So Many Damn Books

Two-time Survivor contestant, cohost of the Survivor podcast We Know Survivor, as well as the literary podcast Paraphrase, Stephen Fishbach drops onto the island SMDB and brings along the swashbuckling spirit of his novel Escape! As you might expect, Survivor is discussed, as is the jungle in general, and self-mythologizing, and then we tear into the savagery of William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies.

For the drink recipe, every book mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-259

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, li...

Ailsa Ross uses the power of the internet to join Christopher and chat about the pleasure of destruction, letting mosquitoes bite, the cost of licensing museum photos, and other things too. Plus, she brings along a Jean Rhys novel that wasn’t Wide Sargasso Sea,Voyage in the Dark, and both enjoy the embattled, embittered voice.

For the drink recipe, every book mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-258

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB vi...

I hang out and chat a bit about books I've read recently! Fun, right? So much fun.

For the drink recipe, every book mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-257

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

music: Disaster Magic

https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Casey Scieszka squeezes through the internet’s tubes to arrive safely on the podcast and talk The Fountain, her debut novel. We get into immortality, and alcohol etymology, and the Spruceton Inn residency, and growing up the daughter of famous children’s author, Jon Scieszka. Plus, we dive deeper into Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting. Were the Tucks faeries or what?

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-256

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episod...

Lior Torenberg zooms into the Damn Library to chat about Just Watch Me, an early entry in the run for “best book of the year.” She goes into just how deep her love for hot sauce goes, some terribly cramped apartments, and chats about the trope of the sad girl grifter. Plus, we get to talk about Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, a much different book about making money online.

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-255

Join the Patreon...

Kathleen Boland road trips into the Damn Library Hyperspace to talk about her novel Scavengers, which also means talking about karaoke, the magic of Utah, treasure hunts, and complicated mother-daughter relationships. Plus, she brings along Christopher’s first Joy Williams’ work, The Quick and the Dead which complements Scavengers nicely. Get on the road and listen in.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink reci...

Drew Broussard (former co-host of this show, current Lit Hub Radio host, Manager at Rough Draft) stops in for a SPOILER-FILLED chat about the dichotomy that is Richard Bachman/Stephen King, and both the book and the movie of The Running Man (the Edgar Wright one).

[note: we stop spoiling plot points for the book and movie at 48:55 or so]

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb<...

Christopher re-read all of Aimee Bender and decided to talk about it.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-252

music: Disaster Magic

https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alix E. Harrow drops into the Damn Library to talk about the everyday magic of being alive and writing really good books, like her newest one The Everlasting, Christopher’s favorite book of the year. Plus, she recommended Nicola Griffith’s Menewood and it leads to encomiums galore, because it’s a fantastic series that earns every one of its many pages.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

...

250 episodes in, Sarah interviews Christopher about some of the behind the scenes details about making So Many Damn Books.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-250

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

Erin Somers returns to the Damn Library, this time virtually, for a punny cocktail and a chat about her novel The Ten Year Affair, expanding her lens, millennial marriage, and how she feels about her debut novel Stay Up with Hugo Best six years on. Plus she brings the quietly devastating/sardonically funny Susie Boyt’s Loved and Missed.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For th...

Patrick Ryan drops into the Damn Library Soda Shoppe for a chocolate peanut butter egg cream and a chat about his much-lauded novel Buckeye. We chat about a family secret that fueled the book, how he achieves the right tone, and how he discovered the spirit realm on the page. Plus, he brings along Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, and we slightly debate the ending.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://pa...

Mona Awad becomes the most frequent guest of So Many Damn Books with this appearance, chatting We Love You, Bunny, how it’s a good time to make fun of yourself, and the pleasure of getting too deep into a narrative, even if you can’t find your way back out. Plus, she brings along the classic The Wind in the Willows, and talks why she almost didn’t want to recommend it.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop...

Kerry Cullen drops in, in person, so I smoke a cocktail (and forget to mention that Manhattans contain vermouth). We get to talking about working in books and then writing a book, shocking your writing group, and the best places to write. And then we talk about Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez, another book about a character revisiting their past and finding ghosts.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

Held it together pretty well interviewing Leonie Swann, the author of one of my favorite novels of all time, Three Bags Full, about her recently translated sequel Big Bad Wool, and all the pleasures of stepping back into the river a changed person. Plus, she brings along The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, a surprisingly fun fantasy detective novel series beginning.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

We only have five months of the year left, so that means it’s time to look back and reminisce. It’s always a good time to look back and reminisce, baby, you better believe it.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-244

music: Disaster Magic

Pencils UP, everyone! Point their sharpened points straight to the sky, because Allison King, author of the endlessly inventive Phoenix Pencil Company, drops by the virtual library to talk all things pencils and magic and the one book that changed her life. Plus, she brings along Anton Hur’s novel in stories, about AI and robots and poetry, Toward Eternity.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

Fo...

Former co-host of the show, current writer and bookseller and host of The Lit Hub Podcast Drew Broussard stops by to chat about our Top 6 of 2015 episode from 10 years ago, plus some other random bookish thoughts. As listenable as a quaffable white wine is quaffable!

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks...

Tyler Wetherall, author and sole force behind the indispensable literary reading series newsletter, Reading the City visits the Damn Library in person in order to have a very involved mezcal margarita, and chat about her novel Amphibian, and mermaids, her memoir No Way Home, and the fun part of research for a new project. And then we also get into (and spoil, to some extent, if you go for that sort of thing) The Ice Palace by Terjei Vesaas, and how it inspired some of the shape of Amphibian.

Join the Patreon and hang out in...

