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In this episode, we announce a new listener survey, recommend 6 new book-related podcasts for you to check out, and tell you about 2 books that we absolutely love: Susan Casey’s The Wave and Richard Harvell’s The Bells.

Take our listener survey, please!

It’s been about 18 months since our last Books on the Nightstand reader/listener survey, and the numbers of you have grown quite a bit. We’d love to learn more about you: how you listen, what you think we are doing well, where you’d like us to improve, and anything else you’d like to tell us. It’s a short, 16-question survey, mostly multiple choice. If you choose to include your email address, you’ll be eligible to win a prize. We’ll choose one name at random to receive a cool Books on the Nightstand tote bag that will contain 2 books we can’t wait for you to read. We’ll close the survey on September 30th, but why wait? Go to the survey now.

Book Podcasts for the rest of the week: (03:46)

There must be something in the water: in the last few weeks, I’ve learned about several new book podcasts. We’re so thrilled that we have something to listen to (besides ourselves) and we couldn’t wait to share them with you. We’re also having a “proud parent” moment, since several of these podcasts are being produced by friends and listeners of Books on the Nightstand. While I’m not sure that we had anything at all to do with their entry into bookish webcasts, we hope that you will give them all a listen.

So, while we hope you will continue to listen to Books on the Nightstand on Wednesdays, please do also check out:

• Guys Can Read – Kevin and Luke talk about books, from the male perspective
• Do Nothing But Read – Amanda and Brandon talk about all things bookish.
• Reading and Writing Podcast – Books on the Nightstand friend Jeff Rutherford interviews authors about their writing and reading pleasures.
• Bookrageous – A revolving cast of booksellers and book bloggers, including many friends of BOTNS, give us a fun and sometimes outrageous podcast about books.
• Enthusiasticast – Our friend Mark and his friend Jon talk about books, comics, movies and pop culture.
• Books and Blogging – Amanda from Australia has just started her book podcast, but I loved it and hope she does many more.

Two books we can’t wait for you to read:(14:30)

I’ve been loving narrative nonfiction lately, and Susan Casey’s The Wave may be my favorite nonfiction of 2010. Taking us inside the worlds of rogue waves and the surfers that attempt to conquer them, Casey has a way of captivating the reader in the way that the resembles fast-paced fiction.  We learn about ships that disappear into the sea, taking the entire crew with it; waves that can decimate landscapes in a few seconds; and the surfer that risk their lives, and those of their camera crews and friends, to ride that wave that’s just a bit bigger than the one they rode yesterday.

Michael finally gets to tell you about The Bells by Richard Harvell. He’s been raving about it to me for months.  Michael was captivated by the beautiful writing in this novel about a castrato named Moses, who is born in a town with beautiful bells that are so loud, they can only be rung by a deaf woman who lives in the village. Be sure to check out the iTunes mix featuring music mentioned in The Bells. Thanks to BOTNS listener Tanya for putting it together and sharing it with us!

image credit: streets of Malmö-8 by Tomme040

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:47 — 17.1MB)

We discuss what constitutes a  review and exactly what it is that we try to do here. Thanks to all of you who wrote and called with info, we have a big list of series you love. For two books, Michael goes back a year and Ann goes back 75.

What is a Review?

On our Goodreads Group several people mentioned reviews, what are they are, how to write them. Ann and I have always intended Books on the Nightstand to be a recommendation show, not a review show. It’s why we don’t talk about books we don’t like and it’s why we don’t write out a script ahead of time. We’re just here to tell you why we love a book.

As for “real” reviews, we do our best to say what we think they do (analyze characters, plot structure, writing style) and how much they should give away, but we’d love to know what all of you think. We’ve started a new discussion thread for your thoughts.

