YA Dad & Daughter Samara Auseon-Zogby

It's 2019! What better way to celebrate the new year than to post a conversation we had back in November? Yes, we've been busy this winter and holiday season, but we're back with a discussion of Samara's all-time favorite book, Markus Zusak's modern classic The Book Thief. We hope to make it the first of a two-part series including the author's latest novel, Bridge of Clay. Come, read with us in 2019...

Summer is over. School has started and so now I, Samara, must trek up to school five days a week. Yippee. But for some, such as Fovea Munson Future Doctor of America (not that she wants to be a doctor) summer has just begun. Of course when your parents work at a cadaver lab, how normal can your summer be?

The end of our summer was HUGE: a trip to Ireland, a 13th birthday, and the start of a new school year. It’s only fitting that we explore How You Ruined My Life, a novel about rock bands, rodent love, peanut butter sandwiches, and the fiery rivalry between two very different cousins. We loved every page of it.

Our first micro-episode, in which Andy dadsplains the beautiful Amal Unbound to a very sleepy Samara, and the two hosts rediscover the importance of the Model UN. Listen for the discussion on indentured servitude and feudal Pakistan, or listen for the terrible pronunciations. You decide.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is a HUGE book with a lot to talk about, and we did our best to do it justice in our 30-minute timeframe. We talk about family, Harry Potter gang theory, and happy endings in fiction versus real life.

In our first episode, we fight summer colds and deduce that the killer is an elderly security guard on a motorized scooter.