The Perks Of Being A Book Lover Podcast

Perks of Being a Book Lover is a show about books, people who read, and how reading, at its very best, is a social experience. Whether it be a book club, a poetry slam, or the production of a play; words are meant to be shared. Keep up with us on FB.

The Perks Of Being A Book Lover Podcast is a education podcast hosted by Amy Smalley, with 335 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Amy Smalley hosts The Perks Of Being A Book Lover Podcast, a education show with 335 episodes published.

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  Episode #335

  S15: Ep 287 - The Geomagician with Guest Jennifer Mandula + AI Book Recs

  Sep 30, 20261h 9m

  Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com . Instagram - @ perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button You can find Jennifer Mandula at jennifermandula.com/ or on IG @jennifermandula. This week we chat with Jennifer Mandula about her book The Geomagician, a historical fantasy novel that explores the life of pioneering paleontologist Mary Anning and a dinosaur that comes to life, all within an alternate magical England. This book explores issues of female empowerment and the tension between science and religion as well as offering up a little romance. For our book rec segment of the show, we’re discussing AI books. It feels like we’re at somewhat of a critical moment in terms of artificial intelligence, with communities protesting data centers and AI heads talking about how it could end humanity in a decade. So we’ve found 6 books about AI that we recommend you check out. Some of these might even make you laugh. Books Mentioned In This Episode: 1- The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula 2- Culpability by Bruce Holsinger 3- Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson 4- The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson 5- Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson 6- The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth 7- The Everlasting by Alix Harrow 8- Life on the Moon by Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr 9- This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews 10- Motherhood Discounted: Care Work in America Before and After Roe by Carolyn McConnell 11- Rental House by Weike Wang 12- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Molly @mollypg - The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders 13- The Verifiers by Jane Pek 14- Afterword by Nina Schuyler 15- The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon 16- The People's Library by Veronica G. Henry 17- Daemon by Daniel Suarez 18- You Look Like a Thing and I Love you: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place by Janelle Shane Media Mentioned in this Episode: 1- High Dive Podcast - https://highdivepod.com/ 2- Zelda Williams and the use of her father's voice - https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/robin-williams-deepfake-video-9.7353857 3- US Military AI mistake close call - https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/politics/us-military-ai-false-intelligence-china-ship 4- Anthropic using old books - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/05/anthropic-ai-destroying-books 5- Janelle Shane blog - https://www.aiweirdness.com/ 6- Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr on The Perks of Being a Book Lover - https://www.perksofbeingabooklover.com/episodes/blpks3ktgywx9fx-x9wxe-p3aft-j9j3f-pk2fn-wbdd3-dbsfp-hhfrc-ep6yz-alk6z-hl34a-dhhaz-l9x4z-88zrd-rh699-xd584-r9src-wkdf3-aegrx-hhnhf-zsc5j-tcmh4-h9adg-9wmnz-c6fgx-57jfn-24pym-jzy8d-j85nx

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  Episode #334

  S15: Ep 286 - Quite Literally Books with Guests Lisa Endo Cooper and Bremond Berry MacDougall + Neurodivergent Book Recs