Series, Redux (9:33)

We heard from so many of you about series you love. So many that we are embarrassed to have forgotten! Here’s the full list of series discussed:

• William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle, the first three of which have been published in one book
• Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin seafaring adventures. Master and Commander is the first in the series
• A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
• Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy
• The North and South Trilogy and The Bicentennial Series (more commonly known as The Kent Family Chronicles) by John Jakes
• Jan Karon’s The Mitford Years
• The Shopaholic books by Sophie Kinsella
• Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
• The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
• Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books
• Madeleine L’Engle’s series about the Murry family, which begins with A Wrinkle in Time
• The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon
• Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
• Authors like P.G. Wodehouse, Dante and William Shakespeare all wrote series and were mentioned
• The Rabbit Angstrom books by John Updike
• Robertson Davies wrote several trilogies
• Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

Back at our Goodreads group (it really is the place to be), in the discussion on Books in Series, Vanessa told us about her rigid guidelines for series reading and how those are enabled, errr… helped by a site called Fantastic Fiction, which lists authors and their series in order.  I heard about the site from a BOTNS listener several years ago, but am finally getting around to checking out now! A British listener mentioned the popularity of historical series in the UK, most notably Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe books and Conn Iggulden’s Caesar and Khan series.

Two Books We Can’t Wait For You to Read (21:51)

Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin arrives in paperback on August 31. It’s the story of Angel Tungaraza, a woman in Rwanda’s capital who runs a bakery out of her apartment. Meeting with her customers, she learns their stories and so do we. Ann cheats  a bit and talks about new reissues of several Nancy Mitford novels, most notably Wigs on the Green, a satire of fascists; it has been out of print since the 1930′s.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:11 — 15.0MB)

Our listeners share several ways to find books set in a specific location; We investigate series and trilogies and remember some of our favorites; and two books we can’t wait for you to read.

Books on the Nightstand is going on vacation! Ann is on vacation up in Maine this week, and I’m taking next week off to clean my basement (do I know how to live, or what?), so there will not be another new episode of the podcast until August 18. Never fear; we’ve lined up some guest blog posts from our friends at Random Acts of Reading, and we’ve discovered a relatively new book podcast that we think you’ll enjoy. Guys Can Read is a weekly podcast from Luke Navarro and Kevin McGill and it’s very informal and conversational, just like Books on the Nightstand. We urge you to check it out!

In episode 86, we read an email from a listener who wanted an easy way to find books set in a particular destination and we got several suggestions. Annette, the Random House rep for NYC pointed us to Idlewild Books, which is a travel store that also carries fiction and everything is organized by country or region. LibraryThing was also recommended several times, including the Reading Globally group and LibraryThing’s Common Knowledge search. Then of course, there’s your local library, both their online search, if available, and the librarians themselves.

Books in Series (7:10)

Several listeners have suggested we do an episode on series, so here it is. Some of the series we talk about include The Three Investigators (which Ann and I both remember fondly), Brian Jacques’ Redwall, Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books and Alan Bradley’s Flavia DeLuce mysteries.

Another question we received was about trilogies. Why so often are there three books in a series? We have a couple theories, but nothing definitive. Ann checked Wikipedia and, while they don’t give a reason as to why three is better than two or four or more, there is some interesting information on the history of trilogies.

It also occurred to us that most series are either children’s books, mysteries or works of science fiction or fantasy. There must be some general fiction series out there that we’re missing. Tell us what we’ve overlooked and any other thoughts you have on series or trilogies. Do you wait until all the books in a series are out before you start it? Is three better than two or four? Let us know!

Two Books We Can’t Wait For You to Read (16:28)

While driving home the other day, I saw a sloppily-corrected typo on a billboard and it reminded about a new book that’s just out called The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson. These guys traveled across the country and corrected typos wherever and whenever they saw them. Sometimes they were thanked; sometimes – not so much. The project started out as a blog, which you can check out here. Ann is thrilled to be able to finally tell us about The Tower, The Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart, which will arrive in North American bookstores on August 10. Balthazar Jones is modern-day Beefeater who lives at the tower of London with his wife Hebe, and Mrs. Cook, the world’s oldest tortoise. This quirky novel (and there’s no better word to describe it) has already found a legion of admirers amongst booksellers and is perfect for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato-Peel Pie Society and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:00 — 13.8MB)

Two listeners bring us up-to-date on book prjects they have undertaken. It’s the dog days of Summer (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least), but these books will have you reaching for a blanket. Our “Two Books We Can’t Wait For You to Read” are both paperbacks this time.

