In celebration of UCL’s wellbeing festival Replenish Dr Rayner chats with Cathy all about her book Dear Reader and how Cathy has turned to reading and books for comfort and therapy during her life.

---

---

Show Notes

Dr Samantha Rayner talks with Cathy Rentzenbrink about her book Dear Reader, and the therapeutic effects of reading on mental health and wellbeing. It’s a lovely episode that travels through time with books that affect multiple generations, how books are enjoyed for what they are not who they are marketed at, and how writing can be hard but the satisfaction of finishing is worth the difficulty.

Cathy Rentzenbrink’s books
Everyone is Still Alive debut novelThe Last Act of Love
A Manual for Heartache
Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books
and her debut novel Everyone Is Still Alive is released in July 2021

Authors and works mentioned in the episode:
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Agatha Christie
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Georgette Heyer
Jean Plaidy
Harriet Evans

Cathy’s book recommendation
Humankind by Rutger Bregman

John and I chat about the therapeutic benefits of humour in books, why Austen and Dickens are so brilliant, and how the crime thriller can be such a comfort in times of stress

---

---

---

Show Notes

A lively and entertaining interview with Professor John Mullan about theraprutic reading and his very favourite authors Charles Dickens and Janes Austen.
John takes us on a deep dive into what we can enjoy in literature and how he finds humour to be the very best comfort read possible. We travel through literature from Shakespeare, stopping at 18th century literature, then right though to modern day authors and thrillers.

John’s most recent books:
The Artful Dickens
What Matters in Jane Austen?

Authors and works mentioned in the podcast:
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Charles Bukowski
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Dante’s Inferno
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son
Great Expectations
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Vladimir Nabokov
Agatha Christie
P.D James
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Lie with Me by Sabine Durrant
Emma by Jane Austen
Moby Dick by  Herman Melville
A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Prelude by William Wordsworth
Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
Symposium by Muriel Spark 

I chat with Joanne about her new book Honeycomb, the therapeutic effects of reading whilst undergoing hospital treatment, and how important good translations are.

---

Show Notes

I chat with the wonderful Joanne Harris MBE, an author across an incredible number of media. We chat about the therapeutic effects of reading and writing, how personifying illness can be beneficial and the ups and downs of translations. We have a very interting chat about reading as a bilingual, the joy of graphic novels, and sneaking those books your mother doesn’t want you to read at the library.

Works and authors mentioned:
Lee Child
Georgette Heyer
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Gustave Flaubert
Andre Gide
Guy de Maupassant
Alexandre Dumas
Francoise Mauriac
Stephen King
George R.R. Martin
Mervyn Peake
Agatha Christie
Laura Grandi Italian translator and author
P.G. Wodehouse
John Mortimer
Sandman by Neil Gaiman
Brian Vaughan
Becoming Unbecoming by Una
Chi’s Sweet Home by Kanata Konami
Inkblot by Emma Kubert and Rusty Glad
Wayfareres Series by Becky Chambers

I chat with Caroline all about the move to digital for the Hay Festival and how much reading means to her and all those visiting the Hay festivals around the world

---

---

---

Show Notes

I have a wonderful chat with Chair of the Hay Literary Festival Caroline Michel all about the festival in all its forms across the globe. We discuss the move to digital online festivals, the succes of the festival in multiple countries, the difficulty in discoverability of events in an online setting, and how wonderful authors and speakers are.
We also chat about the therapeutic effects of reading and books, and how wide ranging the Hay Festival talks and authors are across multiple languages.

Hay Literary Festival

Works and authors mentioned in the podcast:
Agenda magazine
The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heany and Ted Hughes
Donal Óg poem
Ted Hughes
Seamus Heaney
W.B. Yeats
T.S. Eliot
John Keats
Robert Frost
Sylvia Plath
Toni Morrison
Tom Wolfe
Rough Magic by Lra Prior-Palmer
Lemn Sissay
Mario Vargas Llosa
Laura Bates
Stephen Fry
Simon Schama
Elif Shafak

---

---

---

Show Notes

I chat with the wonderful Audioverse Award winner and multiple Hugo and BFA finalist pop culture journalist and podcaster Alasdair Stuart all about the therapeutic effects of reading, consuming media, and writing about your favourite things. This is a fun lively chat that goes from magicians Penn and Teller all the way to The Abyss, stopping via Nick Cage and a Dalek Escape Room. All in all a wonderful insight into the perspective of a pop culture journalist writing on very popular IP with steadfast and vocal fans.
Photo credit to ©Edge Portraits 2019

Link to Alasdair’s website
Link to Alasdair’s Twitter
Link to The Full Lid
Link to the Escape Artists podcast website where you’ll find PseudoPod and the Escape Pod
Link to Alasdair’s Twitch

List of things mentioned in the podcast:
Books
Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski
More than Meets the Eye  (Transformers comic)
Lost Light  (Transformers comic)
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Film, TV, nd Theatre
Red Dwarf
Twilight Zone Theatrical Production
JiuJitsu
The Abyss
Doctor Who
Parks and Recreation
New Girl
Leverage

Awards
IGNYTE awards
Aurealis awards
Sir Julius Vogel Award (The Vogel’s)

I chat with the father of UK fantasy Ian Livingstone all about his co-creation of a new genre of books with the Fighting Fantasy series, the importance this had on getting children to read, and why videogames are so brilliant at getting gamers to use creative and critical thinking.

