So Many Damn Books

Alix E. Harrow drops into the Damn Library to talk about the everyday magic of being alive and writing really good books, like her newest one The Everlasting, Christopher’s favorite book of the year. Plus, she recommended Nicola Griffith’s Menewood and it leads to encomiums galore, because it’s a fantastic series that earns every one of its many pages.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-251music: Disaster Magichttps://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

250 episodes in, Sarah interviews Christopher about some of the behind the scenes details about making So Many Damn Books.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-250music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Erin Somers returns to the Damn Library, this time virtually, for a punny cocktail and a chat about her novel The Ten Year Affair, expanding her lens, millennial marriage, and how she feels about her debut novel Stay Up with Hugo Best six years on. Plus she brings the quietly devastating/sardonically funny Susie Boyt’s Loved and Missed. Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-248music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Patrick Ryan drops into the Damn Library Soda Shoppe for a chocolate peanut butter egg cream and a chat about his much-lauded novel Buckeye. We chat about a family secret that fueled the book, how he achieves the right tone, and how he discovered the spirit realm on the page. Plus, he brings along Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, and we slightly debate the ending.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-248music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mona Awad becomes the most frequent guest of So Many Damn Books with this appearance, chatting We Love You, Bunny, how it’s a good time to make fun of yourself, and the pleasure of getting too deep into a narrative, even if you can’t find your way back out. Plus, she brings along the classic The Wind in the Willows, and talks why she almost didn’t want to recommend it.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-247music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kerry Cullen drops in, in person, so I smoke a cocktail (and forget to mention that Manhattans contain vermouth). We get to talking about working in books and then writing a book, shocking your writing group, and the best places to write. And then we talk about Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez, another book about a character revisiting their past and finding ghosts. Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-246music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Held it together pretty well interviewing Leonie Swann, the author of one of my favorite novels of all time, Three Bags Full, about her recently translated sequel Big Bad Wool, and all the pleasures of stepping back into the river a changed person. Plus, she brings along The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, a surprisingly fun fantasy detective novel series beginning.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-245music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We only have five months of the year left, so that means it’s time to look back and reminisce. It’s always a good time to look back and reminisce, baby, you better believe it. Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-244music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pencils UP, everyone! Point their sharpened points straight to the sky, because Allison King, author of the endlessly inventive Phoenix Pencil Company, drops by the virtual library to talk all things pencils and magic and the one book that changed her life. Plus, she brings along Anton Hur’s novel in stories, about AI and robots and poetry, Toward Eternity.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-242music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former co-host of the show, current writer and bookseller and host of The Lit Hub Podcast Drew Broussard stops by to chat about our Top 6 of 2015 episode from 10 years ago, plus some other random bookish thoughts. As listenable as a quaffable white wine is quaffable!Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-242music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tyler Wetherall, author and sole force behind the indispensable literary reading series newsletter, Reading the City visits the Damn Library in person in order to have a very involved mezcal margarita, and chat about her novel Amphibian, and mermaids, her memoir No Way Home, and the fun part of research for a new project. And then we also get into (and spoil, to some extent, if you go for that sort of thing) The Ice Palace by Terjei Vesaas, and how it inspired some of the shape of Amphibian. Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-237music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Folk flies into the Zoom Damn Library and boy are her arms tired! That’s an airplane joke, and it’s very fitting, actually, because she’s here to discuss her madcap Sky Daddy, as well as the more subdued but no less crazy The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. Put your tray tables up and your seatbacks in the full upright position, it’s time to listen!Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-237music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeanne Thornton physically drops by the Damn Library to talk A/S/L, her incredible novel about amateur video game coders in the 90s and how they’re doing a couple decades years later, and also a bit of her novel Summer Fun as well, because why not. Plus, she brings along Anton Solomonik’s Realistic Fiction, an excitingly strange and very funny short story collection.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-237music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Slotover of The Book Club Review drops in again, virtually this time, to talk about a visit to a posh library, her reading life of late, and Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume Vol. 1, and also we talk about Volume 2 some. Get on the train bound for November 18th!Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-237music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A list of 22 long books because sometimes you need to get lost in a book, like really lost, like 400 pages in and not even halfway there and every tree looks just like the one that came before. But you’re happy about it, because getting lost in a book was the point. That kind of lost. Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-237music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A list of 22 short books for short attention spans because we all hey look at that dog! he’s trying to catch a butterfly!!Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-235music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cynthia Weiner zooms in and starts off the year right with her 80s New York novel, A Gorgeous Excitement. We talk all the trappings of true crime and female friendship and mental health, plus Cynthia brings along Susanna Moore’s 90s cult classic In the Cut.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-235music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christopher chooses some favorites from the reading year that just passed, and answers some questions from the Patreon patrons.Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-233music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily Habeck swims on in to chat the book Christopher can’t stop recommending to anyone and everyone, Shark Heart: A Love Story. Thrill to this episode where we get into the long and winding road from theater to novel writing, and the pleasures of re-reading Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, 10 years on. Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdbFor the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-233music: Disaster Magic(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you do something two years in a row, that makes it a yearly tradition right? With that in mind, here’s the very traditional Holiday Gift Guide episode. I’m joined by Sarah in our Damn Library and we talk some books and get down to the business of gift giving this season. It’s a present, open it up! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.