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Archive for the 'Libraries' Category

Philip Connor

By Rebecca Markwick, on 15 June 2021

Philip chats about how a health scare affected his reading and how in his search for therapeutic books dealing with grief and the fear of death he found it in the most unexpected places and books. He also talks about how audio has changed how he consumes certain types of books and how it has enriched his reading life.



Show Notes

This week I chat with Philip Connor, Commissioning Editor at Penguin Random House Audio and host of the podcast What Editors Want. We chat about how Philip’s reading habits have changed and moved more into non fiction as well as how he found himself searching for himself in books on grief and dying. The importance and suprising nature of finding representation in literature and how audio has lent itself to him rereading books and now commissioning works in audio.

Joan Didion
CS Lewis
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
The Hidden Spring  by Mark Solms
Night’s Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton
Ubik by Philip K Dick
Emmanuel Carrère
Emma Southern
Mary Beard
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
F Scott  Fitzgerald
Virginia Woolf
Vladimir Nabokov
WG Sebald
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Why I Write by George Orwell

BONUS Dr Samatha Rayner & Cathy Renztenbrink for Replenish Festival

By Rebecca Markwick, on 10 June 2021

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

BONUS Dr Samantha Rayner & Cathy Rentzenbrink

By Rebecca Markwick, on 10 June 2021

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

Nigel Beale

By Rebecca Markwick, on 30 March 2021

Lisa and I chat with Nigel Beale all about beautiful books, libraries worth visiting, and his love of literary tourism.



Show Notes
I chat with Nigel Beale and my co host Lisa Dalton all about beautiful books this week. We take a journey into Nigel’s literary critic role, his podcast interviews and how they intersect with his love of literary tourism. Nigel discusses how the very visual nature of a book can be therapeutic in and of itself and how he collects a wide variety of books and book related items, all chosen for their beauty.

Things mentioned in the podcast:

Shakespeare
Bruce Taylor
Martin Amis
JM Coetzee
Cultural Amnesia by  Clive James
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear

The Novel Cure: An A to Z of Literary Remedies by Susan Elderkin and Ella Berthoud
Think and Grow Rich by Andrew Carnegie
Harry Ransom Center  in Austin, Texas
Houghton Library at Harvard
Beinecke Rare Books Library at Yale
British Library
Book of Kells at Trinity College Dublin

Megan Rosenbloom

By Rebecca Markwick, on 16 March 2021

Megan Rosenbloom

I chat with academic Librarian Megan Rosenbloom this week all about the therapeutic effects of reading and her thoughts about the joy of libraries. We discuss Megan’s strong belief in death positivity and how this causes her to constantly strive to read all of the books, very rarely rereading.

We also chat about her book Dark Archives and how historic medical books affect the wellbeing of the researcher and reader. There’s a lovely thought about how Ulysses is best read in a community as well.

Photo by Polly Antonia Barrowman



Show Notes
I chat to the lovely academic librarian Megan Rosenbloom this week all about her thoughts on therapeutic reading, death positivity, researching human skin books, and how Ulysses has stayed with her and should be read as part of a community.

There is so much in this episode, brilliant ideas about librarianship along with a hidden gem of an archive open to the public. Megan’s constant journey to read all the books that she can, and how being a medical librarian affected her way of looking at books. There is book history and book anecdotes galore in this glorious extra long episode!

I would also thoroughly recommed Megan’s fantastic book Dark Archives.
Megan’s photo for this episode by Polly Antonia Barrowman.


Authors, works, and places mentioned:
Authors
Ernest Becker

Works
Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom
A Cat’s Tale: A Journey Through Feline History by Baba the Cat and Paul Koudounaris
The Dreamsongs by John Berryman
Ulysses by James Joyce

Places
The Rosenbach – museum in Philadelphia
The Huntingdon Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens – in LA

James Daunt

By Rebecca Markwick, on 9 March 2021

James Daunt

James and I chat about the essential nature of bookshops and libraries as well as the therapeutic effects of books not only for people but for their fellow books on the shelf. This is a thoughtful and insightful episode which many important topics covered.

A full list of authors, works, and the panels recommended are available in the show notes.



A fascinating episode with the bookseller James Daunt. We talk all about bookshops, libraries, the therapeutic nature of books for both humans and other books on the shelf. James tells us about why libraries and bookshops are essential and the changing nature of books when you re-read them.

Works mentioned:
Moomins by Tove Jansson
Harry Potter  by J.K. Rowling
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Fyoder Dostoevsky
The Little Grey Men by Denys Watkins-Pitchford “BB”
Grief Is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart