We’re back to regularly scheduled programming around here and happy to welcome so many new listeners! You’ll hear a “bookish moment of the week” from each of us: a TV-show experience that only happened because of bookish friendships, and a win in the “raising readers” world, one of our favorite places to report about! Next, we discuss our current reads for the week: brand new titles, buzzed about books and ones we think need more play in the book world. For our deep dive this week, we are focusing on Brick books for the Currently Reading challenge. We qualify these as books over 700 (or maybe 650) pages, and we’ve got a lot of them for you to choose from. As always, we finish up with A Book (yep, capitalized) that we’d like to press into every reader’s hands. This week’s picks include two more giant tomes: an unforgettable, series that defies genre categorization, and a non-fiction biography. As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you’d like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don’t scroll down!  .  .  .  .  .  7:26 - Washington Black by Esi Edugyan 9:40 - Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 10:44 - Heartland by Sarah Smarsh 10:48 - Episode 14 with Amy Allen Clark 11:01 - Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance 12:57 - He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly 17:48 - Lucy & Andy Neanderthal by Jeffrey Brown 18:00 - Diary of A Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney 20:15 - Darth Vader and Son by Jeffrey Brown 20:17 - Goodnight, Darth Vader by Jeffrey Brown 20:55 - Inheritance by Dani Shapiro 24:15 - Interview with Dani Shapiro on the Happier Podcast 24:54 - The Current by Tim Johnston 29:27 - Bookshelf Thomasville Shelf Subscription 32:10 - 11/22/63 by Stephen King 32:39 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling 32:55 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 33:02 - The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet 33:33 - The Physician by Noah Gordon 34:48 - A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 35:04 - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 35:46 - Shogun by James Clavell 35:56 - Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin 36:32 - East of Eden by John Steinbeck 35:38 - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 37:02 - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke 37:45 - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 38:00 - I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb 38:39 - The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy 38:58 - What Should I Read Next episode about big books 39:09 - Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell 39:38 - The Passage (trilogy) by Justin Cronin 40:33 - It by Stephen King 40:35 - The Stand by Stephen King 40:35 - The Shining by Stephen King 40:36 - Needful Things by Stephen King 40:59 - Outlander by Diana Gabaldon 43:18 - Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson 44:27 - Bad Blood by John Carreyrou 45:26 - Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow *Please note that all book titles linked above are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!*