The Book Nerd Podcast – Show #009 Books and the Oscars Edition

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tous-les-espoirs-sont-permis-7   On this week’s show we celebrate the Oscars! This year there are no less than 4 movies competing for the Best Picture award that are based on books and last year 6 out of the 9 contenders were all inspired by best selling books!

Also, I talk about the strange goings-0n in Leicester, England. Could a skeleton that’s been discovered buried beneath a parking lot be the remains of a famous evil king?

Finally, I review the book “Wolf Hall” and talk about the author, Hilary Mantel. For more information on Ms. Mantel check out this great (and lengthy) New Yorker article.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter! A big thank you to some of our newest followers on this week’s podcast!

Also, check out our Facebook page and tell us what you’re reading! Also, weigh in on which books you’d love to see made into movies!

Download this week’s podcast here or subscribe to us on iTunes!

The Book Nerd Podcast – Show #008 The Super Super Bowl Edition

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51JcwyZj0nL._SL500_AA300_In honor of the Super Bowl this week we are discussing sports themed books. Some books were compiled from Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Sports Books of All Time and some were my own pics including Moneyballl by Michael Lewis and The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.

We also discussed Book Riot’s new book “Start Here: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors”. This book (only available in eBook format at this time) lists authors from Sherman Alexie to Herman Melville to David Foster Wallace and provides you with background information and a reading plan to help you choose their best or most influential works and helps you determine in what order they should be read.

I also reviewed the book Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and shared some blog posts about the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. You can find links to those articles at The Book Nerd’s Twitter feed.

You can download the podcast here or subscribe to us on iTunes and don’t forget to rate the show while you’re there!

The Book Nerd Podcast – Show #007

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67040_538836512802783_868751526_nOn this week’s show we discuss the best books of 2012 including the best audio books and comics and graphic novels categories, changes to the National Book Award, the demise of the brick and mortar book stores.  I share with you my weird obsession as a kid and what that reveals about me (maybe!).

I share a list of the best books of 2012 as picked by Amazon.com.  You can find that list here.

We discuss book awards and the changes that are being made to the National Book Awards. The article I cite written by Hillel Itale can be read here.

Finally, we discuss whether book and mortar bookstores are on their way out. Barnes and Noble is slated to close an average of 20 retail stores per year over the next 10 years even as they continue to push the sales of their e-Reader, the Nook. Are eBooks the wave of the future for readers or not? If brick and mortar bookstores are no more where will you find out about new books? (Maybe podcasts like this one? Hint, hint!) The link to the article about Barnes and Noble can be found here. 

The Book Nerd Podcast – Show #006

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416910_10151337286695020_1316672359_nHappy 2013 and welcome back to The Book Nerd Podcast! We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus working on getting some new equipment and, generally, just trying to make this the best show possible for all of our listeners.

On this week’s show I review two books, discuss the most depressing books ever written and end on a high note and list some of the most anticipated books being published this year.

The first book I discuss is HHhH by Laurent Binet. HHhH or “Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich”, translates into “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich” and is a novel that tells of real historical events. Reinhard Heydrich, known as “The Butcher of Prague” was second only to Himmler in Hitler’s cabinet and, possibly, more dangerous. Two men, recruited by the British secret service, ambushed his motorcade in broad daylight in the middle of Prague, forever changing history. It is a novel, but with many details about events as they actually took happened.

I also discussed The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. In a small English town called Pagford a Mr. Barry Fairbrother dies suddenly and unexpectedly leaving his seat vacant in the parish council. How this affects the citizens of the town and their families is a the subject of the author’s first novel for adults after her wildly successful Harry Potter series of books.

I shared a couple of lists with you of the most depressing books ever written. From AbeBooks.com comes “Bleak Books – the Top 10 Most Depressing Books” and the answer posed to readers in a survey by ChaCha.com, “What are the top 10 most depressing books of all time” rounded out our discussion of books you can wallow in when you are in a funk.

Finally, we look forward to 2013 and some great books being published this year by authors including Jamaica Kincaid, J.M. Coetzee, Maurice Sendak and Khaled Hosseini. Flavorwire.com gives us the 30 most anticipated books of the coming year in this article.

If you’d like to be a guest book reviewer send me a comment on our Facebook page or email me at booknerdpodcast@gmail.com. Some books of interest: Sutton by J.R. Moeringer, The 12 Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, The Round House by Louise Erdrich, and Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.