Listener Projects

Nicky, from the UK, has helped implement, at her local library, a new program which gives people with disabilities special services such as free audio book and DVD rentals, no late fees and book delivery. Chris emailed us a few years ago, asking if we knew of any services which would notify him when his favorite authors had new books out. We couldn’t think of any and he never found one, so he created one that is now available to everyone. Check out Reader Alert; it’s wonderful! Way to go Nicky and Chris!

When I raved about Kings of the Earth, I forgot to mention that Jon Clinch, the author, had used a true story as his inspiration for the novel. Several BOTNS listeners wrote in to mention the documentary Brother’s Keeper, which told the story of the four Ward brothers. It’s a documentary that Ann has seen and loved, and that I have in my Netflix queue.

Ice-Cold Pages

Recently, in the midst of a New England heatwave, Ann asked our Facebook followers for their favorite reads set in a cold climate. We got an avalanche of responses. (sorry) Some of the most often-recommended titles were To Build a Fire by Jack London, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, The Terror by Dan Simmons and Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg, which was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo of it’s time (a Scandinavian mystery that came out of nowhere and sold like mad). One book that caught both my and Ann’s attention was The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin, the true account of a late 19th-century storm that trapped a group of children in their one-room schoolhouse. You can see the full thread of recommendations here.

Two Books We Can’t Wait For You to Read

The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer has been getting stellar reviews so, even though I haven’t read it yet, I feel confident recommending this paperback original set in the New York publishing world. It’s about a hapless, aspiring writer caught up in a fake memoir scheme. Ann tells us about Border Songs by Jim Lynch. Newly released in paperback, this novel tells the story of Brandon Vanderkool who, despite being uninterested in his new job as a guard along the Washington-Canadian border, actually excels at catching illegal aliens and drug-runners.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:26 — 16.3MB)

We have the best listeners and readers around and we always get wonderful feedback on topics we discuss. Today, it’s an entire show filled with your thoughts, observations and a recommendation or two!

In episode 85, we talked about how we choose the next book from our to be read pile, and Shannon from Ohio called in to tell us about the way she uses the to read shelf on Goodreads.

In episode 82, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird. We heard from two listeners: one who attended the Monroeville, AL celebration, and one who created a celebration of her own by rereading the book. (For more information on the documentary Hey, Boo, visit this site.)

Episode 84‘s question “Do you buy books or do you use the library?” led to several similar responses of “Both!” It’s clear that book lovers need more than one way to get their fix!

Both Kristen, a librarian, and Ellen from Ohio called to weigh in on our Episode 83 topic, the importance of bestseller lists. We had so many responses to this topic and many people actively avoid reading books on bestseller lists. Anna Marie wrote to tell us about a book, on this subject, that she enjoyed: Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction by John Sutherland.  Eric wrote in the comments section of the blog that he has decided to read the top bestsellers from every year since 1974, the year of his birth. That’s quite an undertaking Eric. Keep us up-to-date on your progress! Pat emailed us about bestsellers and the other topic we discussed in episode 83, which was the city as character. She loves to read books set in a place she is planning on visiting, but can’t find an easy way to search for books that way. Ann and I searched the web also and couldn’t find anything. Anyone have suggestions for Pat? Ann also reminds us that your local booksellers are a great resource for queries like this.

Mark from Toronto called in a recommendation for Jose Saramago’s Blindness. He recounts the way, as a bookseller, he would tell stories to sell stories. It’s a wonderful call and it made both Ann and me want to pick up Blindness immediately! Please don’t forget that we would love for you to call in your own recommendations. Our voicemail number is 209-867-7323.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:25 — 14.0MB)

We discuss how to decide which book to choose to read next. Then we present a few books for the World Cup viewer to pick up once the tournament is over. And it’s Two Books We REALLY Can’t Wait For You to Read.

Eeny Meeny Miney Moe

Goodreads has recently introduced the ability to re-order you To Be Read shelf and I’ve begun experimenting with that as a way of keeping track of which books I’ll read next, and I tend to sort by when the books will be released. Ann often chooses by mood, current buzz, what her book group has picked for that month, or what catches her eye on her bookshelves. What about you? Do you have a system to pick your next reading selection or is it all spur-of-the-moment?

