Book Dreams Podglomerate

Welcome to our last regularly scheduled episode of Book Dreams. We started the podcast because books, more than just about anything, bring us joy. So we thought, what better way to end the podcast than to spread that joy and talk about how to make great book recommendations for other people? Our guest, James Gilbert, is a bookseller at the Heywood Hill bookstore in London, which runs, in its words, “the most personalized book subscription service in the world.” James makes personalized book recommendations for Heywood’s subscription (and other) customers–including, for the past several months, Eve and Julie. James talked about the key to being a good book recommender, how to help people figure out what they want to read when they’re not sure of it themselves, how he decided which books to send to Julie and which books to send to Eve, and when it’s okay to recommend books you haven’t yet read yourself.

One more thing: This is not our last episode ever–we’ll continue to air bonus episodes every month or so. And we’re working on a new podcast! It’s called Rebel Nuns. We wanted to focus on stories about groups of people coming together to take collective action with a positive outcome, and it turns out there are many fascinating accounts, from ancient Mesopotamia all the way up until today, of nuns banding together to fight the powers that be in the service of causes they believe in. These stories are all-too-often hidden, and they reflect larger forces in society, and we can’t wait to tell you all about them. We’ll post updates about Rebel Nuns here in the Book Dreams feed.

Thank you so very much for listening to Book Dreams, whether you’ve been with us from the very beginning or whether you’re tuning in today for the first time. We’ve loved learning and sharing and bonding over all things book-related with you, and we’re excited to keep connecting over bonus episodes and all that is to come.

James Gilbert has been a bookseller, and professional recommender of books, for eight years at Heywood Hill, an internationally renowned bookstore in London that runs “the most personalized book subscription service in the world.”

Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com.

We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more.

Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.

Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature.
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In this episode, Book Dreams producer and guest host Gianfranco Lentini takes us on a journey to a real-life literary paradise—a thin barrier island just 50 miles east of New York City—that has been a haven for authors, especially queer authors, for more than a century. Author and scholar Jack Parlett joins Gianfranco to discuss the subject of Jack’s latest book, Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise. They talk about the significance of creating and maintaining queer spaces as havens, and they examine the cultural context that led many writers—including Noël Coward, W. H. Auden, Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams, and James Baldwin—to spend summers on Fire Island, experiencing personal freedom that was denied to them everywhere else. They also explore the effect that those earlier writers, as well as Fire Island itself, had on the authors who make the island their second home today. Says Jack, “The [Fire Island] landscape itself knows something, feels something, about the people who were there. It's a repository of their legacies."
Jack Parlett is a writer, poet, and scholar. He is the author of three books: Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise; The Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to Grindr; and Same Blue, Different You, a poetry pamphlet. Fire Island was named an Editor’s Pick by The New York Times and One of the Best Books of 2022 by The New Yorker and BBC Culture. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Boston Review, Granta, Literary Hub, BBC Culture, Poetry London, and elsewhere. Jack currently holds a junior research fellowship at University College Oxford, where he also teaches. His research focuses on 20th and 21st century American literature and culture with an emphasis on queer writing and questions of gender, sexuality, and race.
Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com.
We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more.
Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.
Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we talk to author Angie Cruz, whose latest novel is the widely acclaimed How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water. This irresistible book inspired a conversation about a myriad of topics: how the unconscious mind influences the creative process, the lengths women will go to escape a dangerous situation, invisible labor as it pertains to women–especially immigrant women. Friendship, partnership, motherhood, and more. Take a listen!

Angie Cruz is the author of four novels. Her book Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for the Good Morning America Book Club. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and won the Alex Award in Fiction. It was named a “most anticipated” or “best book” in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. Angie is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning literary journal Asterisk, and she's currently an associate professor at University of Pittsburgh. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water was a New York Times Notable and a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice.

Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com.

We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more.

Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.

Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do family secrets show us about the times we live in, and how do they impact the people who safeguard them? These are questions that sociologist Margaret K. Nelson explores in her most recent book, Keeping Family Secrets, a study of more than 150 memoirs involving families hiding something of consequence during the 1950s. In this episode of Book Dreams, we talk to Margaret about a host of fascinating topics, everything from how misguided—and even damaging—prevailing expert advice can be; to the complicated costs of concealing true genetic ancestry; to the complex relationship—highlighted in recent years by the availability of DNA testing—between biology and cultural identity.

Margaret K. Nelson is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Sociology Emerita at Middlebury College, where she taught for more than 40 years. In her latest book, Keeping Family Secrets: Shame and Silence in Memoirs from the 1950s, she focuses on six categories of secrets revealed time and time again in memoirs from that era, including the institutionalization of a child, unwanted pregnancy of a daughter, and the Jewish ancestry of one or more family members. Margaret has written a number of other nonfiction books as well, including Like Family: Narratives of Fictive Kinship and Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times.

Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com.

We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more.

Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.

Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our 2022 end-of-year holiday extravaganza! In the spirit of holiday giving, we have a present for you, which, if we’re being honest, is also a present for us: BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS. Two dozen of them, in fact!

At the end of almost all the interviews we conducted this year, we asked our guests, “What’s one book you love and why do you love it?” We held back the recordings of their answers so we could share them with you now, with our gratitude for another year of book dreaming.

Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com.

We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more.

Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.

Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why, exactly, do we feel so shattered when someone we love leaves us? What is the science behind the physical changes we experience during heartbreak, such as weight loss and anxiety, and why do so many of us stop behaving rationally? In this episode of Book Dreams, we talk with acclaimed science writer Florence Williams about her latest book, Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey, in which she explores questions like these within the framework of a heartbreak of her own and its aftermath. In her conversation with Julie and Eve, Florence discusses the brain science behind our responses to this kind of loss; the potential impact of loneliness and feelings of abandonment on our immune systems; why some of us bounce back from heartbreak faster than others; what advice she gives to everyone struggling to recover from heartbreak; and so much more.

Florence Williams is a journalist, podcaster, and the author of Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey. Her first book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology, and was named a notable book by The New York Times. She's also the author of The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, The New York Review of Books, and many other outlets, and she's a contributing editor at Outside Magazine.

Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com.

We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more.

Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.

Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices