Imagine having an indie bookstore all to yourself for an entire night. Join me in this episode as I chat with fellow book lover and Bookstagrammer, Dr. Stefanie Caeners, a Literary Studies lecturer who had just that experience. We talk about indie bookshops, books we love, Edinburgh, and reading.
Stefanie's journey is a fascinating one. From discovering her love for Southern California at the tender age of 16, choosing an office job over college, to her apprenticeship in the media business, and finally, her transition into studying literature, it's a story worth hearing.
Stefanie's passion for British literature will captivate you, as will her insights on the topic of her PhD thesis and the freedom she found in studying something she adored.
Dr. Sefanie Caeners
Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, Paul Rudnick
The Displacements, Bruce Holsinger
The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa
James Fahy The Bookshop Podcast
Paul Rudnick the Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Mandy Jackson-Beverly
Social Media Links
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Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly and I'm a
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Bibliophile.
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Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast .
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Each week, I present interviews with independent bookshop
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owners from around the globe, authors and specialists in
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subjects dear to my heart the environment and social justice.
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To help the show reach more people, please share it with
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friends and family and on social media, and remember to
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subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this
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podcast.
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You're listening to Episode 225 .
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After finishing an apprenticeship, living in
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Southern California for some time and working in the media
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business for several years, stephanie Canes studied English
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and German literature at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
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During her studies, she worked as a journalist and also as both
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a student assistant and a tutor in the English department.
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In March 2007, she finished her degree with an MA thesis on
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literary theory in David Lodger's campus novels.
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In October 2010, she completed her PhD with a thesis entitled
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Verbal Visuality the Visual Arts in Contemporary Anglophone
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Fiction.
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She's been working as a lecturer for the Literary
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Studies section since 2007.
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Hi, stephanie, and welcome to the show.
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It's lovely to see you again.
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Hi, mandy, thank you for having me.
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Thank you for being here.
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In my introduction, I spoke about how you'd lived in
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Southern California and the different courses.
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You'd studied your PhD and your work as a literary professor.
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So can you expand on this a little bit and tell us what led
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you through this journey?
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Speaker 2: Oh, wow where to start.
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My CV is a little bit complicated, maybe a little more
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complicated than the CV of most people.
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Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know about complicated, but it's
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definitely interesting Good point.
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Speaker 2: Well, the first time I went to Southern California
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was in the early 90s, so when I took part in it was like a four
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week long home state program where we had English classes, we
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learned all about US culture, went on field trips and all of
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these things.
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So my love for Southern California kind of started when
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I was 16, roughly.
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So after I finished school I did something that's actually
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quite typical for Germany.
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So instead of going to college, I started vocational training
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in an office.
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This was mostly something that my parents kind of talked me
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into, I must say, because they were saying, well, an office job
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gives you security and I would already earn some money and I'd
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always have something decent to fall back on.
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So, yeah, I believed them and I did that and ended up hating
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every single second of it.
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I had actually wanted to do, or rather wanted to do, something
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with books, yeah.
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But people were always saying, well, you can't make any money
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from reading and book selling is an underpaid profession and all
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of these things.
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So well, I was young and gullible, so I abandoned those
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dreams, but even though I did pull through with the
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apprenticeship, so I did finish it and all of that.
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But I always told myself, even while working, or maybe
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especially while I was working that I'd be out of there the
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minute my training ended.
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Yeah, I basically started saving just the meager salary I
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was making as an apprentice and then made that dream come true
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and went to San Diego for about well half a year, I think, where
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I took language classes and, just yeah, had a blast in a way.
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Speaker 1: Well, san Diego is a beautiful place.
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Yeah, it's lovely.
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So, from San Diego, what prompted you to move back to
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Germany and study literature?
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Speaker 2: It was a step in between.
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I mean, I did go back to Germany because obviously my
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student visa didn't last forever .
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So I returned to Germany and because I was still kind of like
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buying into this idea of having to do something substantial and
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that's not a why that wasn't a wise choice went to work in an
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office again for a few years and it was in fact a much better
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job than the one I had before doing the apprenticeship,
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because it was in media, in media business, and it was in
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flight entertainment agency, so I was talking to US film studios
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on a daily basis.
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So that was really interesting.
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But just deep down I knew that this just wasn't it.
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Then I quit after a few years and went to university at the
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tender age of 27.
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Speaker 1: I think that's a great age to go to university.
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You've sown some oats by then right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 2: So I studied German and English literature, so a
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double major.
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Yeah, frankly, I've never regretted it because I
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absolutely loved it.
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It was sort of like the best thing that ever happened to me,
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and I enjoyed English more than German.
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But just in general, I think I valued this experience much more
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highly than a lot of the younger students, because I'd
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seen the real world, if you know what I mean.
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So I think I was enjoying being a student much more and
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savoring sort of like the freedom to finally be doing
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something that I'd always wanted to do, and from there you went
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on to get your masters, followed by your PhD.
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I did.
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Yeah, I was quite lucky.
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I mean, I had like a handful of jobs during my studies to keep
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afloat, like all students probably, and one of them was as
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a freelance journalist at the local newspaper.
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I was quite lucky to get a position like a student
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assistant position in the English department.
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So I basically already had my foot in the door when it came up
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to finishing my masters and applying for a PhD.
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Speaker 1: And what was your thesis topic for your PhD?
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Speaker 2: For the PhD, it was on the visual arts in
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contemporary literature.
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They're basically novels that deal with visual art.
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It could just be descriptions of paintings or could be a story
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about a painter and the sort of like artistic viewpoint and
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those types of things.
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Speaker 1: Yes, and you currently teach British
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literature at the British and Anglophone Literature and
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Culture Department at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
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What drew you to British literature?
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Speaker 2: That's a good question.
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As I said before, English was my second major and I liked it a
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lot better than German literature.
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But I don't know, I'm kind of like a weak spot for the English
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language and for English literature and I like how
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different it is throughout the various epochs of history and
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maybe or probably it all started when I first read like a
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battered library copy of Jane Eyre when I was 14.
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Speaker 1: That creates a great image.
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I can see you sitting in a library with that book.
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Not that Now for our listeners.
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You and I met through Instagram and were lucky to meet in
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person when you traveled to California earlier this year and
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visited Bart's books in my hometown of Ohai.
