It’s the inaugural episode of our Serial Box Book Club! Plus, a sea update, a rundown of some recent book awards, and our thoughts on Yewande Omotoso’s (Bailey’s-longlisted!) book The Woman Next Door. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Here’s the time signatures for each segment, if you want to skip around!
1:05 – What We’re Reading
4:01 – Sea or Space Update
5:42 – Serial Box Book Club
14:32 – Book Awards!
31:58 – The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso
44:41 – What We’re Reading Next Time
And here are the books we discussed this ep!
What We’re Reading
Mama Day, Gloria Naylor
The Abyss Surrounds Us, Emily Skrutskie
The Fortunes, Peter Ho Davies
Sea or Space
Here’s an article about the supergroups of humpback whales.
Serial Box Book Club
We’re reading episodes one and two of The Witch Who Came in from the Cold. Thanks again to Serial Box for letting us have these episodes to review!
Book Prizes
National Book Critics Circle Awards
LaRose, Louise Erdrich
Future Home of the Living God, Louise Erdrich
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram Kendi
Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
Darktown, Thomas Mullen
A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS, Robert F. Worth
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, Heather Ann Thompson
They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, Wesley Lowery
Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson
Suki Kim on journalism and memoir
His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes within Us and a Grander View of Life, Ed Yong
Patient H. M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets, Luke Dittrich
Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, Masha Gessen
Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso
Barkskins, Annie Proulx
The Lesser Bohemians, Eimear McBride
Stay with Me, Ayobami Adebayo
The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry
We did not love this match-up.
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders
The Mothers, Brit Bennett
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
We Love You Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge
Version Control, Dexter Palmer
The Vegetarian, Han Kang
Sudden Death, Álvaro Enrigue
High Dive, Jonathan Lee
The Nix, Nathan Hill
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter
For This Time
The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso
For Next Time
Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour