Summer reading is in the air. Listen in as Kate and Laura swap feel-good early summer reads. Much to their relief after Rodham, the sex in Curtis Sittenfeld’s latest novel ROMANTIC COMEDY turns out to be as good as the rest of it. Meanwhile Kate is surprised and entertained by Monica Heisey’s REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY. Via the discerning edit of the books aisle in her upmarket grocery store, Laura discovers PINEAPPLE STREET, and enjoys it hugely. Kate is fascinated and entertained by British actress Miriam Margolyes and her autobiography THIS MUCH IS TRUE, enjoying the social commentary as much as if not more than the showbiz stories (though those are good, too). And finally in a preview of Laura’s thoughts on Women’s Prize shortlisted DEMON COPPERHEAD, she reports back on what she thought of it. And if you thought you were over re-tellings of Greek myths Kate urges you to think again with STONE BLIND by Natalie Haynes.
Booklist
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
Really Good, Acutally by Monica Heisey
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
This Much is True by Miriam Margolyes
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
and in our current reads section we talked about GREY BEES by Andrey Kurkov, and POD by Laline Paull.
Listen via the media player above, or in your favourite podcast app with this podfollow link.
Notes
If you enjoyed this show, why not try our Summer Reading episode from last year. The recommendations all still hold good.
If your interest was piqued by our discussion of the cover design for Demon Copperhead, there’s an interesting behind-the-scenes, at least into the design of the original UK hardback cover, anyway, here.
Transcript
[coming soon]
Comments
Read any of these? Let us know what you thought of them, or suggest one of your favourite reads to us.
1 Comment
I’d be really interested to hear what you think about A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes.
We read it for book club last year and it was a good book club book, in that we had a lot to talk about, but nobody really liked it!
We all seemed to feel that the re-telling of this tale from the point of view of women didn’t really add anything to the story, we thought in part, because there were too many tales being interwoven and because of this we didn’t feel we really got to know any of the characters well.
We only had one person at book club who knew the story well, they’d studied classics, but even they felt that this knowledge didn’t help the book.