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Now, like me, you adore independent bookshops and have
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seen many across the globe.
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Is there a country, city or town you feel has an innately
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stronger presence of reading and indie bookshops?
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Speaker 2: Oh, that's a tough one.
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As for certain countries, the city is, I don't know.
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I think I haven't really traveled widely enough yet to
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sort of like presume I know what that special place would be,
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but what I can say is that I think that everywhere the
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appreciation for smaller and independent bookshops is kind of
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on the rise.
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At least that's my impression, because, as we all know, that
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was this time where the smaller shops went out of business
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because of the chain bookstores, which then in turn had a
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difficult time because of readers ordering their books
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online, and I mean, even though people myself included,
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obviously will continue to buy things on the Internet.
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I feel like more and more indie bookshops are being opened
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again, because customers crave that sense of community that had
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been lost.
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At least that's my impression.
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Speaker 1: Yes, I agree with you there.
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One of the things that I noticed in your Instagram post
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is that you travel to Scotland quite regularly.
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Speaking of literary towns, Is it easy access to get there from
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Germany?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not too far.
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I mean, if you take the plane it's about one and a half hours
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from here to Edinburgh.
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But we usually take the overnight ferry, so we have the
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car with us.
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It's much more convenient, so you can drive around.
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Speaker 1: Yes, and you can pack books in your car.
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That as well yes.
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I've not been to Edinburgh but it's on my wish list.
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But I imagine it to be a little like Ireland, where their local
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writers, past and present, are cherished.
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I guess that's one of the reasons Edinburgh was named the
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first city of literature by UNESCO.
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For this show, I've interviewed booksellers from Golden Hair
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Lighthouse Bookshop and the Edinburgh Bookshop, but I'm
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interested in which bookshops you've visited while you've been
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in the city.
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Speaker 2: You actually.
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I mean, Edinburgh is essentially any book lover's
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paradise, I would say right, it's not just a stunningly
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beautiful city, but it has some of the most amazing bookshops
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around, and well, I've been to Topping Company, that's
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definitely a favorite.
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They have other branches, one of them in St Andrews and then
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another one in Bath and some other place I can't remember
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right now.
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They have these sort of like honey-coloured bookshelves and
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rolling letters.
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It's amazing and they also have complimentary tea and coffee,
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so that's a nice plus.
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Also really like lighthouse books.
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I think you interviewed them.
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The Golden Hair, that was another one.
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Yeah, maybe, if you like secondhand books, armchair books
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would be a nice place to go, because that's like a rabbit
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hole that you can fall into and you might just find one or the
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other little treasure.
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Speaker 1: It sounds a bit like Bart's books.
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Stephanie, how do you feel social media has enhanced
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reading?
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Speaker 2: It's a good addition to just reading by yourself at
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home, etc.
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But I think it gives you something that also, like local
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bookshops, do this the sense of community in a way.
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I think, especially during the last years, with the pandemic
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and everything that's been going on, and places like Instagram
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ignoring all the drama that can obviously happen there as well
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those places are kind of lovely because people can easily sort
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of like find their own niche you know what I mean.
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So cat lovers will find other cat lovers and knitters will
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find other knitters and book lovers will find other readers,
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and it's a global thing.
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That's the lovely thing about it, I think.
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So to get to talk to people from all over the world who
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share your interests, and that's amazing and obviously it
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wouldn't have been possible 20 or 30 years ago.
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Speaker 1: And I also like how the hashtags have managed to
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break down the writing genres.
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For example, hashtag reading romance, hashtag romance,
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hashtag crime thrillers, hashtag nonfiction.
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And, as you said, there is a group for everyone.
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It wasn't that long ago where there were fan clubs for authors
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, so you would write a physical letter, send it through the mail
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and hope the author got back to you, and now it's almost
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instantaneous.
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You can tag an author in a post , drop them a message, comment
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on one of their posts.
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I think that connection is wonderful for readers and also
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for authors, and it's a fantastic way for publishing
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companies or the PR reps in publishing companies to reach
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out to readers.
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It's become a phenomenal marketing tool.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.
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It's kind of like also a modern way of advertising and
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recommending books right, and can be very bad for your bank
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account yes, tell me about it, because you find so many new
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titles that you may never have heard of before without social
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media.
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But it's great fun and I also like how it kind of like
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promotes reading and the passion for the written word in general
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, especially in times where, like overly critical people are
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always advertising the death of the book.
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I believe that places like Bookstagram and Booktalk and
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BookTube when you name it are evidence that literature is
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still running strong right.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.
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You spoke earlier about the drama of social media.
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That's something I keep away from.
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If there's a book that I've read and I don't like it, or I
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decide not to read it because it just didn't capture me quick
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enough, I don't talk about it.
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I'd much rather focus on the positive of books that I find
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thrilling to read, and for someone who is wanting to share
00:13:20
a negative review, then my goodness, you better back that
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up.
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For example, just writing I didn't like this book.
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I was bored.
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It doesn't really help another reader.
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Think about what it is that bored you with this book, and my
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guess is that if it didn't grab you within that first sentence,
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first paragraph, first page, then perhaps the reason you
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didn't like that book is because you like to be grabbed from
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that first sentence.
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So maybe you could give an example of why the first
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sentence was boring, and I think this is actually good for the
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author and good for the reader.
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Let's face it, reading is subjective, like everything else
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on the planet.
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Some people are going to like what you like and others aren't,
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and that's the joy of the arts, exactly, yeah?
00:14:05
Okay, now let's talk about something fun, because you've
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recently had an overnight stay in a bookshop.
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Can you share that little adventure with us?
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Speaker 2: I did.
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Yeah, that was amazing.
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That was a wonderful experience and obviously something I'd
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been wanting to do forever and ever and ever, like any other
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bookworm.
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So how did it happen?
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Well, I recently found out that a relatively new indie bookshop
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just five kilometers down the road from our house was offering
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overnight stays.
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Yeah, so they have a beautiful shop downstairs and upstairs,
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kind of like an open landing, where they have a fold out couch
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that you can sleep on when you get tired.
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So you basically show up shortly before closing time,
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which is when they show you everything that you need to know
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, like where the light switches, where's the coffee machine, and
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then you're left in the shop by yourself till the next morning
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and you can browse and read, and it was actually quite nice and
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lovely to just browse the shelves without interruption and
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to read through half the night.
