The Book of Life

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    SUPPORT THE AUCTION     🕮    We're squeezing in an extra episode this month to let you know about a special project inspired by our July 2023 interview with Arthur Levine of Levine Querido! After hearing the July interview, listeners Liza Wiemer and Debbi Lakrtiz were inspired to address the challenge of reduced sales that LQ is facing due to its mission of championing diverse voices.  Levine Querido is a remarkable publisher with an important yet imperiled mission. In the few short years since they were founded, they've won over 150 awards for their devastatingly beautiful books, but the timing of the pandemic and the rise in book banning is a huge challenge for them. We need Levine Querido to succeed, not just because they are doing great work but because the publishing industry needs to see that diversity does sell. Liza and D...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    There's a common TV trope called the Two timer date, in which a character needs to be in two places with two different people at the same time, often in two different outfits. I first encountered this trope when I was a kid watching Brady Bunch reruns, the one where Peter has to run back and forth between two dates, called Two Petes in a Pod . Hilarity, of course, ensues. That trope is brilliantly enacted and expanded upon in Joshua S. Levy's middle grade novel, The Jake Show. TV-obsessed Jake sees life in terms of shows. His parents divorce is like his favorite show getting cancelled, and now he's stuck playing two roles, Yaakov for his religious mother and Jacob for his secular father. Jake has to concoct a web of lies to get to a summer camp where he can just be himself. Will that end well? Tune in to my conver...