Kobo in Conversation

Nathan Maharaj spoke with the novelist and journalist Jowita Bydlowska about her new book Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After. It's a frank, unflinching recounting of the years following the publication of her first book, the memoir Drunk Mom. And it's a thoughtful, fearless meditation on the concept of shame. 
Jowita Bydlowska speaks about her accidental expertise in shame

For this special bonus episode of Kobo in Conversation, producer and co-host Nathan Maharaj was joined by one of Kobo's booksellers (and frequent Staff Picks contributor), Deandra Lalonde. They sort through the buzziest books to take along to the beach, the books landing in the next few weeks that you won't want to miss, and how best to bring a little Hollywood into your summer reading this year.
Books mentioned:
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Whistler by Ann Patchett
Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune From 2023: Carley Fortune on summer love and second chances

Heartstopper #6 by Alice Oseman
Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty
The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson
The Odyssey by Homer
There's Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson
On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
And check out dozens more summer picks HERE.

Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Sharon Bala, author of the award-winning 2018 novel, The Boat People. Her new book is called Good Guys. It's about a nearly bankrupt international aid charity called Children of the World, and how their stumbling into the good graces of an A-list celebrity raises a lot of money, and a lot of questions about who the good guys really are.
You can watch their conversation too: https://youtu.be/6_YeVizUPr4 
Sharon Bala on the absurdity of so-called Good Guys

This week we're bringing you a conversation Michael Tamblyn had in 2021 with Natalie Zina Walschots about her extremely fun novel called Hench. It's about a world where superheroes are out there saving the day in super ways, while villains, who are a lot like you and me, run organizations bent on taking over the world while also trying to keep scores up on Glassdoor.
Natalie's just released a sequel to Hench, and it's called Villain. 
 
[From 2021:]
We learned about some of the fantastical worlds Natalie enjoyed exploring as a young reader "often for sheer escapism," as well as the writers she drew inspiration from while starting out as a writer herself, and as a lifelong student of supervillainy:
Robert O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Z for Zachariah
High fantasy including J. R. R. Tolkien, but also Shannara, Dragonlance, and "anything with a wizard holding an orb on the cover" or "a skeleton holding a sword"
Christian Bök, Karen Solie, bp Nichol, and other writers "doing super weird things with language and the structural materiality of language..."
Soon I Will Be Invincible "was the first book I read from the perspective of a supervillain."
"Paradise Lost is really important to me ... the relationship between Satan the adversary to the world informs the way I write villains."
Neil Gaiman's Sandman, where "a character who's a villain in one context becomes the protagonist in another."
Vicious by V E Schwab
Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and various writings of Catherynne M. Valente for their "messed up fairy tale feel."

Nathan Maharaj spoke with physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of the 2021 book The Disordered Cosmos, a highly personal reflection on the human and inherently flawed practice of scientific inquiry and her career as a Black Jewish scientist. Her new book is The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie. In it she explains to readers, what's really going on with quantum cats? what does a light-swallowing black hole actually look like? what can we learn about quantum theory from the Afrofuturist jazz musician Sun Ra? —and a whole lot more.
Why Chanda Prescod-Weinstein sees hope in cosmic curiosity