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I fell asleep like sometime after midnight, but then got up
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early the next morning, make myself a cuppa and continued
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browsing till the booksellers came in to open the shop at
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around nine I think it was and then I went and had a lovely
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breakfast, which was also included in the overnight fee.
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Speaker 1: It was quite something.
00:15:29
It sounds like the perfect gift to give a book lover.
00:15:32
Let's talk books, our favorite topic.
00:15:35
Do you read mostly fiction or nonfiction, and is there a genre
00:15:39
of fiction that is your preferred genre to read?
00:15:43
Speaker 2: Well, I've always had a soft spot for gothic fiction,
00:15:47
horror fiction, but I'm very much a mood reader actually, so
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I read almost any kind of genre, depending on what I feel like
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really, which is why my piles of books are growing, yeah, so it
00:16:02
really depends on my mood what I want to read.
00:16:05
But yeah, I have kind of like this weak spot for the gory and
00:16:09
the creepy, and that's a great segue into my next question.
00:16:12
Speaker 1: What are you currently reading?
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Speaker 2: The book I'm currently reading is Stephen
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King's latest novel, holly.
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I know I've been enjoying that a lot.
00:16:20
It's about people going missing and a very questionable couple
00:16:25
of academics who are to blame and that's not a spoiler,
00:16:28
because it's on the back blurb.
00:16:30
I really like King because he's an author I've been following
00:16:34
ever since I picked up a copy of Pet Sematary when I was 14.
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And I was way too young to read something that scary, and that
00:16:42
book scared me good.
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I was equally traumatized and fascinated at the same time.
00:16:49
So I kind of stuck with his literature, all his books, his
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novels.
00:16:54
As for recommendations, that's a tough one.
00:16:57
Well, this last year it was quite a bit of a stressful time
00:17:01
because we had a few family issues with my mom was ill and
00:17:05
stuff like that.
00:17:06
So I was kind of drawn to sort of what you would probably call
00:17:10
comfort books, comfort reads A few that really stuck out for me
00:17:15
.
00:17:15
So my first recommendation would probably be A Quiet Life
00:17:19
by Ethan Joella, which is kind of like a powerful but also
00:17:23
tender novel about three people grappling with different kinds
00:17:27
of loss.
00:17:27
But be warned, it will rip out your heart.
00:17:29
That then it will stitch back together.
00:17:31
So you should be fine.
00:17:33
Speaker 1: I think your last sentence would make an author
00:17:36
feel proud.
00:17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I really enjoyed that one.
00:17:39
And another one I read quite recently was the Wishing Game by
00:17:43
Meg Schaeffer.
00:17:44
Even though you can guess quite early on how it will end, it's
00:17:49
slightly predictable.
00:17:50
It ticked all my boxes.
00:17:52
Yeah, it's an enchanting Willy Wonka kind of story, with a
00:17:57
mystical island, a reclusive bestselling author and lots of
00:18:01
riddles, and I mean, what's not to love about that, right?
00:18:04
Yes, absolutely.
00:18:05
So these are sort of like the two I read quite recently and
00:18:10
that I would recommend.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Did you read Yellow Face by Rebecca F Hwang?
00:18:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did.
00:18:15
I did read that while we were in Scotland this summer.
00:18:18
I really enjoyed it.
00:18:20
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:20
Speaker 1: I loved it.
00:18:21
My daughter-in-law gave me this book and I really want to read
00:18:24
it, so it's on my list.
00:18:25
A book I'm going to recommend is by Paul Rudnick, and it's
00:18:30
called Errol Covington and the Limits of Style.
00:18:33
It's hysterical, it's moving, it goes through kind of a
00:18:38
timeline which reflects a little bit about Paul's life.
00:18:41
It's definitely one of my favourite books of 2023 and I'll
00:18:45
make sure to put a link in the show notes to my interview with
00:18:48
Paul Rudnick.
00:18:48
Another book I'm going to give a shout out to is the
00:18:51
Displacements by Bruce Holsinger .
00:18:53
It's probably about two years old now, but it's a great read.
00:18:57
Oh my goodness, he is a fabulous writer, and the
00:19:00
Displacements is a climate thriller, and I'll also make
00:19:03
sure to put the link to my interview with Bruce Holsinger
00:19:07
in the show notes.
00:19:07
Oh, and I'm going to give one more recommendation.
00:19:10
It is a little book.
00:19:11
It's called Days at the Morasaki Bookshop by Satoshi
00:19:15
Yagasawa.
00:19:15
I just love that little book.
00:19:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really enjoyed that one.
00:19:19
I think it came out in German slightly earlier than it did in
00:19:22
English, so because it was a Japanese book, I thought, okay,
00:19:25
I can also read the German translation.
00:19:27
Yeah, I really enjoyed that.
00:19:29
I mean, when I first read it I kind of I don't know, I kind of
00:19:32
thought, well, I'd expected a little bit more.
00:19:35
But then eventually it kind of stuck with me for a while and I
00:19:38
kept thinking about it.
00:19:39
And it's been a few months and I'm still thinking about it.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, it's one of those lingering stories
00:19:45
and I love it when a book stays with me for a while.
00:19:48
Plus, I'm finding more and more I'm enjoying reading books in
00:19:52
translation, the cadence and the lilt of the text.
00:19:56
Books in translation are wonderful tools to help writers
00:20:01
discover more about their own writing.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
00:20:04
I think every culture has their own style of writing in a way,
00:20:09
and you can still hear that through the translation, right?
00:20:12
Speaker 1: Yes, Stephanie, you mentioned that you read in both
00:20:15
German and English.
00:20:16
Which language is your preferred language to read a
00:20:19
good book in?
00:20:20
Speaker 2: English actually.
00:20:21
Yes, I mean, it also has to do with my job, so I would say that
00:20:25
about 80 to 90% of the books I read are in English, and then
00:20:29
the rest would be German titles picked up from the library or
00:20:32
the local bookshop.
00:20:33
I mean, I like to read books in the language they were written
00:20:38
in, if I speak that language, obviously, but a lot of this art
00:20:42
of writing gets lost in translation.
00:20:44
Even translators who do a fabulous job, there's still this
00:20:49
tiny thing that always gets lost.
00:20:51
So if I can, then I'll try to read it in the original, but
00:20:55
obviously I don't speak all the languages in the world, and so a
00:20:58
lot of books would be read in translation.
