Michael Kindness is a sales rep for Penguin Random House, the former host of the popular podcast, Books on the Nightstand, and of course, a friend of the show. The “hand-seller to booksellers” returns to Just the Right Book Podcast to help add to your summer book pile! Michael and Roxanne also talked about some indie bookstores that you should visit this summer, or anytime.

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We’re trying to get a better demographic handle on the people like yourself who listen to Just The Right Book Podcast. Just go to our website, www.BookPodcast.com, and click on the “Listener Survey,” it should take you about 30 seconds and be most helpful to us. Thank you in advance for this!

Get even more book talk from Michael Kindness and listen to Ep 9 & Ep 20 of Just the Right Book Podcast.

Follow Michael Kindness on Twitter

Books in this episode:

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

Chemistry by Weike Wang

Shadow Man by Alan Drew

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

House of Names (Compact Disc) by Colm Toibin, Juliet Stevenson (Read by), Charlie Anson (Read by)

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Bookstores in this episode:

Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, NC

The Montague Bookmill in Montague, MA

The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, CA

Prairie Lights in Iowa City, IA

Book People in Austin, TX

Phoenix Books in Essex, Burlington, Rutland & Chester, VT

Powell’s Books in Portland, OR

Also check out the article Roxanne mentioned on Culture Trip:

50 Unique Independent Bookstores You Need to Visit in Every US State

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talks about his new memoir, Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court, and his decades-long friendship with UCLA coach and mentor John Wooden. 

The NBA’s all-time leading scorer took the stage in a live event hosted by Read to Grow and RJ Julia and Just the Right Book Podcast was there every step of the way.

After the conversation, with sportscaster Dan Patrick, Adbul-Jabbar answers questions from the audience, including one young fan’s question on who Kareem’s favorite teammate was and why.

Later in this episode, we hear from patrons of RJ Julia on what’s on their nightstand.

Be sure to like us on Facebook and join our mailing list to hear more news about Just the Right Book Podcast

We’re trying to get a better demographic handle on the people like yourself who listen to Just The Right Book Podcast. Just go to our website, www.BookPodcast.com, and click on the “Listener Survey,” it should take you about 30 seconds and be most helpful to us. Thank you in advance for this!

Books in this episode:

Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

The to All the Boys I’ve Loved Before Collection: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before; P.S. I Still Love You; Always and Forever, Lara Jean (Boxed Set) by Jenny Han

The Disappearances by Emily Bain Murphy

Heartbreak Hotel by Jonathan Kellerman

The Force by Don Winslow

This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibe

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Beren and Luthien by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien

Like Family by Paolo Giordano

In today’s Tidbits episode, Roxanne talks about poetry and reads a selection from one of her favorite books, A Child’s Anthology of Poetry. Also in this episode, Roxanne answers a listener’s question about the Pulitzer prize-winning bestseller, Underground Railroad.

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Books in this episode:

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

A Child’s Anthology of Poetry Edited by Elizabeth Hauge Sword

Sick by Shel Silverstein

“I cannot go to school today”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox.
And there’s one more ? that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue,
It might be the instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke.
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in.
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My toes are cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There’s a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is ?
What? What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is ????.. Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

Just the Right Book Podcast is celebrating Mother’s Day with one of Roxanne’s favorite Mother’s Day poems. In this very special Tidbit, Roxanne reads The Lanyard by Billy Collins. 

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The Lanyard by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
and then led me out into the air light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift – not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

RJ Julia recently hosted an event for one of their favorite authors, Dani Shapiro and Just the Right Book Podcast was there every step of the way. The best-selling novelist and memoirist caught up with Roxanne prior to the event to discuss her latest memoir, “Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage.” The book, says Roxanne, is an “exquisite jewel” that you will want to read whether you are thinking of marriage, newly married, or have been married for a long time. Shapiro describes the joys and challenges of matrimonial life as, “Just that sense of what it is to go through life together… the all of it, the beauty and the terror.

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Books in this episode: 

Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro 

Devotion by Dani Shapiro 

Slow Motion: A Memoir of a Life Rescued by Tragedy by Dani Shapiro