Kate Folk flies into the Zoom Damn Library and boy are her arms tired! That’s an airplane joke, and it’s very fitting, actually, because she’s here to discuss her madcap Sky Daddy, as well as the more subdued but no less crazy The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. Put your tray tables up and your seatbacks in the full upright position, it’s time to listen!

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! ht...

Jeanne Thornton physically drops by the Damn Library to talk A/S/L, her incredible novel about amateur video game coders in the 90s and how they’re doing a couple decades years later, and also a bit of her novel Summer Fun as well, because why not. Plus, she brings along Anton Solomonik’s Realistic Fiction, an excitingly strange and very funny short story collection.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patr...

Kate Slotover of The Book Club Review drops in again, virtually this time, to talk about a visit to a posh library, her reading life of late, and Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume Vol. 1, and also we talk about Volume 2 some. Get on the train bound for November 18th!

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link me...

A list of 22 long books because sometimes you need to get lost in a book, like really lost, like 400 pages in and not even halfway there and every tree looks just like the one that came before. But you’re happy about it, because getting lost in a book was the point. That kind of lost.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, ev...

A list of 22 short books for short attention spans because we all hey look at that dog! he’s trying to catch a butterfly!!

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-235

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See ac...

Cynthia Weiner zooms in and starts off the year right with her 80s New York novel, A Gorgeous Excitement. We talk all the trappings of true crime and female friendship and mental health, plus Cynthia brings along Susanna Moore’s 90s cult classic In the Cut.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.so...

Christopher chooses some favorites from the reading year that just passed, and answers some questions from the Patreon patrons.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and link mentioned, and more, visit: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-233

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

Emily Habeck swims on in to chat the book Christopher can’t stop recommending to anyone and everyone, Shark Heart: A Love Story. Thrill to this episode where we get into the long and winding road from theater to novel writing, and the pleasures of re-reading Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, 10 years on.

Join the Patreon and hang out in the monthly book club, listen to exclusive episodes, and get access to the SMDB virtual book stoop a couple times a year! https://patreon.com/smdb

For the drink recipe, every book and...

If you do something two years in a row, that makes it a yearly tradition right? With that in mind, here’s the very traditional Holiday Gift Guide episode. I’m joined by Sarah in our Damn Library and we talk some books and get down to the business of gift giving this season. It’s a present, open it up!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosalind Brown makes her airwaves debut in this one, talking about her debut novel Practice, which means talking about Shakespeare, and using white space on the page, and the various intimacies of point of view. Plus, she brought along The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson, a jubilant novel of thoughts that feels perfectly aligned with Practice. Pick up your pens and your pencils and your listening devices, it’s time to podcast!

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

Our old pal Drew drops into the Damn Library, in Brooklyn, in person, for the first time since February 2020, to celebrate 10 years of So Many Damn Books. The show gets done like it usually does, only with a lot of trips down memory lanes and nostalgia avenues.

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lena Valencia drops by the Damn Library, physically, and it’s a real nice time complete with a flashing drink you can’t see, because this is a podcast. Lena and I discuss her blockbuster, nearly a decade in the making, short story collection debut, Mystery Lights, and she brings along Muriel Spark’s Driver’s Seat, which is just as good as it gets. Read on!

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disa...

Lev Grossman returns to the podcast after a nine year break. That’s a long time! Since he was here last, he wrote his Arthurian magnum opus, The Bright Sword, and he chats about it, along with a good name for a cocktail sword, God, Merlin, and how he likes to be in conversation with someone else’s work. Plus, he brings along Phillip K. Dick’s UBIK, a bizarre sci-fi classic that’s on the verge of fantasy itself.

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanyda...

Holly Gramazio drops by via the magic of Zoom to talk her magical summer blockbuster of a book, The Husbands. She gets into its origin as a computer game, a lack of supernatural solutions, and why it used to have the moon falling apart. Plus, she brings along the surreal-but-still-relatable Zito Madu’s The Minotaur at Calle Lanza, and reveals she’s just been to Venice. Read on, compadres!

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(http...

Kate Slotover, host of The Book Club Review podcast, joins me in the Damn Library all the way from London! Drinks are had, New York is discussed, along with two different worlds of New York reportage, Helene Hanff’s Letter from New York, and Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel. Such a joy!

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com...

Melissa Mogollon zooms in to talk her debut Oye, and all the fun she had writing it. That means we talk how her friends are like her sisters, the unusual structure that always felt like it could fail, and how she might write a sequel from the sister’s perspective. Plus, she brings along Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, a book that was great to revisit, and is informing her on how to connect digitally as she releases her book.

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more...

Our old pal Drew (of Voyage into Genre) is back! We talk about how the internet used to be, how Drew broke his slump, some literal tea discussion, RPG and video games, and general book chatter. The usual, served up just how you like it, in podcast form.

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fiona Warnick, author of the charming novel The Skunks, drops by to talk animals and metaphor, how her creative writing program helped her with this book, writing smooth, and more than that, because we also get into Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, which inspires a deeper dive into the work of Heti and her influence.

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo...

Christopher goes through some stuff he read and some stuff he wants to read. Got any modern pirate book recommendations?

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexandra Tanner shares the Damn Library physical space, sitting in the chair across from me and everything. She discusses her sibling’s influence on Worry, writing for an audience of one, money, moms, and more. Plus, she brings Kathryn Scanlan’s Aug 9 - Fog for book club. Listen closely and you’ll hear books mentioned now and again.

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr...

Damn Library co-owner Sarah sits to chat about all the things that makes one pick up a book only to put it back down again. A list of reading pet peeves that touches on everything from subject matter, to stylizations, tropes, design choices, and more.

contribute! https://patreon.com/smdb

for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com

music: Disaster Magic

(https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.