00:21:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, Are there any local authors in your area that
00:21:03
you could recommend?
00:21:05
Speaker 2: Something I always recommend if you are into.
00:21:07
I wouldn't call it fantasy, but kind of like mysterious, very
00:21:13
bookish worlds with weird but oftentimes very friendly
00:21:17
monsters.
00:21:18
There is an author called Walter Möres and he wrote a
00:21:27
series of books that are sort of like loosely connected and they
00:21:30
all take place in this fabulous world, and some of them are
00:21:34
really about books and quite with quite a bookish theme.
00:21:38
So there's one called the City of Dreaming Books the title
00:21:42
itself is quite nice and then there's the Labyrinth of
00:21:44
Dreaming Books, and I think the third, like in that series, is
00:21:50
planned for sometime in the future.
00:21:51
But he wrote other books that are connected with that, and one
00:21:55
of those came out about two weeks ago.
00:21:58
Speaker 1: I love that title the City of Dreaming Books.
00:22:01
That's beautiful.
00:22:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I highly recommend it.
00:22:04
I mean it's a unique writer that has Like.
00:22:09
The protagonist is a dragon who grew up on this castle where
00:22:15
all of the dragons are poets, and then he comes to the city of
00:22:18
dreaming books where all of the people are booksellers and
00:22:22
antiquarian booksellers and publishers and editors and all
00:22:26
of that and there's like an labyrinth underneath the city
00:22:30
that's full of books.
00:22:32
Speaker 1: And I'll make sure to put links to all of the books
00:22:34
we've talked about on this episode today in the show notes.
00:22:37
Stephanie, are there any authors you've discovered on
00:22:41
Instagram who you might not have found otherwise?
00:22:45
Speaker 2: Quite a few.
00:22:45
Actually, as I said before, it's very bad for your bank code
00:22:50
I keep repeating myself, but I found quite a few new authors.
00:22:54
Ethan Dweller, the one I recommended earlier, he's
00:22:58
actually one of them.
00:22:59
He's an author I came across on Instagram and I'm sure I
00:23:03
probably never would have seen any of his books over here.
00:23:06
Well, at least so far they haven't been translated yet, so
00:23:09
I wouldn't see them in the bookshop.
00:23:10
That's something that is quite neat about social media.
00:23:14
James Farhi, you interviewed him, I think as well.
00:23:18
Speaker 1: And while not all authors will comment or
00:23:22
communicate with followers on social media, many of them do,
00:23:27
and one of them is, of course, james Farhi.
00:23:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, but exactly, I already said earlier that it's
00:23:32
also a nice way for authors to get in contact with their
00:23:35
readers and obviously for the readers it's a complete
00:23:39
highlight when an author, and maybe even a best-selling author
00:23:42
, likes your comment or says thank you or something.
00:23:46
Speaker 1: Another author I'm going to give a shout out to,
00:23:48
just because he's such a sweetheart, and one of my
00:23:51
favourite authors is TJ Klune.
00:23:52
Have you read the House in the Cerulean Sea?
00:23:55
I have, yeah, I enjoyed the art a lot, yeah, and in the Lives
00:23:59
of Puppets?
00:23:59
I mean, all his books are wonderful.
00:24:01
I wanted to ask you before you go is Germany banning books?
00:24:05
Speaker 2: No, thankfully they aren't Not yet.
00:24:07
At least you never know what's going to happen.
00:24:09
But no, thankfully not so far.
00:24:13
So we're quite lucky.
00:24:14
Speaker 1: Yes, you are.
00:24:15
It's been pretty bad over here in the States.
00:24:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read about that.
00:24:19
I didn't heard about that.
00:24:20
It's horrible.
00:24:22
Speaker 1: Yes, it sure is, Stephanie.
00:24:24
I've had a great time chatting with you.
00:24:26
Thank you for being a guest on the Bookshop podcast, and where
00:24:30
can people find you?
00:24:31
On Instagram.
00:24:33
Speaker 2: So my Instagram handle is the constant reader.
00:24:36
So that's the underscore, constant underscore reader.
00:24:40
Speaker 1: Thanks, again, Stephanie, and I will see you on
00:24:43
Instagram.
00:24:43
Well, thank you very much.
00:24:45
It was great chatting with you.
00:24:46
You've been listening to my conversation with fellow book
00:24:50
lover, Stephanie Caners.
00:24:52
To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to
00:24:55
thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a
00:25:00
review wherever you listen to the show.
00:25:02
You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, Instagram
00:25:07
and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast.
00:25:11
If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to
00:25:14
suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via
00:25:18
the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom.
00:25:21
The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, Mandy
00:25:25
Jackson Beverly, Theme music provided by Brian Beverly,
00:25:29
executive assistant to Mandy Adrian Otterhan and graphic
00:25:33
design by Francis Farahla.
00:25:35
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson Beverly and I'm a
00:00:14
Bibliophile.
00:00:15
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast .
00:00:18
Each week, I present interviews with independent bookshop
00:00:22
owners from around the globe, authors and specialists in
00:00:25
subjects dear to my heart the environment and social justice.
00:00:30
To help the show reach more people, please share it with
00:00:33
friends and family and on social media, and remember to
00:00:37
subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this
00:00:40
podcast.
00:00:41
You're listening to Episode 225 .
00:00:51
After finishing an apprenticeship, living in
00:00:53
Southern California for some time and working in the media
00:00:56
business for several years, stephanie Canes studied English
00:01:00
and German literature at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
00:01:04
During her studies, she worked as a journalist and also as both
00:01:08
a student assistant and a tutor in the English department.
00:01:11
In March 2007, she finished her degree with an MA thesis on
00:01:16
literary theory in David Lodger's campus novels.
00:01:19
In October 2010, she completed her PhD with a thesis entitled
00:01:24
Verbal Visuality the Visual Arts in Contemporary Anglophone
00:01:29
Fiction.
00:01:29
She's been working as a lecturer for the Literary
00:01:32
Studies section since 2007.
00:01:34
Hi, stephanie, and welcome to the show.
00:01:37
It's lovely to see you again.
00:01:38
Hi, mandy, thank you for having me.
00:01:40
Thank you for being here.
00:01:42
In my introduction, I spoke about how you'd lived in
00:01:45
Southern California and the different courses.