  Sep 16, 20261h 12m

  Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com . Instagram - @ perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button. You can find Quite Literally Books at https://quiteliterallybooks.com/ or on IG at @quiteliterallybooks. This week we chat with two long-time friends and book lovers, Lisa Endo Cooper and Bremond Berry MacDougall, who decided to create a small press together to help bring some forgotten books back into print that were written by American women writers. Their company, Quite Literally Books, is modeled after heritage presses in the UK like Persephone Books, Manderley Press, and Slightly Foxed Editions. In addition to bringing back worthy novels, these presses produce books on high quality papers and have beautiful covers. Lisa and Bremond couldn’t find an equivalent in the US and were determined to bring this type of press across the pond. For our book recommendation section, we’re highlighting books that feature neurodivergent characters. We have middle grade, a popular murder mystery, crime fiction, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and young adult. Books Mentioned In This Episode: 1- The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson 2- Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim 3- Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 4- Plum Bun by Jese Redmon Fauset 5- Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 6- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 7- Who Would Have Thought It? by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton 8- Moby Dick by Herman Melville 9- Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville 10- Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick 11- In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick 12- The Pink House by Nelia Gardner White 13- The Little Dinner by Christina Terhune Herrick 14- Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray 15- The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout 16- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 17- How to End a Story: Diaries: 1995-1998 by Helen Garner 18- The Children's Bach by Helen Garner 19- Middlemarch by George Eliot 20- Freyja by Margrét Ann Thors 21- Elizabeth & Marilyn by Julie Owen Moylan 22- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 23- Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko 24- The Maid by Nita Prose 25- Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan 26- June in the Garden by Eleanor Wilde 27- Rubberneckers by Belinda Bauer 28- The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer 29- When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds Media Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Dolly Parton/ Kim Michele Richardson - https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article317220255.html 2- Dark Matter (Apple +, 2024 - present) 3- What Does Neurodivergence Mean - https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23154-neurodivergent

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  Episode #333

  S15:Ep285 - 4 Janes: A Novel with Guest Marian Yee + Women in Translation Book Recs

  Sep 2, 20261h 6m

  Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com . Instagram - @ perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button. You can find Marian Yee at marianyee.com or on IG at @mariangyee Remember the 1996 film Jerry Maguire and its famous line, “You had me at hello?” Well, our guest this week, Marian Yee, had me at hello with her novel 4 Janes, which is a genre- and time-bending re-imagining of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. It is a novel that you’ll want to read a second time (or even a third) and discuss with others because there are so many layers. And our book rec segment features female authors in translation. August was Women in Translation month and yes we missed it by a few days, but we still have some great suggestions to last you all year long. We’ve got historical fiction set in a brothel in early 20th century Japan, a fantasy filled with Norse mythology, a psychological thriller set in Iceland, a family saga set in early 20th century Mexico filled with magical realism, the story of an old woman and her neighbors living outside Chernobyl, and the plight of young women in a mental asylum in Paris. Books Mentioned in This Episode: 1- 4 Janes: A Novel by Marian Yee 2- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 3- The Lioness of Boston by Emily Franklin 4- Love and Other Monsters by Emily Franklin 5- Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World's Largest Art Heist by Geoffrey Kelly 6- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez 7- The Whisper Man by Alex North 8- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 9- War and Peace: The Graphic Novel by Leo Tolstoy, Alexandr Poltorak, and Dmitry Chukhrai 10- The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley 11- Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennie Capo Crucet 12- Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës by Devoney Looser 13- Snap by Susin Nielsen 14- 5 Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Brenna Julian - Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan 15- The Murmur of Bees by Sofía Segovia, translated from Spanish by Simon Bruni 16- The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mad, translated from French by Frank Wynne 17- Baba Dunja's Last Love by Alina Bronsky, translated from German by Tim Mohr 18- A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata, translated from Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter 19- The Night Guest by Hilda Knutsdottir, translated from Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal 20- Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen, translated from Norwegian by Siân Mackie and Paul Russell Media Mentioned: 1- The Last Seen Podcast - https://www.wbur.org/podcasts/lastseen/last-seen-season-one 2- One Hundred Years of Solitude (Netflix, 2024 - present) 3- The Whisper Man (Netflix, 2026) 4- The Mad Women's Ball (Amazon Prime, 2021)

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  Episode #332

  S15:Ep264 - Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison with Guest Britt Lovett + Ohio Book Recs - 8/19/26

  Aug 19, 20261h 8m

  Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com . Instagram - @ perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button. For more information about Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison, visit their website www.OhioCelebratesToniMorrison.org or on Insta at @ohiocelebratesmorrison. This week we have created a motley episode of different segments all about or set in OH in some way. Think of it as the Frankenstein’s monster episode. First we will be chatting with Britt Lovett, who is the Project Manager for the Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison Project. This year-long celebration running from February 2026-February 2027 focuses on the life, literature, and legacy of Toni Morrison, a native of Ohio and the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. While Amy has gone to Ohio this year to visit Hocking Hills and the Columbus Book Festival, I have driven to Ohio three times because my youngest son had surgery in June at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Because this year feels like it has been “All Ohio, all the time,” we’re giving you recommendations for books set in the Buckeye State. Books Mentioned in This Episode: 1- Assassination Nation by Sarah Vowell 2- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison 3- Sula by Toni Morrison 4- Beloved by Toni Morrison 5- Paradise by Toni Morrison 6- I'll Watch Your Baby by Nina Viel 7- Clutch by Emily Nemens 8- Murder Your Darlings by Jenna Blum 9- Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Houser 10- The Night Hunter by Natalie Moss 11- Guess Again by Charlie Donlea 12- A Harlem Wedding by Tiffany L. Warren 13- A Hunger to Kill by Kim Mager with Liza Pulitzer 14- Love is a Contact Sport by Frederick Smith 15- The French Winemaker's Daughter by Loretta Ellsworth 16- The Jilted Countess by Loretta Ellsworth 17-We Were Promised: How an Appalachian Grandmother Fought a Corporate Giant by Julia Flint 18- Mosquitoland by David Arnold 19- The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, The Woman Who Pursued Him, and the Murder that Shocked Jazz-Age America by Karen Abbott 20- Buckeye by Patrick Ryan 21- The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos by M. Elizabeth Weiser 22- Kent State by Deborah Wiles 23- To Slip the Bonds of Earth by Amanda Flower 24- The Wright Sister by Richard Maurer 25- Harvey Pekar's Cleveland by Harvey Pekar Media Mentioned: 1- Death by Lightening (Netflix, 2026) 2- Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison - https://ohiocelebratestonimorrison.org

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  Episode #331

  S15:Ep283 - The Mixed Marriage Project with Guest Dorothy Roberts + Amusement Park Book Recs

  Aug 5, 20261h 14m

  Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com . Instagram - @ perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button. You can find Dorothy Roberts at www. dorothyeroberts.com/ or you can find her on IG at @dorothyeroberts . This week, we chat with Dorothy Roberts, the author of the book The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family. As an esteemed professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and a social justice advocate, Dorothy Roberts has written many scholarly books and academic papers about reproductive justice, child welfare, and bioethics, but her most recent book is a much more personal one. She is the child of a white father who was an anthropologist and a black Jamaican mother, both now deceased. When Dorothy’s sister gave her boxes of her father’s files, she began to read transcripts of research he had done on interracial marriage over a 60-year period. She had no idea how these files would affect her memories of her childhood, her parent’s marriage, and her own racial identity. This book is a fascinating look at racial history in Chicago as well as a very touching memoir about a father/daughter bond. And for our book recommendation segment of the show, we turn to one of the most iconic parts of an American summer. August is here, which means people are having their last hurrahs at amusement parks. With this in mind, we decided we would feature books about these places where people go to be entertained, eat overpriced food, and argue with their relatives. The books we’ve chosen are set in various amusement park venues, such as a western theme park in Arizona, an arcade park where reality disintegrates, a place called Dreamworld where everyone is happy, a real-life New Jersey amusement park that was certainly ride at your own risk, a North Carolina park that was the site of a murder mystery, and an amusement park set in the mind. Books Mentioned In This Episode: 1- The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family by Dorothy E. Roberts 2- The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson 3- Martin Marten by Brian Doyle 4- The Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson 5- Jane Kenyon: The Making of a Poet by Dana Greene 6- The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and Obsession by Michael Finkel 7- The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel 8- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 9- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Elizabeth S. @fireplacebookworm - Beartown by Frederik Backman 10- The Free Lunch by Spider Robinson 11- Krazyland by Mar Romance-Moore 12- The Insignificant Events in the Lives of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling 13- Joyland by Stephen King 14- Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill with Jake Rosen 15- Anxietyland by Gemma Correll Media Mentioned: 1- The Odyssey (2026) 2- Emily Wilson review of the Odyssey - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man 3- Class Action Park (2020, HBO Max)

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