of Tea or Books? – a far more knowledgable source than me for mid-century novels. As ever, so fun to have an excuse to chat books in the middle of the day, even if it was amid the breaking news story about the Israel-Dubai flight. Link in my bio and scroll to about 1hr 15 minutes to catch our bit. There was such a wonderful message from a listener about how Naga’s book club has helped her discover a love of reading - felt very lucky to have played a part in it.
#coldcomfortfarm #bookpodcast #bookrecommendations #bookstomakeyoulaugh #bookstoturntowhenyouneedtokeepyourworriesatbay
Book of the day • I made a new mum friend at the park recently who turns out to be the author of this, and many other brilliant guides from Hoxton Mini Press. FREE LONDON by Emmy Watts is a perfect collection of suggestions for things you can do in London for free. I love it for inspiration and a reminder to take more advantage of the wonders that lie on my doorstep - and that it doesn’t have to cost the earth.
@hoxtonminipress #londonguides #bookspodcast #makethemostoflondon #thingstodoinLondonthatdontcost£60beforeyouveevenhadlunch
Book of the day: NO FRIEND TO THIS HOUSE by Natalie Haynes. Have you read Natalie Haynes? She’s so good - I loved Stone Blind, her take on the Medusa myth. You wouldn’t think you could end up rooting for the monster with snakes for hair, but such is Haynes’s genius that you do. She’s coming to give a talk at my daughter’s school next week, which was all the excuse I needed to pick up her latest - a retelling of the Medea story ‘as you’ve never heard it before’.
#nofriendtothishouse #nataliehaynes #bookrecommendations #bookpodcast #didntstudyclassicsssonowcatchingup
What a captivating, but also completely devastating novel THE SWIMMERS by Julie Otsuka is. It starts out among the community of swimmers at a local pool, and she’s brilliant on all the little details of what regular swimmers at pools are like, the unspoken rules, the lane discipline, the envy of people who can do flip turns.
‘The shock of the water - there’s nothing like it on land. The cool clear liquid flowing over every inch of your skin. THe temporary reprieve from gravity. The miracle of your own buoyancy as you glide, unhindered, across the glossy blue surface of the pool. It’s just like flying. The pure pleasure of being in motion. The dissipation of all want. I’m free… and if you swim for long enough you no longer know where your own body ends and the water begins and there is no boundary between you and the world. It’s nirvana.’
The first half is written in the first person plural. The swimmers are disturbed one day by a hairline crack that appears at the bottom of their beautiful pool. Evidence of some engineering fault? Some geological tremor? A figment of their own imaginations? No one can explain it and the crack will lead to a disruption of the swimmers’ orderly world. And then you realise what the novel is really about, has been all along, as the focus moves to one of the swimmers, Alice, who suffers from dementia. It becomes her story, and that of her daughter.
I wonder if it’s better not to know anything about this novel before reading it? I certainly wouldn’t have picked it up, as ageing and dementia are not generally subjects I like to dwell on. And yet, I so loved the first half that Otsuka effectively entranced me into reading the rest. I’m so glad I did. A sad but incredibly beautiful novel that I know will resonate with me for a long time, perhaps forever.
Have you read it? What did you think?
#theswimmers #bookreview #fivestarread #julieotsuka #bookpodcast
As the nights start to draw in here in London I’m thinking back to the magical time I had at @chateaustvictorlacoste with my friend @the_litedit on her reading retreat. I met so many wonderful people there and had such rich experiences, including a masterclass in how to lead a philosophical life from @ac.grayling.9, spending time with @janegreenauthor - who had us all completely spellbound reading from her new memoir Rewilding - and enjoying many wonderful conversations about books and reading. And all in the beautiful surroundings of an ancient chateau, restored and looked after by Alison and Costas who in addition to their extraordinary interior design skills have given it all the magical touches of home. A delight to be in their company and experience such a special place. If all of this sounds enticing then follow @the_litedit and @chateaustvictorlacoste as another reading retreat is planned for next year. And there’s nothing nicer than having good things to look forward to.
#chateaustvictorlacoste #readingretreat #provenceholidays #summerreading #retreatlife
Funny how books bubble up sometimes. A week ago I had never heard of THE SHORT END OF THE SONNENALLEE and then a Patreon subscriber (source of all my best tips - please join and then you too can influence me) flagged it up. As we’d been planning a pod travel special (I’m still not over the end of summer) I duly ordered a copy and then two other readers whose taste I trust also mentioned it approvingly.
It’s a short, endearing novel set in East Berlin among the community who live at one particular point on the Sonnenallee - most of which is in the West, but Churchill apparently decided to let Stalin have 60m of it, and so the residents live above the Wall, tantalised by the freedom they can see but never experience.
I’ve seen and read various things about how awful life was under a totalitarian state (from The Lives of Others to Lea Ypi’s wonderful memoir about growing up in Albania) but I’ve never read a light comedy about it. Hints at darkness abound but in the main this is a novel that celebrates the ability humans have to look on the bright side and make the best of a bad deal. Micha, a lovelorn teenager, is at the novel’s heart, but also his friends and relations who make up an idiosyncratic cast of characters. Will Mischa ever persuade Miriam, the most beautiful girl in the GDR to take him seriously? You’ll have to read it and see - I recommend that you do. Also if you thought Jonathan Franzen was only interested in birds these days you’d be wrong - turns out, with Professor Jenny Watson, he’s been translating, and it’s him we should thank that this funny, winningly readable, original and relevant novel is now available for us English-speakers to enjoy.
#theshortendofthesonnenallee #bookrecommendations #bookclubreads #bookpodcast #booksintranslation
After a dream weekend in Provence in the sparkling company of @the_litedit @janegreenauthor, an eminent philosopher and his dear brother, and a small group of strangers who quickly felt like friends, I am now officially a Daphne du Maurier fan. I’d read Rebecca of course, back in the day, hasn’t everyone? But I’d never ventured into her other works.
The Scapegoat is a doppleganger story, our main character John being tricked into assuming another’s identity. Through a reasonably believable plot contrivance he ends up at his double’s chateau where he is obliged to pretend to be a husband, brother-in-law, father and general seigneur to a colourful cast of characters. Apart from the dog, who isn’t fooled and is nearly his undoing, they accept him as their own. He quickly discovers the various difficulties they are all labouring under - the daughter under the sway of religious fanaticism, the brother-in-law attempting to run a failing glass manufacturers, and while our hero doesn’t exactly roll up his sleeves and get to work, Flora Poste style, his steadfast nature and inner decency start to have their effect.
Du Maurier doesn’t give the reader - who by now is deeply invested in John and his travails - the ending they might want, but she does deliver a richly satisfying conclusion, one that lingers in the mind as do the characters and sense of place.
What surprised me was the writing, so detailed - quite unlike any contemporary novels I can think of - and yet never difficult. Oh the contrary it was all the little details that absorbed me. It’s a book to be savoured, and contains one of the most beautiful descriptons of Autumn I think I’ve ever read (swipe left). A treat. (With the fact that there is apparently a Netflix series starring Matthew Rhys the icing on the cake.)
#bookreviewersofinstagram #bookreccomendations #bookpodcast #bookclubpicks #daphnedumaurier
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Discussion, debate, even a little dispute
Every month we bring you a new episode. That could be Book Club where we chat about the book read most recently by one of our book clubs. An interview with a book club, bookshop or book lover. Or Bookshelf, an episode dedicated to the books we’re reading outside of book club – the ones we get to pick and choose.