00:01:48
You'd studied your PhD and your work as a literary professor.
00:01:53
So can you expand on this a little bit and tell us what led
00:01:57
you through this journey?
00:01:58
Speaker 2: Oh, wow where to start.
00:01:59
My CV is a little bit complicated, maybe a little more
00:02:03
complicated than the CV of most people.
00:02:06
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know about complicated, but it's
00:02:08
definitely interesting Good point.
00:02:10
Speaker 2: Well, the first time I went to Southern California
00:02:13
was in the early 90s, so when I took part in it was like a four
00:02:18
week long home state program where we had English classes, we
00:02:22
learned all about US culture, went on field trips and all of
00:02:26
these things.
00:02:27
So my love for Southern California kind of started when
00:02:30
I was 16, roughly.
00:02:32
So after I finished school I did something that's actually
00:02:36
quite typical for Germany.
00:02:38
So instead of going to college, I started vocational training
00:02:42
in an office.
00:02:43
This was mostly something that my parents kind of talked me
00:02:48
into, I must say, because they were saying, well, an office job
00:02:52
gives you security and I would already earn some money and I'd
00:02:56
always have something decent to fall back on.
00:02:59
So, yeah, I believed them and I did that and ended up hating
00:03:04
every single second of it.
00:03:05
I had actually wanted to do, or rather wanted to do, something
00:03:09
with books, yeah.
00:03:10
But people were always saying, well, you can't make any money
00:03:13
from reading and book selling is an underpaid profession and all
00:03:18
of these things.
00:03:19
So well, I was young and gullible, so I abandoned those
00:03:24
dreams, but even though I did pull through with the
00:03:27
apprenticeship, so I did finish it and all of that.
00:03:29
But I always told myself, even while working, or maybe
00:03:33
especially while I was working that I'd be out of there the
00:03:36
minute my training ended.
00:03:37
Yeah, I basically started saving just the meager salary I
00:03:42
was making as an apprentice and then made that dream come true
00:03:46
and went to San Diego for about well half a year, I think, where
00:03:51
I took language classes and, just yeah, had a blast in a way.
00:03:56
Speaker 1: Well, san Diego is a beautiful place.
00:03:57
Yeah, it's lovely.
00:03:59
So, from San Diego, what prompted you to move back to
00:04:03
Germany and study literature?
00:04:05
Speaker 2: It was a step in between.
00:04:06
I mean, I did go back to Germany because obviously my
00:04:09
student visa didn't last forever .
00:04:12
So I returned to Germany and because I was still kind of like
00:04:16
buying into this idea of having to do something substantial and
00:04:20
that's not a why that wasn't a wise choice went to work in an
00:04:24
office again for a few years and it was in fact a much better
00:04:28
job than the one I had before doing the apprenticeship,
00:04:31
because it was in media, in media business, and it was in
00:04:36
flight entertainment agency, so I was talking to US film studios
00:04:41
on a daily basis.
00:04:42
So that was really interesting.
00:04:43
But just deep down I knew that this just wasn't it.
00:04:48
Then I quit after a few years and went to university at the
00:04:54
tender age of 27.
00:04:57
Speaker 1: I think that's a great age to go to university.
00:05:00
You've sown some oats by then right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:05:03
Speaker 2: So I studied German and English literature, so a
00:05:07
double major.
00:05:07
Yeah, frankly, I've never regretted it because I
00:05:11
absolutely loved it.
00:05:12
It was sort of like the best thing that ever happened to me,
00:05:15
and I enjoyed English more than German.
00:05:17
But just in general, I think I valued this experience much more
00:05:22
highly than a lot of the younger students, because I'd
00:05:25
seen the real world, if you know what I mean.
00:05:27
So I think I was enjoying being a student much more and
00:05:30
savoring sort of like the freedom to finally be doing
00:05:33
something that I'd always wanted to do, and from there you went
00:05:37
on to get your masters, followed by your PhD.
00:05:40
I did.
00:05:40
Yeah, I was quite lucky.
00:05:41
I mean, I had like a handful of jobs during my studies to keep
00:05:47
afloat, like all students probably, and one of them was as
00:05:51
a freelance journalist at the local newspaper.
00:05:54
I was quite lucky to get a position like a student
00:05:58
assistant position in the English department.
00:06:00
So I basically already had my foot in the door when it came up
00:06:04
to finishing my masters and applying for a PhD.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: And what was your thesis topic for your PhD?
00:06:11
Speaker 2: For the PhD, it was on the visual arts in
00:06:14
contemporary literature.
00:06:15
They're basically novels that deal with visual art.
00:06:19
It could just be descriptions of paintings or could be a story
00:06:23
about a painter and the sort of like artistic viewpoint and
00:06:27
those types of things.
00:06:28
Speaker 1: Yes, and you currently teach British
00:06:31
literature at the British and Anglophone Literature and
00:06:34
Culture Department at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
00:06:37
What drew you to British literature?
00:06:40
Speaker 2: That's a good question.
00:06:41
As I said before, English was my second major and I liked it a
00:06:45
lot better than German literature.
00:06:47
But I don't know, I'm kind of like a weak spot for the English
00:06:52
language and for English literature and I like how
00:06:55
different it is throughout the various epochs of history and
00:06:58
maybe or probably it all started when I first read like a
00:07:02
battered library copy of Jane Eyre when I was 14.
00:07:06
Speaker 1: That creates a great image.
00:07:07
I can see you sitting in a library with that book.
00:07:10
Not that Now for our listeners.
00:07:13
You and I met through Instagram and were lucky to meet in
00:07:17
person when you traveled to California earlier this year and
00:07:20
visited Bart's books in my hometown of Ohai.
00:07:23
Now, like me, you adore independent bookshops and have
00:07:28
seen many across the globe.
00:07:29
Is there a country, city or town you feel has an innately
00:07:34
stronger presence of reading and indie bookshops?
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Speaker 2: Oh, that's a tough one.
00:07:39
As for certain countries, the city is, I don't know.
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I think I haven't really traveled widely enough yet to
00:07:47
sort of like presume I know what that special place would be,
00:07:51
but what I can say is that I think that everywhere the
00:07:55
appreciation for smaller and independent bookshops is kind of
00:07:58
on the rise.