If you’d like to suggest a book in any genre that you think is a must read please let me know!

Download Show #6 here or subscribe to us on iTunes!

The Book Nerd Podcast – Show #005

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I’ve tentatively titled this week’s show “It was a Dark and Stormy Night” edition.  Hope you are all staying safe and warm and dry!

Topics covered on show #5 include:

Short Fiction – The Art of the Short Story.  I talked about the panel of short fiction writers I attended at Litquake in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Some of the writers on the panel included Catherine Brady, Thaisa Frank, Kathryn Ma and Lysley Tenorio.  I was inspired to read short stories by such esteemed writers as Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov and John Cheever.  Do you have any short stories or short story writers to recommend? Please share in the comment section below!

I also attended another panel at LitQuake, The Art of the Novel. The authors I mentioned on that panel were Gina Frangello, Joshua Mohr, Hector Tobar and Ellen Ullman.

I found a great bookstore in the San Francisco’s Mission District, Dog Eared Books, a new and used bookstore located at 900 Valencia Street.

Just in time for Halloween I shared a list of the 13 Scariest Books of All Time NOT Written by Stephen King a great list put together by Marc Bernardin for SyFy.

With Hurricane Sandy in the news I shared hopes that everyone in the path of the storm to stay safe and, while riding out the storm or any other stormy or rainy days we’re sure to have this season I shared a Stormy Weather Reading List from Flavorwire.com written by Emily Temple.

I talked about some recently published books and shared Poets and Writers “Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin” blog where the first lines of new books are shared with readers.  New books by Chinua Achebe, A.M. Homes, and Orhan Pamuk are featured.

Finally, I shared an exciting bit of news about an upcoming, much anticipated (at least by me and my book group!) novel by Kahled Hosseini. The third novel by the author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns will be realeased next May 21st and the title is And the Mountains Echoed. You can read the AP article here.

Click here to listen to this week’s podcast. Or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

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The Book Nerd Podcast Show #004

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This week’s podcast is “All About the Classics”!

I share an article with you that shares with you “Four Things to Remember and Eight Things to Avoid When Reading the Classics”. 

I also found the link to the page with the free classics you can download from Amazon to your Kindle! Here you go!

I mentioned a blog post from Stephen King’s website talking about Huffington Post’s contest this summer where readers voted for “The Best Novel Ever Written”.  You can find out the results here!

I also told you why, if you’re a writer, you might want to see the new movie “Seven Psychopaths”.  You can see the trailer here.

Finally, I shared a great piece from Flavorwire.com, “15 Scathing Early Reviews of Classic Novels”.  See what books, now considered some of the greatest pieces of writing ever done, were panned by the critics when they were first released.

Thanks for following The Book Nerd Podcast! Make sure to share it with all your book nerd friends! Thanks!

Download it on iTunes here  or listen to it online here.

The Book Nerd Podcast – Show #003

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In today’s podcast we cover the following:

What kind of reader are you? Do you fall into a category created by Jen Doll at The Atlantic? Are you a Promiscuous Reader, A Hate Reader, A Chronological Reader or something else? Click here to read the full article.

I told you I’d share one of my favorite blogs. Here it is: The New Yorker’s Page Turner Blog.

Looking for an off-the-beaten-path kind of vacation? Want to make it a literary-themed vacation? Then you have to check out this article by Kimberly Turner at Lit Reactor. Some of the crazier offerings? If you love “Charles Dickens, bleakness, poverty, strategically placed stench and rickets” you will not want to miss Dicken’s World in Kent, England. For you Katniss Everdeen fans you might love a Hunger Games Adventure Weekend in Transylvania County, North Carolina. Check out the full article with even more bizarre tourism here.

Finally, I shared some information about LitQuake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival being held from October 5 – 13th at various locations in the city. You can download a schedule, list of authors, events and more at the website www.litquake.org. The festival culminates in the ever popular LitCrawl happening on Saturday, October 13th in San Francisco’s Mission District. You can get information and maps at the LitCrawl website www.litcrawl.org.

Download Show #3 here or find us on iTunes.

I’m looking for book reviewers! Have you read any of the following books?

HHhH: A Novel by Laurent Binet

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

NW by Zadie Smith

Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

If you’ve read any of these books and would be willing to review them for The Book Nerd Podcast please contact me!  Send an email to booknerdpodcast@gmail.com or through our Facebook page www.facebook.com/booknerdpodcast.  Thanks!