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 331 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Amy Smalley hosts The Perks Of Being A Book Lover Podcast, a education show with 331 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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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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  Episode #330

  S15:Ep282 - Love and Other Monsters with Guest Emily Franklin + Shakespeare Inspired Book Recs - 7/22/26

  Jul 22, 20261h 5m

  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 Emily Franklin at www. emilyfranklin.com or on IG at emilyfranklinauthor At the end of May, we attended a Carmichael’s book event featuring author Emily Franklin, who has written numerous books. Her latest titled Love & Other Monsters is about a time in history that most English majors look on with awe and wonder. Her novel is about the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori traveled to Switzerland and, as the legend goes, told scary stories to each other, which ended up leading to the first vampire story and the book we now know as Frankenstein. But Franklin’s novel focuses on a member of the party who doesn’t get any acknowledgement—Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairemont. Emily did a great job making the Carmichael’s audience want to learn more about Claire’s story, so we invited her on to share it with our listeners. And for our book recommendation segment of the show, we are talking Shakespeare, the Bard, the Swan of Avon, Willy Shakes. Shakespeare is such a touchstone in literature in ways that we don’t regularly think about like classic phrases and tropes. But you don’t have to be (or not to be) a Shakespeare scholar to enjoy the books we talk about this week. We have a historical mystery, witty nonfiction, historical fiction, a memoir, a middle grade novel, and a novel in verse. All are influenced in some way by Shakespeare’s plays or the man himself. Books Mentioned In This Episode: 1- Love and Other Monsters by Emily Franklin 2- Grandma Joy & Me: A Journey of Healing , One National Park at a Time by Brad Ryan 3- The Humming Room by Ellen Potter 4- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 5- Summer of 1816: A World Without Summer by Nicholas Day 6- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 7- The Vampyre by John Polidori 8- Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Mushrooms Taught Me About Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival by Maria Pinto 9- Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman 10- Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbly Weiden 11- Wisdom Corner by David Heska Wanbly Weiden 12- A Five Star Read of Fellow Book Lover Joshua - Devotions by Mary Oliver 13- Daughter of Fair Verona by Christina Dodd 14- Much Ado About Mistletoe by Christina Dodd 15- Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson 16- By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult 17- Enter the Body by Joy McCullough 18- Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench 19- The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt Media Mentioned 1- The Bride (2026) 2- Guillermo de Toro article about Frankenstein: "Why Vampires Never Die" - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31deltoro.html

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  Episode #329

  REPLAY - Award Winners! Hugo Award Winner Alix E. Harrow

  Jul 7, 20261h 3m

  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 Alix E. Harrow at www.alixeharrow.wixsite.com or on IG at @alix.e.harrow Carrie and I are still reading and resting on our summer hiatus but we are continuing our summer replay series of award winners! This week we are going way back in the archives to the fall of 2019, the first season of our podcast. We took a roadtrip from Louisville to Berea, KY to meet up with Alix E. Harrow, a Hugo and British Fantasy award winner and a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, and Goodreads Choice Awards. And she is a New York Times best-selling author. At the time of our interview, her debut novel The Ten Thousand Doors of January had been released and one of her short stories had just won the Hugo. Currently her most recent novel The Everlasting is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The Hugo is science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious annual award. Because this interview was recorded in a library with tall ceilings, not in a studio, and because we were definitely newbies at podcasting with a different format, this episode will sound a lot different than those today. But we hope you’ll enjoy hearing Alix talk about her influences and her view of sci-fi fantasy early on in her writing career. We will be back July 22 with an all new episode. Happy Reading!

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  Episode #328

  REPLAY - Award Winners! - Edgar Award Winner Erin Flanagan

  Jun 23, 20261h 1m

  Carrie and I are on summer hiatus but we are leaning into award winners! We have been lucky enough to interview many acclaimed authors who have won awards in their genres. So we are replaying some of these past episodes. First up is Erin Flanagan who was on the show in 2022. Her debut novel Deer Season won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The Mystery Writers of America gives the Edgar Award to recognize the best in fiction, non-fiction, and television writing. Erin has gone on to write 2 more thrillers. Blackout had just been published when we spoke to her. You can follow Erin Flanagan on Instagram @ erinlflanagan or at her website; www.erinflanagan.net For shownotes for any episode at our website www.perksofbeingabooklover.com . Follow us on Instagram @ perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a BookLover In this week’s episode, we chat with Erin Flanagan, an author whose debut novel Deer Season won a 2022 Edgar Award for Best First Novel; her most recent book that published this past summer is a thriller called Blackout. Blackout revolves around a sociology professor named Maris who begins having blackouts despite the fact that she gave up drinking seven months before and then discovers other women in her community are experiencing the same thing. It’s a bit of a #metoo novel with some speculative science and some vodka thrown in. In addition to being an award-winning writer, Erin is also a creative writing professor at Wright State University in Ohio. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Deer Season by Erin Flanagan 2- Blackout by Erin Flanagan 3- In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet 4- Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen Kirby 5- The Damage by Caitlin Wahrer 6- They Never Learn by Layne Fargo 7- The Case of the Missing Marquess (Enola Holmes #1) by Nancy Springer 8- The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (Enola Holmes #2) by Nancy Springer Movie Mentioned 1- Enola Holmes - 2020 (Netflix) TV series mentioned: 1- Severance - 2022 (Apple +)

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