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At least that's my impression, because, as we all know, that
00:08:01
was this time where the smaller shops went out of business
00:08:05
because of the chain bookstores, which then in turn had a
00:08:08
difficult time because of readers ordering their books
00:08:10
online, and I mean, even though people myself included,
00:08:14
obviously will continue to buy things on the Internet.
00:08:16
I feel like more and more indie bookshops are being opened
00:08:20
again, because customers crave that sense of community that had
00:08:23
been lost.
00:08:24
At least that's my impression.
00:08:27
Speaker 1: Yes, I agree with you there.
00:08:29
One of the things that I noticed in your Instagram post
00:08:32
is that you travel to Scotland quite regularly.
00:08:34
Speaking of literary towns, Is it easy access to get there from
00:08:38
Germany?
00:08:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not too far.
00:08:41
I mean, if you take the plane it's about one and a half hours
00:08:44
from here to Edinburgh.
00:08:45
But we usually take the overnight ferry, so we have the
00:08:49
car with us.
00:08:49
It's much more convenient, so you can drive around.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: Yes, and you can pack books in your car.
00:08:54
That as well yes.
00:08:56
I've not been to Edinburgh but it's on my wish list.
00:09:01
But I imagine it to be a little like Ireland, where their local
00:09:06
writers, past and present, are cherished.
00:09:08
I guess that's one of the reasons Edinburgh was named the
00:09:12
first city of literature by UNESCO.
00:09:14
For this show, I've interviewed booksellers from Golden Hair
00:09:18
Lighthouse Bookshop and the Edinburgh Bookshop, but I'm
00:09:21
interested in which bookshops you've visited while you've been
00:09:24
in the city.
00:09:26
Speaker 2: You actually.
00:09:26
I mean, Edinburgh is essentially any book lover's
00:09:30
paradise, I would say right, it's not just a stunningly
00:09:34
beautiful city, but it has some of the most amazing bookshops
00:09:37
around, and well, I've been to Topping Company, that's
00:09:41
definitely a favorite.
00:09:42
They have other branches, one of them in St Andrews and then
00:09:45
another one in Bath and some other place I can't remember
00:09:49
right now.
00:09:49
They have these sort of like honey-coloured bookshelves and
00:09:54
rolling letters.
00:09:56
It's amazing and they also have complimentary tea and coffee,
00:10:00
so that's a nice plus.
00:10:02
Also really like lighthouse books.
00:10:05
I think you interviewed them.
00:10:06
The Golden Hair, that was another one.
00:10:08
Yeah, maybe, if you like secondhand books, armchair books
00:10:12
would be a nice place to go, because that's like a rabbit
00:10:17
hole that you can fall into and you might just find one or the
00:10:20
other little treasure.
00:10:22
Speaker 1: It sounds a bit like Bart's books.
00:10:23
Stephanie, how do you feel social media has enhanced
00:10:27
reading?
00:10:29
Speaker 2: It's a good addition to just reading by yourself at
00:10:33
home, etc.
00:10:35
But I think it gives you something that also, like local
00:10:39
bookshops, do this the sense of community in a way.
00:10:42
I think, especially during the last years, with the pandemic
00:10:46
and everything that's been going on, and places like Instagram
00:10:50
ignoring all the drama that can obviously happen there as well
00:10:54
those places are kind of lovely because people can easily sort
00:10:57
of like find their own niche you know what I mean.
00:11:00
So cat lovers will find other cat lovers and knitters will
00:11:04
find other knitters and book lovers will find other readers,
00:11:08
and it's a global thing.
00:11:09
That's the lovely thing about it, I think.
00:11:10
So to get to talk to people from all over the world who
00:11:14
share your interests, and that's amazing and obviously it
00:11:17
wouldn't have been possible 20 or 30 years ago.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: And I also like how the hashtags have managed to
00:11:23
break down the writing genres.
00:11:25
For example, hashtag reading romance, hashtag romance,
00:11:29
hashtag crime thrillers, hashtag nonfiction.
00:11:32
And, as you said, there is a group for everyone.
00:11:36
It wasn't that long ago where there were fan clubs for authors
00:11:40
, so you would write a physical letter, send it through the mail
00:11:44
and hope the author got back to you, and now it's almost
00:11:47
instantaneous.
00:11:48
You can tag an author in a post , drop them a message, comment
00:11:54
on one of their posts.
00:11:55
I think that connection is wonderful for readers and also
00:12:00
for authors, and it's a fantastic way for publishing
00:12:05
companies or the PR reps in publishing companies to reach
00:12:09
out to readers.
00:12:10
It's become a phenomenal marketing tool.
00:12:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.
00:12:16
It's kind of like also a modern way of advertising and
00:12:19
recommending books right, and can be very bad for your bank
00:12:23
account yes, tell me about it, because you find so many new
00:12:29
titles that you may never have heard of before without social
00:12:33
media.
00:12:33
But it's great fun and I also like how it kind of like
00:12:37
promotes reading and the passion for the written word in general
00:12:41
, especially in times where, like overly critical people are
00:12:44
always advertising the death of the book.
00:12:46
I believe that places like Bookstagram and Booktalk and
00:12:51
BookTube when you name it are evidence that literature is
00:12:55
still running strong right.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.
00:12:58
You spoke earlier about the drama of social media.
00:13:01
That's something I keep away from.
00:13:03
If there's a book that I've read and I don't like it, or I
00:13:07
decide not to read it because it just didn't capture me quick
00:13:09
enough, I don't talk about it.
00:13:11
I'd much rather focus on the positive of books that I find
00:13:15
thrilling to read, and for someone who is wanting to share
00:13:20
a negative review, then my goodness, you better back that
00:13:22
up.
00:13:23
For example, just writing I didn't like this book.
00:13:25
I was bored.
00:13:26
It doesn't really help another reader.
00:13:28
Think about what it is that bored you with this book, and my
00:13:32
guess is that if it didn't grab you within that first sentence,
00:13:36
first paragraph, first page, then perhaps the reason you
00:13:40
didn't like that book is because you like to be grabbed from
00:13:43
that first sentence.
00:13:44
So maybe you could give an example of why the first
00:13:48
sentence was boring, and I think this is actually good for the
00:13:51
author and good for the reader.
00:13:52
Let's face it, reading is subjective, like everything else
00:13:56
on the planet.
