Episode 187 - Author Spotlight with Alli Frank & Asha Youmans

Episode One Hundred Eighty Seven Show Notes
KEY: CW = Chris Wolak and EF = Emily Fine

– 3rd Quarter Readalong our Scarlet Summer –
For more details and to download the Bingo card follow this link.
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne (July)
Hester – Laurie Lico Albanese (August)
The Invisible Hour – Alice Hoffman (September)
Send an email if you would like to join the Zoom conversation on Sunday, September 10th at 7pm (ET).

– Currently Reading – [2:42]
Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark – Cecelia Watson (CW)
The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth – Elizabeth Rush (EF) release date 8/29/2023
How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope – edited by James Crews (CW)
The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy – edited by James Crews (CW)

– Just Read – [10:06]
The Breakaway – Jennifer Weiner release date 8/29/2023
How Can I Help You – Laura Sims (CW)
Come with Me – Erin Flanagan (EF) release date 8/22/2023
What Did it Take?: The Story of Anna Louise James – Whitney McKendree Moore (CW)
We Ride Upon Sticks – Quan Barry (EF)(audio)

– Biblio Adventures – [29:11]
Chris and Emily went to the Red Heat Tavern for the Vintage Book Club to discuss The Street by Ann Petry (audio). The next meeting date is Thursday, October 19 at 1:00 (ET) at Wood Memorial Library and Museum to discuss Country Place.

Chris and Emily went on a joint jaunt to the Grolier Club in NYC to do some archival research. They also stopped in at the newly opened McNally Jackson Independent Booksellers in Rockefeller Center.

– Upcoming Jaunts – [46:16]
Chris and Emily are heading on a joint jaunt to Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA on August 2nd at 7pm where Laura Sims (How Can I Help You) will be in conversation with Paul Tremblay (The Beast You Are: Stories). You can register for the event here.

– Upcoming Reads – [47:44]
A Head Full of Ghosts – Paul Tremblay (CW)
The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (CW)
The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl (CW)
Hester – Laurie Lico Albanese (CW)(EF)(audio)
Join our Patreon Community by August 15th if you want to win a copy of this book.
Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen – Rebecca May Johnson (EF)

– Author Spotlight with writing duo Alli Frank and Asha Youmans – [52:24]
We talk with Alli and Asha about their new novel The Better Half and their writing life.
You can learn more about them here.
Their other books: Tiny Imperfections and Never Meant to Meet You

– Also Mentioned –
Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
Bank Square Books in Mystic, CT
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore – Elizabeth Rush
Milkweed Editions
Shirley Jackson
Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter: The Remarkable True Story of American Heroine Ida Lewis – Lenore Skomal
The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem – Stacy Schiff
Tayari Jones
What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books – Sheila Liming
Jojo Moyes

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Episode 179 - Deep Dive with Poet Shuly Cawood

Episode 179 Show Notes
CW = Chris Wolak and EF = Emily Fine

Emily read “Climbing” from Book of Light by Lucille Clifton.

You can find the video of Chris and Emily rearranging the readalong shelf at Book Cougars headquarters here.

– Currently Reading – [7:50]
Voyager – Diana Gabaldon (CW)
Chase of the Wild Goose – Mary Gordon (CW)
The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron (EF)
Writing for Impact: 8 Secrets from Science That Will Fire Up Your Readers’ Brains – Bill Birchard (CW)
Summer Stage – Meg Mitchell Moore (EF) release date 5/23/2023

– Episode Sponsor – [14:00]
Episode 179 is sponsored by The Peak Experiment. Learn more about Diana X. Moga here.

– Just Read – [14:59]
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg (EF)(audio)
Why Am I So Anxious: Powerful Tools for Recognizing Anxiety and Restoring Your Peace – Tracey Marks (CW)(audio)
You can find her on YouTube.
My Dearest Darling: Letters of Love in Wartime – Lisa Franco (EF)
Bookselling in America and the World – edited by Charles B. Anderson (CW)
The Lager Queen of Minnesota – J. Ryan Stradal (EF)
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret – Judy Blume (CW)(EF)(audio)
Watch the video with us talking about the book on YouTube.

– Biblio Adventures – [42:32]
Chris went to New York City to meet a fellow writer and visited the new McNally Jackson bookstore in Rockefeller Center where she picked up the Writing Down the Bones Deck of writing prompts. Before catching the train home she walked through the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures.

