Bedside Reading

• Shred Sisters

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• It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

  Send us a textHow Christmasy are you feeling? It's December now and I know for some people this is a really exciting time of year.Today's podcast has been the best fun to record and is about a book which I absolutely adored. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about today's book is the fact that I didn't read it for the first time in December because it is a proper warm hug of a cheesy Christmas romantic comedy. That's not to say that it is without depth, but it really is just about the most perfect book to snuggle up in front of the fire with a hot chocolate and escape into and it was a huge treat to get to talk to Hayley Dunlop, the author, about it today.

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• The Wonders of Dr Bent

  Send us a textI'm delighted to welcome Professor Paul Crawford to the podcast today. We are talking about his novel, The Wonders of Dr Bent, described in the publisher's blurb as "a twisted tale of murder, revenge and abandonment."It is sort of a crime thriller, but there's so much more to this novel. There are some beautiful characters. There are two main protagonists who skirt on the edges of health and and illness.  We see characters who are thriving professionally whilst battling with demons of their own. In the background, we have fabulous supporting cast and a real sense of what could be and what could be better if only our mental health services were not designed with the idea that people are either mad or bad or perhaps both or completely well.Paul enables us to experience that area in between and the value of allowing people to survive and function within their own lives and be of value. It's a really interesting, gripping, thought-provoking novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Paul about it.

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• I who have never known men

  Send us a textA warm welcome back today to GP Kirsty Shires, who's here today to talk with me about Jacqueline Harpman's 1995 novel, I Who Have Never Known Men.This is an absolutely astonishing book. It is dystopian fiction at its best, I think. It is human, it is connected, it is thought-provoking, it is bizarre. There's so much to think about packed into 200 very short pages. I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's definitely a book I'm going to go back to, and I've really enjoyed talking to Kirsty about it.

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• Educated

  Send us a textEducated by Tara Westover is one of those books which has really stayed with me since I first read it back in 2018. It's also a book that I just assumed when I started this podcast that somebody would approach me and want to talk about.It feels astonishing that we've got as far as season 11 before anybody has asked to come on and discuss it. I'm glad I waited, though, because I've thoroughly loved my conversation with Syba Sunny today about the book and about some of the themes.We think about acceptance. We think about education. We think about self-motivation in learning. The ideas of hiding in plain sight. What is safeguarding? What is not safeguarding? And how do you norm reference a family? It's a brilliant book, and I've really enjoyed thinking about it.

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