Podcasts About Books That All Bookworms Need To Subscribe To

If you’re obsessed with all things literature, you may well want to listen to content about books as well as read them. Whether it’s chatting with your favourite authors or raking in the recommendations of the week, here are the book podcasts you need to subscribe to.

Podcasts about books you need to listen to

Backlisted

Hosted by John Mitchinson (the head researcher for panel show QI and subsequently the co-author of the related book series) and Andy Miller (the author of three books including The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life) get together with a guest writer each week to chat through books they believe have been widely unrated and underread.

You’re Booked

Journalist and Author Daisy Buchanan (How To Be A Grown-Up and The Sisterhood: A Love Letter to the Women Who Have Shaped Me) heads to the homes of authors and writers she admires to inspect their bookshelves, questionings them on titles that jump out to her and their reading habits from over the years.

Sentimental Garbage

Promising Young Women author and journalist Caroline O’Donoghue sets out on a mission to give the so-called Chick Lit that’s often been dismissed of literary worth the validation it deserves – from Bridget Jones Diary to Watermelon. Chatting with a guest who works within in publishing industry in some shape or form, the changing duo talk nostalgically about how such works have shaped them.

Talking of Books

Recorded here in Dubai, the hosts of this podcast – Isobel Abulhoul and Annabelle Corton – sit down with different UAE-based guests week on week to discuss reviews, suggestions and reading and writing tips, with the occasional interview, too.

What to listen to when you can’t reach for your current read

The Penguin Podcasts

There’s nothing quite like a bookshelf lined with Penguin Classics, right? So it’s well worth letting Penguin’s very own podcast into your ears, too. Thinkers, authors and publishing pioneers bring in five items that inspired them and discuss these with the host.

The New Yorker Fiction

Likewise, serious fiction lovers need to put the New Yorker’s podcast on their listening list, too. Fiction Editor for the publication Deborah Treisman sits down with an author each month to digest a fiction reading of their choice and engage in a discussion.

The Stories That Shaped Me

From stories they’ve read to anecdotes from their lives, guests such as Elizabeth Day and Sarra Manning join Alice Revel to flit between the two and link them together. A self-prescribed ‘books podcast for the non-bookish’.

Fresh Air

Not a books podcast necessarily, but author interviews and book reviews are regular features. Broadcaster Terry Gross, whose frank yet warm interview style is always engaging, hosts the show each week. Recently she has spoken to novelist John Green about his works such as The Fault In Our Stars, for example.

The High Low

Journalists and authors Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes – the former penned bestseller autobiography Everything I Know About Love while the latter has a collection of essays on the way – speak about new stories and pop culture week to week. More often than not, each host arrives with a long list of books and articles they’ve enjoyed, and the occasional author interview makes up the chart-topping podcast, too.