The Book Club Review

The Booker judges have made their choices, and six novels have made it through to the shortlist. But what about the books left behind?
In this episode, Kate is joined by regular-contributor Phil Chaffee, and Elizabeth Eva Leach and Charlotte Kearsley (both Patreon members) to give the best-of-the-rest their moment in the spotlight. Between them, they've read their way through the Booker dozen, now it's time for their full and frank reviews.
If the books on the longlist have one thing in common, Elizabeth thinks, it's a preoccupation with the idea of the failure of knowledge, while Charlotte noticed a split between authors who chose to be highly specific, and others who resisted doing that, which was a characteristic of many of the books on the list. Leaving no stone unturned, we're considering all seven books that didn't make the shortlist and singling out those books we don't want listeners to miss.
And of course we're taking a brief look at favourites from the shortlist and thoughts on the potential winner. This is Part One of our Booker coverage. Coming soon Part Two: our discussion of the six shortlisted novels, and then our reaction to the winner.
Books discussed
The Shadow of the Object – Chloe Aridjis
Switzy – Emma Cline
Helen of Nowhere – Makenna Goodman
The Renovation – Kenan Orhan
The Palm House – Gwendoline Riley
All Them Dogs – Djamel White
The Vivisectors – Missouri Williams
Other books mentioned
The Rouse – China Miéville
The Power Broker – Robert A. Caro
The Guest, Daddy and The Girls – Emma Cline
Milkman – Anna Burns
Hello Phantoms and First Love – Gwendoline Riley
The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson
Flesh – David Szalay

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Kate and Laura are back and diving in to two book club reads, one recent release and one modern classic. Transcription by Ben Lerner was published earlier this year to much critical fanfare. It's a playful, intellectually ambitious exploration of writing, memory, technology and the slippery relationship between fiction and reality. When the narrator's phone fails to record his final interview with an eminent cultural figure, he reconstructs the conversation from memory. But does the truth of an encounter depend on an accurate transcript? And what happens when a novel begins to fold back on itself?
We discuss Lerner's auto-fictional project, his fascination with the act of writing, the glass flowers at Harvard's Natural History Museum, and whether Lerner's novels are genuinely profound or sometimes guilty of taking themselves a little too seriously.
Laura’s book club, meanwhile headed back to the mid-20th century with Dorothy Baker’s classic Cassandra at the Wedding, a brilliantly funny, unsettling and surprisingly contemporary novella about an intensely self-absorbed young woman determined to prevent her identical twin sister from getting married. With its claustrophobic family setting, unreliable narrator, dark comedy and complicated portrait of sisterly love, it's a novel that raises questions about identity, dependence, artistic ambition and the difficulty of allowing the people we love to become themselves – but what did Laura's book club make of it?
As ever in addition to the book club catch up we’re also swapping notes on recent reads and upcoming plans, including diving in to the Booker prize shortlist – the most enticing, we both agree, in years.
Notes and books mentioned
The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models at Harvard
 A Portrait of the Artist as an Artist Portraying the Artist by Nathan Anthony West
Indiana by George Sand
Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet
When the Going was Good by Graydon Carter
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
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Our next reads are A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch (October '26) and Helm by Sarah Hall (November '26).
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The Book Club Review is a podcast about books, book clubs and the books that get people talking.
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It’s the end of summer, so Kate and Laura are looking back over their holiday reading, the books they loved, the ones that disappointed them, and the unexpected discoveries that made their reading lists longer rather than shorter.
We talk about Alex E. Harrow’s huge fantasy novel The Everlasting, and why it turned out to be a surprisingly divisive read. Kate reports back on her pick from the Booker longlist, The Palm House by Gwendolyn Riley. She's also recently completed The Power Broker, Robert Caro's iconic book on New York master-builder Robert Moses, but was it worth the read? She's also discussing The Silver Book, Olivia Laing's most recent work of fiction. In Pankaj Mishra’s The Romantics, Laura found an interesting book club choice, while Kate's flagging up Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, and while on the campus novel theme she also read Joanna Miller’s The Eights, set in 1920s Oxford. Laura wraps things up with the wonderfully atmospheric The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo.
But there’s more as pod-regular Phil Chaffee joins us with two of his favourite summer reads, Sue Prideaux’s Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin and Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards.
As summer comes to an end, we’re also looking ahead to Booker season, with the shortlist just around the corner and plenty more reading on the horizon.
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Complete booklist
The Power Broker by Robert Caro
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Everlasting by Alex E. Harrow
The Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
Starling House by Alex E. Harrow
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Palm House by Gwendolyn Riley
Famesick by Lena Dunham
My Phantoms by Gwendolyn Riley
The Silver Book by Olivia Laing
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing
Crudo by Olivia Laing
The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon
Fathers & Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do (Anton Hur)
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinnerman
Land by Maggie O’Farrell
The Chair (Netflix)
Monsters by Claire Dederer
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
The Eights by Joanna Miller
The Night Tiger and The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online (Houman Barekat, Robert Barry and David Winters, eds.)
When We Talk About Love by Carl Wilson
Timecodes for the time-poor
00:00 — Welcome & summer reading
02:00 — What did we actually read this summer?
Holiday reading plans, library books and the perennial problem of taking too many books away with you.
04:00 — The Everlasting by Alex E. Harrow
Time loops, quests and a very divided reaction.
15:30 — The End of the Power Broker by Robert Caro
Kate tackles another Booker longlist book and asks: why is this on the longlist?
20:00 — The Booker longlist pick
A frank discussion of Gwendolyn Riley's The Palm House and the pleasures (and pains) of reading for the Booker.
22:20 — The Silver Book by Olivia Laing
A surprise for Kate after her mixed reaction to Laing’s Crudo.
27:30 — An accidental book-club adventure
Laura's brilliant idea: abandon the overheated book-club meeting and send everyone into Foyles to choose books.
28:40 — The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
A chance discovery — and a Hilary Mantel endorsement that seals the deal.
35:50 — Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
Sex, power, academia and the deliciously murky moral territory of a campus novel.
40:00 — The Eights by Joanna Miller
Women in academia, 1920s Oxford and coming-of-age just after World War I
42:40 — The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
Mystery, folklore, tigers and colonial Malaysia, Laura's perfect summer read
50:45 — Phil’s summer reading
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux and The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
54:20 — Booker season begins
The shortlist is coming, and summer reading gives way to required reading.
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Looking for the perfect summer read? Kate is joined by Laura Potter and returning guest Phil Chaffee to compare recent reads before putting this year's biggest summer books to the test. Inspired by reading lists from The New York Times, The Times, Lit Hub and The Booker Prize, they decide which books are beach reads, suitcase books, and which they'd happily leave behind at the airport. Plus, they reveal the books they're packing for their own holidays.
Books discussed
Recently read
The Golden Mean — Annabel Lyon
Plato and the Tyrant — James Romm
Glorious Exploits — Ferdia Lennon
The Game of Kings — Dorothy Dunnett
The House of Niccolò series — Dorothy Dunnett
We Are Green and Trembling — Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (trans. Robin Myers)
Evaluating the picks from the summer reading lists
Hot Milk — Deborah Levy
The Eighth Life — Nino Haratischwili
A Month in the Country — J. L. Carr
Whistler — Ann Patchett
The Things We Never Say — Elizabeth Strout
Land — Maggie O'Farrell
Instructions for a Heatwave — Maggie O'Farrell
John of John — Douglas Stuart
I Want You to Be Happy — Jem Calder
The Director — Daniel Kehlmann
Villa Coco — Andrew Sean Greer
Our holiday recommendations
The Feast — Margaret Kennedy
Free Food for Millionaires — Min Jin Lee
Famesick — Lena Dunham
Swimming Home — Deborah Levy
Radiant Star — Ann Leckie
The Balkan Trilogy — Olivia Manning
Wait for Me — Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire
The Pursuit of Love — Nancy Mitford
Also mentioned
Pachinko — Min Jin Lee
Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo — Douglas Stuart
Less — Andrew Sean Greer
Transcription — Ben Lerner
Reading Lolita in Tehran — Azar Nafisi

