There’s something very wrong here.

It just happens to be National Library Week when last night I overhear my 13yo son on the phone with his friend while playing video games, “What you do is, you go to the app store right now and download Libby…”

ffs. I can’t tell you how careful we are at every tiny meeting of booksellers not to talk about pricing in any way. We’re already at a disadvantage and just knowing they’re doing this (on top of everything else!) and nothing is going to happen to them is so demoralizing.

Will be haunted by “competence porn” for a long time.

Wait, I totally missed Sam on the list! My ski captain 🙌

Yooooo, it's episode 12! It posted yesterday but just getting around to letting you know about it. Sorry for the delay. I'm sure it just auto-downloaded for you because you subscribe anyway. NBD. Anyway!

Over 8 billion reasons to ditch fossil fuels in one photo.

Thanks, Keith!!

EP12: Making Choices, Good and Bad Podcast Episode · Four Books a Fortnight · April 9 · 33m

“You are a middle-aged woman—did this ring authentic to you???”

If this is the sort of straight talk you want from your book podcasts, may I recommend Four Books a Fortnight from @hhharlow.bsky.social, @sampfeifle.bsky.social & @bfbookshop.bsky.social? So fun! 📚💯🙌
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

EP12 posts on Thursday. Make sure you're caught up (even though, really, you can listen to any one of these at any time and it's all good. We create them to be timeless).

Hannah talks about this book in EP10:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

A copy of MUTUAL AID by Dean Spade with a delicious orange sherbet color cover

Spotted at the inimitable @bfbookshop.bsky.social essential skills for our troubled times @deanspade.bsky.social

Copy of Robert Parish’s new book THE CHIEF

Spotted at the incomparable @bfbookshop.bsky.social and reminded of great recent pod with @TheChief and @johnkaralis.com (tagging @JAKEUITTI over in the bad place, just in case)

EP11 came out of the gate HOT. Biggest single-day download for an episode yet for FBAF! Are you folks just hoping Sam slags all over "Hamnet"? Love a good Cinderella retelling? What's the deal?

Found this bookstore near Boston that’s been open since 1968. A brother and sister run it now and they have their own podcast.
If you’re into shops that don’t feel like Instagram sets, this is the kind of place you’d wander into and stay too long.
@bfbookshop.bsky.social

There’s a lot more to Jessica Mitford’s life! A lot of it truly astonishing. Kaplan is an excellent speaker. If you have a chance to see her, go! Also read the book.

(Muckraking started more than a half century before this with Upton Sinclair and others.)

Mitford’s classic work of muckraking was THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH. (Rachel Carson published SILENT SPRING around the same time. THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE by Betty Friedan published that year too.)

Kaplan said she wished Jessica Mitford were present in this current political moment so she could teach us how to wake up each morning energized to fight fascism. That’s how she lived her life (apparently she first threw back a shot of vodka upon waking - food for thought).

Kaplan is an English professor at Northeastern. She said she was one of three people teaching about muckraking in this country, that she knew of.

Muckraking exposes exploitation and defends the exploited. It builds sympathy for the exploited.

Someone asked if muckraking wasn’t the same as investigative journalism and Kaplan said that all muckraking is investigative journalism but not all investigative journalism is muckraking.

Cover of the book TROUBLEMAKER: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford by Carla Kaplan

Learned many things from Carla Kaplan at our event with her last night, but one of the things I’m still mulling over is what she said about muckraking as a literary form and how it is purely American and not widely taught.

So much great stuff to talk about in EP8. Kathy Acker is ... wild. And we do a little lesson on what makes something "gothic." And then look at the very flawed foundations of liberal notions of "freedom." The seabirds are squawking!

Find, like, review, etc., on Apple or wherever you get your pods.

This Olympics more than any other, I’m struck by how many of the competing athletes have Olympian parents.

Fat cat sleeping on blanketed lap with open book visible

Thank goodness LONDON FALLING by Patrick Radden Keefe (coming April 7) is so good bc I’m being held hostage by this sleeping lap cat.

I just wish it wasn’t a Substack link

If James VanDerBeek was left broke because he couldn't pay the bills during his cancer struggle, imagine the plight of millions of Americans?

Medicare for All or some major, radical overhaul of the system will only gain steam as Republicans and billionaires continue killing us.

The mass market paperback is vanishing The mass market paperback — born in 1935, boomed after WWII — is vanishing from airports, drugstores, and groceries.

For those of you who were keeping up with the mass market mess, here is a more informative article.

Trade paperbacks cost only 30c more to make and are priced $18-20 now, where mass market paperbacks didn't sell at $12. So... there's your answer. It's about margins.

boingboing.net/2026/02/10/t...

If you haven't listened to EP7 yet, now's the time!

Or start back at EP1. All we do is talk about the books, so no need to worry that you're "behind," or whatever.

Find us (and like us and review us!) on Apple (and elsewhere): podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...