Book Cougars Podcast: Two Middle-Aged Women on the Hunt for a Good Read
Book Cougars
250 episodes
1 week ago
Welcome to Episode 250!
We joke that we turned “250” before “America250,” the moniker given to the United States’s anniversary celebration. The country is celebrating 250 years in 2026.
This is also our last episode of 2025, and we want to thank you for listening and making this another fantastic year filled with good books and good friends!
Some highlights:
We have our usual segments in this episode, but first, we review how we did with our reading intentions for 2025. Overall, we did well, even if we had to look in our notes to see what they were! Emily had one that really surprised us, and may have slipped into our subconscious to help create our theme for 2026.
What we’ve read since last time:
THE AWARD by Matthew Pearl
“A Small, Good Thing” from the collection WHERE I’M CALLING FROM by Raymond Carver
JURASSIC GIRL: THE ADVENTURES OF MARY ANNING, PALEONTOLOGIST AND THE FIRST FEMALE FOSSIL HUNTER by Michele C. Hollow
THE LAST WITCH by C.J. Cooke
“Street Haunting: A London Adventure” from the collection, COLLECTED ESSAYS by Virginia Woolf
A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens (the audio version narrated by Ralph Cosham)
SAPPHIRA AND THE SLAVE GIRL by Willa Cather
In Biblio Adventures, Chris watched Hank Phillipi Ryan’s excellent interview with Matthew Pearl about his new novel, THE AWARD, on A MIGHTY BLAZE. Emily spent a week in the Big Apple and visited the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Café Con Libros in Crown Heights, and Bibliotheque NYC in Soho.
We talk about our 2026 theme: books/stories with movie/TV adaptations. Our first quarter readalong pick is FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley. The Zoom discussion will be in March; the exact date is TBD. We’ll use #booktofilm2026 as our official hashtag.
Reminder: if you played Ghost Story Bingo with us this year, email us an image of your card by midnight on 12/31/2025.
Happy Listening and Happy Reading!
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Welcome to Episode 250!
We joke that we turned “250” before “America250,” the moniker given to the United States’s anniversary celebration. The country is celebrating 250 years in 2026.
This is also our last episode of 2025, and we want to thank you for listening and making this another fantastic year filled with good books and good friends!
Some highlights:
We have our usual segments in this episode, but first, we review how we did with our reading intentions for 2025. Overall, we did well, even if we had to look in our notes to see what they were! Emily had one that really surprised us, and may have slipped into our subconscious to help create our theme for 2026.
What we’ve read since last time:
THE AWARD by Matthew Pearl
“A Small, Good Thing” from the collection WHERE I’M CALLING FROM by Raymond Carver
JURASSIC GIRL: THE ADVENTURES OF MARY ANNING, PALEONTOLOGIST AND THE FIRST FEMALE FOSSIL HUNTER by Michele C. Hollow
THE LAST WITCH by C.J. Cooke
“Street Haunting: A London Adventure” from the collection, COLLECTED ESSAYS by Virginia Woolf
A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens (the audio version narrated by Ralph Cosham)
SAPPHIRA AND THE SLAVE GIRL by Willa Cather
In Biblio Adventures, Chris watched Hank Phillipi Ryan’s excellent interview with Matthew Pearl about his new novel, THE AWARD, on A MIGHTY BLAZE. Emily spent a week in the Big Apple and visited the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Café Con Libros in Crown Heights, and Bibliotheque NYC in Soho.
We talk about our 2026 theme: books/stories with movie/TV adaptations. Our first quarter readalong pick is FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley. The Zoom discussion will be in March; the exact date is TBD. We’ll use #booktofilm2026 as our official hashtag.
Reminder: if you played Ghost Story Bingo with us this year, email us an image of your card by midnight on 12/31/2025.
Happy Listening and Happy Reading!
Episode 239 - Playwright Spotlight with Laura Thoma
Book Cougars Podcast: Two Middle-Aged Women on the Hunt for a Good Read
1 hour 29 minutes 30 seconds
5 months ago
Episode 239 - Playwright Spotlight with Laura Thoma
Welcome to Episode 239!
Playwright Laura Thoma joins us to talk about her first commissioned play, Letter to My Soul, which will premiere at the GreenStage Guilford Live Arts Festival on August 10th.
We discuss another story from THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GHOST STORIES, “At the End of the Passage” by Rudyard Kipling, which didn’t seem very ghostly to us. Other stories we’ve read and discuss include BUCKEYE by Patrick Ryan (out 9/2/2025); SUMMER ON THE LAKES, IN 1843 from the new Library of American edition, MARGARET FULLER: COLLECTED WRITINGS, edited by Brigitte Bailey, Leslie Eckel, and Megan Marshall; NANAVILLE by Anna Quindlen; THE BELGIAN GIRLS by Kathryn J Atwood; HOW TO SAY BABYLON by Safiya Sinclair; and REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier.
In BiblioAdventures, we had the opportunity to attend the launch event for the New Haven Memory Lab at the Ives Main Library in New Haven, Connecticut. The lab is part of the Beinecke’s New Haven Community Archives Support program. It provides free resources for people to digitize their family history or their organization’s records.
We’re reading some great books this summer and are excited about new releases and events on the horizon.
Happy Listening and Happy Reading!
https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2025/episode239
Book Cougars Podcast: Two Middle-Aged Women on the Hunt for a Good Read
Welcome to Episode 250!
We joke that we turned “250” before “America250,” the moniker given to the United States’s anniversary celebration. The country is celebrating 250 years in 2026.
This is also our last episode of 2025, and we want to thank you for listening and making this another fantastic year filled with good books and good friends!
Some highlights:
We have our usual segments in this episode, but first, we review how we did with our reading intentions for 2025. Overall, we did well, even if we had to look in our notes to see what they were! Emily had one that really surprised us, and may have slipped into our subconscious to help create our theme for 2026.
What we’ve read since last time:
THE AWARD by Matthew Pearl
“A Small, Good Thing” from the collection WHERE I’M CALLING FROM by Raymond Carver
JURASSIC GIRL: THE ADVENTURES OF MARY ANNING, PALEONTOLOGIST AND THE FIRST FEMALE FOSSIL HUNTER by Michele C. Hollow
THE LAST WITCH by C.J. Cooke
“Street Haunting: A London Adventure” from the collection, COLLECTED ESSAYS by Virginia Woolf
A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens (the audio version narrated by Ralph Cosham)
SAPPHIRA AND THE SLAVE GIRL by Willa Cather
In Biblio Adventures, Chris watched Hank Phillipi Ryan’s excellent interview with Matthew Pearl about his new novel, THE AWARD, on A MIGHTY BLAZE. Emily spent a week in the Big Apple and visited the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Café Con Libros in Crown Heights, and Bibliotheque NYC in Soho.
We talk about our 2026 theme: books/stories with movie/TV adaptations. Our first quarter readalong pick is FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley. The Zoom discussion will be in March; the exact date is TBD. We’ll use #booktofilm2026 as our official hashtag.
Reminder: if you played Ghost Story Bingo with us this year, email us an image of your card by midnight on 12/31/2025.
Happy Listening and Happy Reading!