Gooooooaaaaaalllllll! (4:48)

The vuvuzela has sounded and the World Cup is here (for a few more days at least). The ESPN World Cup Companion is a beautifully illustrated book that looks at the entire history of this event, and was fun to look through even for as unschooled in soccer/football as I am. Ann recommends two true stories of inspirational soccer teams.  The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss, an American-in-Italy story with soccer at its heart. Outcasts United by Warren St. John is the story of a soccer team in Clarkston, Georgia, home to scores of families who have fled war-torn regions around the world. A young Jordanian woman forms a soccer team made up of refugee children and this book follows that team over the course of a single season.

Two Books We Can’t Wait For You to Read (13:30)

Ann departs from tradition by recommending an older book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which she just read for the first time, and which was chosen by her book group. This story of young Francie Nolan growing up in Brooklyn in the first decades of the 20th century quickly jumped onto Ann’s Top 10 Books of all time list. A book that’s sure to make my Top 10 (or 5, or 1) of 2010 is Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch. I do my best to describe this novel about three elderly, illiterate brothers on a rundown farm in upstate New York, but I quickly lapse into “I can’t coherently express how much I love this book” territory. Just take my word for it and read it!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:09 — 12.1MB)

In this episode, we read some listener email, talk about the 50th anniversary of To Kill A Mockingbird, and recommend two great new books that are just out: The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst, and Blind Descent by James Tabor.

We love email!

We start this episode with two listener emails. Richard thanks us for recommending Stoner, and responds to our inquiry about novels with nontraditional reading structures. Richard suggests that we take a look at the novels of David Markson, who recently passed away. Richard suggests that we start with The Last Novel, Reader’s Block, Vanishing Point, or This Is Not a Novel.

Katherine wrote in to correct Michael’s pronunciation of a name in his recent recommendation of Operation Mincemeat. “Cholmondeley”, it turns out, is actually pronounced “Chumley.” Katherine goes on to say:

“As I was writing the above, I remembered a limerick Willard Espy included in one of his wonderful compilations on language, probably Words at Play. He noted several English names that were not pronounced as written, one of which was Cholmondeley and another Beauchamp, or “Beechum.” Then he wrote:

A naughty young fellow named Beauchamp
Said: “These jelly tarts–how can I reauchamp?
To my parents I’d go
But they always say no,
No matter how much I beseauchamp.”

The English language can be endless fun, especially in rhyme.”

Thanks to Richard and Katherine for taking the time to write in. We encourage all of our listeners to contact us at any time, using any of the methods in our About/Contact Us page.

Happy 50th to an American classic! (4:45)

July 11th, 2010 is the 50th Anniversary of To Kill A Mockingbird.

Both Michael and I are hoping to listen to the audiobook, which is read by Sissy Spacek. Harper Collins has a website set up for all information regarding the 50th anniversary. They also just released Scout, Atticus and Boo by Mary McDonagh Murphy, which is a compliation of essays from well-known writers and celebrities about the effect that To Kill A Mockingbird had on their lives.

There are many events around the US to celebrate the anniversary. A full schedule is at http://tokillamockingbird50year.com.

Two books we can’t wait for you to read (11:20)

I love, but cannot coherently explain, The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst. In this novel, main character Octavia Frost attempts to reconcile with her estranged son Milo, a rock star who has been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend. Much of the story is told through summaries of Octavia’s successful novels, with newly-rewritten endings that make up her next novel. It sounds confusing, but the reading experience is not. And to add an additional layer of interest, author Carolyn Parkhurst has also created an author website for her novelist-character Octavia, where you can see book jackets, read a Q&A, and experience Octavia in a new way.

Michael talks about Blind Descent by James Tabor about two men who each believe that he has discovered the deepest cave in the world.  It’s not a book for the claustrophobic, but if you’re a fan of Shadow Divers, you’ll love the adventure elements of this book. If you’ve ever wondered about the various ways you could die in a super-cave, this book is for you — turn immediately to chapter 4!