Timecodes
00:00 Welcome
02:44 Phil on The Golden Mean
07:39 Laura on Dorothy Dunnett
11:55 Kate on Green and Trembling
16:54 Beach read game rules
18:20 Booker picks: Hot Milk
19:40 Doorstop epic The Eighth Life
21:46 Classic: A Month Country
23:07 NYT Beach Reads, Whistler by Ann. Patchett
25:33 Elizabeth Strout and American vibes
28:22 Switching to the (UK) Times list
28:29 Times list features
29:03 Maggie O'Farrell debate
30:51 Douglas Stuart pick John of John
33:05 New paperback picks
35:03 Kehlmann masterpiece The Director
38:28 The LitHub list of lists
38:55 Villa Coco verdict
41:44 Get more from the pod on Patreon
43:26 Our personal holiday reads
44:03 Phil recommends The Feast
46:01 Min Jin Lee deep dive
48:18 Lena Dunham Famesick
51:44 Laura's summer stack
53:56 Mitfords and Tana French
01:02:20 Final wrap and farewell

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What makes secondhand books so irresistible? Kate and Laura celebrate the joy of used bookshops, their favourite places to shop, literary finds and the thrill of unexpected discoveries. There's also an interview with W. B. Gooderham, author of Dedicated To, a book that explores the touching, funny and sometimes heartbreaking messages that can be found in the handwritten dedications tucked inside secondhand books. Whether you're a devoted secondhand book hunter or simply love hearing readers talk about books, this episode is a celebration of literary serendipity, book collecting, and the enduring pleasure of finding exactly the right book when you least expect it.
Book list and links
Bookshopaholics: The Paperhound • Episode #139
‘Owner of Vancouver's eclectic MacLeod’s Books marks 50 years of serving bibliophiles’,John Mackie for the Vancouver Sun
The Second Shelf bookshop (now in online form)
Aphrodisiacs in your Garden by Charles Connell
The Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
Things I Learned on the 6.28 by Stig Abell
Griffin Bay Bookstore, San Juan island
Episode #51: Barnabees Bookshop
Skoob books
Dedicated to, compiled by W.G. Gooderham
The Diary of a Nobody by George and Wheedon Grossmith
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
Wise Children by Angela Carter
Arabella by Georgette Heyer
House of Niccolo and Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
Judd Books, Bloomsbury
Timecodes
00:00 Welcome and a pod milestone
00:48 Secondhand book-hunting
03:01 Browsing vs. buying
07:58 Secondhand treasures
11:52 Kate's love of books about books
16:23 Dream bookshops
17:18 Our favourite places to buy secondhand
20:42 Patreon Break
21:50 Kate meets W.B. Gooderham
23:43 Skoob books and inscribed editions
27:22 How Wayne's collecting began
28:41 Dedicated To: The forgotten friendships hidden stories and lost loves found in secondhand books
30:50 Releasing Books Back
32:09 To inscribe or not to inscribe
33:07 Diary Of A Nobody by George and Wheedon Grossmith
37:32 Adrian Mole Editions
38:39 Wise Children
39:51 Pnin – a collection that took Wayne years to assemble
41:28 Bookshelves and Umberto Eco's library
44:04 Laura shares some of her favourite used-book haunts
47:54 Why secondhand books matter
49:08 Episode wrap

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