00:13:57
Some people are going to like what you like and others aren't,
00:14:00
and that's the joy of the arts, exactly, yeah?
00:14:05
Okay, now let's talk about something fun, because you've
00:14:07
recently had an overnight stay in a bookshop.
00:14:10
Can you share that little adventure with us?
00:14:13
Speaker 2: I did.
00:14:13
Yeah, that was amazing.
00:14:16
That was a wonderful experience and obviously something I'd
00:14:19
been wanting to do forever and ever and ever, like any other
00:14:24
bookworm.
00:14:24
So how did it happen?
00:14:26
Well, I recently found out that a relatively new indie bookshop
00:14:31
just five kilometers down the road from our house was offering
00:14:35
overnight stays.
00:14:36
Yeah, so they have a beautiful shop downstairs and upstairs,
00:14:40
kind of like an open landing, where they have a fold out couch
00:14:43
that you can sleep on when you get tired.
00:14:45
So you basically show up shortly before closing time,
00:14:49
which is when they show you everything that you need to know
00:14:52
, like where the light switches, where's the coffee machine, and
00:14:56
then you're left in the shop by yourself till the next morning
00:15:00
and you can browse and read, and it was actually quite nice and
00:15:04
lovely to just browse the shelves without interruption and
00:15:08
to read through half the night.
00:15:09
I fell asleep like sometime after midnight, but then got up
00:15:13
early the next morning, make myself a cuppa and continued
00:15:18
browsing till the booksellers came in to open the shop at
00:15:21
around nine I think it was and then I went and had a lovely
00:15:24
breakfast, which was also included in the overnight fee.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: It was quite something.
00:15:29
It sounds like the perfect gift to give a book lover.
00:15:32
Let's talk books, our favorite topic.
00:15:35
Do you read mostly fiction or nonfiction, and is there a genre
00:15:39
of fiction that is your preferred genre to read?
00:15:43
Speaker 2: Well, I've always had a soft spot for gothic fiction,
00:15:47
horror fiction, but I'm very much a mood reader actually, so
00:15:53
I read almost any kind of genre, depending on what I feel like
00:15:56
really, which is why my piles of books are growing, yeah, so it
00:16:02
really depends on my mood what I want to read.
00:16:05
But yeah, I have kind of like this weak spot for the gory and
00:16:09
the creepy, and that's a great segue into my next question.
00:16:12
Speaker 1: What are you currently reading?
00:16:14
Speaker 2: The book I'm currently reading is Stephen
00:16:16
King's latest novel, holly.
00:16:18
I know I've been enjoying that a lot.
00:16:20
It's about people going missing and a very questionable couple
00:16:25
of academics who are to blame and that's not a spoiler,
00:16:28
because it's on the back blurb.
00:16:30
I really like King because he's an author I've been following
00:16:34
ever since I picked up a copy of Pet Sematary when I was 14.
00:16:37
And I was way too young to read something that scary, and that
00:16:42
book scared me good.
00:16:43
I was equally traumatized and fascinated at the same time.
00:16:49
So I kind of stuck with his literature, all his books, his
00:16:53
novels.
00:16:54
As for recommendations, that's a tough one.
00:16:57
Well, this last year it was quite a bit of a stressful time
00:17:01
because we had a few family issues with my mom was ill and
00:17:05
stuff like that.
00:17:06
So I was kind of drawn to sort of what you would probably call
00:17:10
comfort books, comfort reads A few that really stuck out for me
00:17:15
.
00:17:15
So my first recommendation would probably be A Quiet Life
00:17:19
by Ethan Joella, which is kind of like a powerful but also
00:17:23
tender novel about three people grappling with different kinds
00:17:27
of loss.
00:17:27
But be warned, it will rip out your heart.
00:17:29
That then it will stitch back together.
00:17:31
So you should be fine.
00:17:33
Speaker 1: I think your last sentence would make an author
00:17:36
feel proud.
00:17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I really enjoyed that one.
00:17:39
And another one I read quite recently was the Wishing Game by
00:17:43
Meg Schaeffer.
00:17:44
Even though you can guess quite early on how it will end, it's
00:17:49
slightly predictable.
00:17:50
It ticked all my boxes.
00:17:52
Yeah, it's an enchanting Willy Wonka kind of story, with a
00:17:57
mystical island, a reclusive bestselling author and lots of
00:18:01
riddles, and I mean, what's not to love about that, right?
00:18:04
Yes, absolutely.
00:18:05
So these are sort of like the two I read quite recently and
00:18:10
that I would recommend.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Did you read Yellow Face by Rebecca F Hwang?
00:18:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did.
00:18:15
I did read that while we were in Scotland this summer.
00:18:18
I really enjoyed it.
00:18:20
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:20
Speaker 1: I loved it.
00:18:21
My daughter-in-law gave me this book and I really want to read
00:18:24
it, so it's on my list.
00:18:25
A book I'm going to recommend is by Paul Rudnick, and it's
00:18:30
called Errol Covington and the Limits of Style.
00:18:33
It's hysterical, it's moving, it goes through kind of a
00:18:38
timeline which reflects a little bit about Paul's life.
00:18:41
It's definitely one of my favourite books of 2023 and I'll
00:18:45
make sure to put a link in the show notes to my interview with
00:18:48
Paul Rudnick.
00:18:48
Another book I'm going to give a shout out to is the
00:18:51
Displacements by Bruce Holsinger .
00:18:53
It's probably about two years old now, but it's a great read.
00:18:57
Oh my goodness, he is a fabulous writer, and the
00:19:00
Displacements is a climate thriller, and I'll also make
00:19:03
sure to put the link to my interview with Bruce Holsinger
00:19:07
in the show notes.
00:19:07
Oh, and I'm going to give one more recommendation.
00:19:10
It is a little book.
00:19:11
It's called Days at the Morasaki Bookshop by Satoshi
00:19:15
Yagasawa.
00:19:15
I just love that little book.
00:19:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really enjoyed that one.
00:19:19
I think it came out in German slightly earlier than it did in
00:19:22
English, so because it was a Japanese book, I thought, okay,
00:19:25
I can also read the German translation.
00:19:27
Yeah, I really enjoyed that.
00:19:29
I mean, when I first read it I kind of I don't know, I kind of
00:19:32
thought, well, I'd expected a little bit more.