---

---

---

Show Notes

I chat with the delightful Ian Livingstone, games legend. Co-founder of Games Workshop, co-creater of the Fighting Fantasy genre of books, videogames star who brought us the brilliant Lara Croft. We chat all about the therapeutic effects of reading, how he and Steve Jackson created an entirely new genre of books that encouraged children to read and increased literacy rates. He shares some amusing stories about the launch of the first book and how they are still in print today. We also discuss co-writing, how important games are for critical thinking, and why having a sense of agency is so important when engaging in media.

Ian’s Twitter
Ian and Steve’s new book from Unbound

Things mentioned in this episode:
On the Road by Jack Kerouac 

Fighting Fantasy books mentioned
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Citadel of Chaos
Forest of Doom
City of Thieves
Deathtrap Dungeon
Assassins of Alansia

Games Mentioned
Skyrim
Dark Souls
Minecraft
Rollercoaster Tycoon

I chat with Kiernan all about Shakespeare’s ongoing draw, why tragedy is therapeutic, and how skillfully the Bard creates empathy with both characters and the audience

---

---

Show Notes
This week I have the delightful job of chatting to my old Shakespeare professor, Emeritus Professor Kiernan Ryan, all about the therapeutic effects of his sonnets, speeches, and plays. How Shakespeare has remained relevant four centuries after first being performed, and what there is to be gained and lost in watching, listening, and reading his work.
We discuss rhetoric, the draw of tragedies, how Shakespeare mirrors both the audience and the characters themselves, the importance of empathy, and how gender fluid many of the comedies are.

Do check out Kiernan’s books available from Bloomsbury here
Kiernan’s new book, coming out in August 2021

The  Shakespeare works most mentioned and quoted from are:
Sonnet 29
The Tempest
The Merchant of Venice
Hamlet
King Lear
Much Ado About Nothing
Twelfth Night

I chat with Nick Coveney all about reading It at a young age, finding yourself represented in stories, LGBTQ+ in literature & publishing, problematic authors, & how digital is changing how we consume books.

There is a content warning on this one as Nick says a rude word. He quickly follows it up with rainbows and unicorns though.

---

---

Show Notes
I chat with the wonderful Nick Coveney of Rakuten Kobo. We chat about Nick’s early experience of reading It and what kinds of books he finds therapeutic. We also chat about problematic authors and their effects on being able to gain comfort from their books, how well represented LGBTQ+ is in literature and publishing and problems arising from perceived rulebooks. We discuss the role of the ebook and audiobook on reading habits and how publishers like Rakuten Kobo can decide which books are available on their platform.

Authors and works mentioned in the podcast:
Peter F Hamilton
It by Stephen King
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Ender’s Quartet by Orson Scott Card
It’s A Sin by Russel T Davis (TV)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Dragonriders of PERN by Anne McCaffrey
The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

This week I chat with Rachel Taylor and Amanda Melfi, social media and marketing geniuses at Tor. We chat about the importance of author wellbeing, the role of Tor’s social media channels, and how Rachel sent John Scalzi a secret burrito one time.

---

---

Show Notes
I chat to the fabulous people behind the Tor family of twitter accounts Rachel Taylor and Amanda Melfi all about how they try to be fun and engaging on social media on behalf of the Tor family without putting pressure on their authors. We chat about favourite books, hilarious twitter moments, sending John Scalzi secret burritos, and why it’s important to them to make the Tor spaces a safe space for authors and readers alike.
Check out the Shelf Healing Twitter account for debates on what counts as a dragon!

Twitter accounts:
Tor Books
Tor.com
Tor.com Publishing
Nightfire
Tor Teen
Rachel’s account
Amanda’s account

Books, authors, and twitter accounts mentioned in the episode:

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke
John Scalzi
The Invisible Life of Addie by V.E. Schwab
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Murderbot by Martha Wells

Twitter accounts
Effin birds
Spark Notes

---

---

Show Notes
This week I chat with award winning author Diana Evans about the therapeutic effects of reading, why we no longer lend books to people, the emotional connection one has with a physical book, and why audiobooks are wonderful creations.

Link to Diana’s website where you can buy all of her books
Link to Diana’s Twitter profile

Diana gives a whole host of wonderful author and book suggestions which are listed below:
Mary Oliver
Mark Doty
Anne Sexton
Ursula le Guin
James Baldwin
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Heaven’s Coast by Mark Doty
In Search of our Mother’s Gardens by Aice Walker
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
Behold the Dreamers Imbolo Mbue
The Beautiful and The Damned by F Scott Fitzgerald