Chris and Emily went to Boston and worked at the Simmons University Library then took a browse at Brookline Booksmith. Chris bought A Small Book of Grave Humour by Fritz Spiegl and The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes.

– Upcoming Jaunts – [50:30]
Emily is heading to the Newburyport Literary Festival April 28-30 where she will be moderating two author sessions: Fur, Feathers, and Scales: A Lifetime of Caring for Pets with author Karen Fine and Shaped by Loss: How Tragedy Changed the Lives of Emerson, Thoreau, and William James with author Megan Marshall.

Chris is bummed that she won’t be able to attend either of the two Willa Cather conferences this June. She is planning to attend a series of four virtual events with author Benjamin Taylor that the National Willa Cather Center is offering beginning on April 27th. Taylor’s new book, Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather, publishes on November 14, 2023. Learn about the conferences and Taylor’s virtual study series here.

– Upcoming Reads – [58:50]
Travels with Charley in Search of America – John Steinbeck (CW)(EF)(audio)
Learn more about the Vintage Book Club.
Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives – Robert D. Richardson with a foreword by Megan Marshall (EF)
The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us about Love, Life, and Mortality – Karen Fine, DVM (EF)
Best American Short Stories 2023 – edited by Min Jin and Heidi Pitlor Lee (EF) release date 10/17/2023

– Out Now –
On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer – Michael P. Branch
Chain Gang All Stars – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
You Could Make this Place Beautiful: A Memoir – Maggie Smith

– Poet Spotlight with Shuly Cawood – [1:00:55]
We speak with Shuly about her poem “Starter Marriage” from her forthcoming collection Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough available for PREORDER NOW.  
Learn more about Shuly’s publications and workshops here.

___________________________________________
Starter Marriage
after Erin Adair-Hodges*

First there was the word and the word was trying.
Trying the apartment with white walls, popcorn ceilings,
footsteps heavy above, thudding over our days.

Trying the job I took filing papers into squeaking cabinets,
the one you took answering phones for dentists. Trying
the brown bag lunches with limp sandwiches

and sliced cheese, the softening apple, the room-temperature
soda. Consuming it all on church steps, hunched below
the overhang as it rained. Trying the cold pool after work

with dead insects needing to be netted. Unraveling towels,
TJ Maxx suits, the walk back on the no-car driveway.
All heat evaporated. Empty stomachs. No one wanted what the other craved.

Trying the red Chevrolet with the bad battery, no parking without pay,
the bus rides to and from work, your stop, my stop, the sun hitting hard,
us squinting at the sky. Your last day, the blue electric toothbrush

they gave you as goodbye. Buzzing in your mouth with all those
trapped words. Trying the new queen mattress
we could not afford but bought anyway.

Trying the laundry we toted to the next
building, plastic hampers in our
arms full of every day’s dirt.

Coffee but no creamer,
bread but no toaster,
sugar hardened in the bag.

Day-old everything bagels,
buy-one, get-one veggie burritos,
dollar theater on Sundays.

New job but less pay, new boss
but no promotion. Saving for tickets
for never vacations.

Trying the places we gave up for each other:
city salted by an ocean, all those fish and ferry rides;
town with three stoplights, two policemen,

a forest to get lost in. Your dreams, my dreams,
weeds by the parking lot. Trying
your face a broken banister,
my hands an unused map.

*The first nine words are borrowed from “Portrait of Mother: 1985” by Erin Adair-Hodges
___________________________________________

– Also Mentioned –
Book Barn
John William Tebbel
Sylvia Beach
Shakespeare and Company
Parnassus on Wheels – Christopher Morley
The Sunwise Turn Bookshop
Also by J. Rion Straddal: Kitchens of the Great Midwest and Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
Erin Adair Hodges

You can help support the Book Cougars via our affiliates:
Libro.fm audiobook platform: Follow this link and use promo code: bookcougars
Shop on Bookshop.org – support the Book Cougars and independent bookstores!

If you’d like to help financially support the Book Cougars, please consider becoming a Patreon member. If you would prefer to donate directly, email for instructions.

Join our Goodreads Group!

Check out our BookTube Channel and be sure to subscribe!

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.