00:19:35
But then eventually it kind of stuck with me for a while and I
00:19:38
kept thinking about it.
00:19:39
And it's been a few months and I'm still thinking about it.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, it's one of those lingering stories
00:19:45
and I love it when a book stays with me for a while.
00:19:48
Plus, I'm finding more and more I'm enjoying reading books in
00:19:52
translation, the cadence and the lilt of the text.
00:19:56
Books in translation are wonderful tools to help writers
00:20:01
discover more about their own writing.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
00:20:04
I think every culture has their own style of writing in a way,
00:20:09
and you can still hear that through the translation, right?
00:20:12
Speaker 1: Yes, Stephanie, you mentioned that you read in both
00:20:15
German and English.
00:20:16
Which language is your preferred language to read a
00:20:19
good book in?
00:20:20
Speaker 2: English actually.
00:20:21
Yes, I mean, it also has to do with my job, so I would say that
00:20:25
about 80 to 90% of the books I read are in English, and then
00:20:29
the rest would be German titles picked up from the library or
00:20:32
the local bookshop.
00:20:33
I mean, I like to read books in the language they were written
00:20:38
in, if I speak that language, obviously, but a lot of this art
00:20:42
of writing gets lost in translation.
00:20:44
Even translators who do a fabulous job, there's still this
00:20:49
tiny thing that always gets lost.
00:20:51
So if I can, then I'll try to read it in the original, but
00:20:55
obviously I don't speak all the languages in the world, and so a
00:20:58
lot of books would be read in translation.
00:21:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, Are there any local authors in your area that
00:21:03
you could recommend?
00:21:05
Speaker 2: Something I always recommend if you are into.
00:21:07
I wouldn't call it fantasy, but kind of like mysterious, very
00:21:13
bookish worlds with weird but oftentimes very friendly
00:21:17
monsters.
00:21:18
There is an author called Walter Möres and he wrote a
00:21:27
series of books that are sort of like loosely connected and they
00:21:30
all take place in this fabulous world, and some of them are
00:21:34
really about books and quite with quite a bookish theme.
00:21:38
So there's one called the City of Dreaming Books the title
00:21:42
itself is quite nice and then there's the Labyrinth of
00:21:44
Dreaming Books, and I think the third, like in that series, is
00:21:50
planned for sometime in the future.
00:21:51
But he wrote other books that are connected with that, and one
00:21:55
of those came out about two weeks ago.
00:21:58
Speaker 1: I love that title the City of Dreaming Books.
00:22:01
That's beautiful.
00:22:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I highly recommend it.
00:22:04
I mean it's a unique writer that has Like.
00:22:09
The protagonist is a dragon who grew up on this castle where
00:22:15
all of the dragons are poets, and then he comes to the city of
00:22:18
dreaming books where all of the people are booksellers and
00:22:22
antiquarian booksellers and publishers and editors and all
00:22:26
of that and there's like an labyrinth underneath the city
00:22:30
that's full of books.
00:22:32
Speaker 1: And I'll make sure to put links to all of the books
00:22:34
we've talked about on this episode today in the show notes.
00:22:37
Stephanie, are there any authors you've discovered on
00:22:41
Instagram who you might not have found otherwise?
00:22:45
Speaker 2: Quite a few.
00:22:45
Actually, as I said before, it's very bad for your bank code
00:22:50
I keep repeating myself, but I found quite a few new authors.
00:22:54
Ethan Dweller, the one I recommended earlier, he's
00:22:58
actually one of them.
00:22:59
He's an author I came across on Instagram and I'm sure I
00:23:03
probably never would have seen any of his books over here.
00:23:06
Well, at least so far they haven't been translated yet, so
00:23:09
I wouldn't see them in the bookshop.
00:23:10
That's something that is quite neat about social media.
00:23:14
James Farhi, you interviewed him, I think as well.
00:23:18
Speaker 1: And while not all authors will comment or
00:23:22
communicate with followers on social media, many of them do,
00:23:27
and one of them is, of course, james Farhi.
00:23:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, but exactly, I already said earlier that it's
00:23:32
also a nice way for authors to get in contact with their
00:23:35
readers and obviously for the readers it's a complete
00:23:39
highlight when an author, and maybe even a best-selling author
00:23:42
, likes your comment or says thank you or something.
00:23:46
Speaker 1: Another author I'm going to give a shout out to,
00:23:48
just because he's such a sweetheart, and one of my
00:23:51
favourite authors is TJ Klune.
00:23:52
Have you read the House in the Cerulean Sea?
00:23:55
I have, yeah, I enjoyed the art a lot, yeah, and in the Lives
00:23:59
of Puppets?
00:23:59
I mean, all his books are wonderful.
00:24:01
I wanted to ask you before you go is Germany banning books?
00:24:05
Speaker 2: No, thankfully they aren't Not yet.
00:24:07
At least you never know what's going to happen.
00:24:09
But no, thankfully not so far.
00:24:13
So we're quite lucky.
00:24:14
Speaker 1: Yes, you are.
00:24:15
It's been pretty bad over here in the States.
00:24:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read about that.
00:24:19
I didn't heard about that.
00:24:20
It's horrible.
00:24:22
Speaker 1: Yes, it sure is, Stephanie.
00:24:24
I've had a great time chatting with you.
00:24:26
Thank you for being a guest on the Bookshop podcast, and where
00:24:30
can people find you?
00:24:31
On Instagram.
00:24:33
Speaker 2: So my Instagram handle is the constant reader.
00:24:36
So that's the underscore, constant underscore reader.
00:24:40
Speaker 1: Thanks, again, Stephanie, and I will see you on
00:24:43
Instagram.
00:24:43
Well, thank you very much.
00:24:45
It was great chatting with you.
00:24:46
You've been listening to my conversation with fellow book
00:24:50
lover, Stephanie Caners.
00:24:52
To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to
00:24:55
thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a
00:25:00
review wherever you listen to the show.
00:25:02
You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, Instagram
00:25:07
and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast.
00:25:11
If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to
00:25:14
suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via
00:25:18
the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom.
00:25:21
The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, Mandy
00:25:25
Jackson Beverly, Theme music provided by Brian Beverly,
00:25:29
executive assistant to Mandy Adrian Otterhan and graphic
00:25:33
design by Francis Farahla.
00:25:35
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
