#237 

I don't know if anyone mentioned this or if you had a similar idea already but I had a thought about the book truck just now. What if you made a stamp for the truck to stamp the books people buy (if they want to) like Shakespeare and Company does in Paris. It would be a nice souvenier and constant reminder where you got the book.

For all those people struggling with book clubs: I’m currently in a book club that focuses on movie adaptations, so every month we read a book, meet up to watch the movie together and then discuss whether we think it’s a good adaptation. This means that if you haven’t read the book (or don’t want to), you can still show up, hang out with friends, watch a movie and discuss that! It’s honestly a really good time, and it takes a lot of pressure off having to finish the book :) Also, something I did with my uni friend group for a while was a “book tag club”. Basically, once a week we’d choose a book tag (or make one up ourselves) and then discuss our answers over lunch. It was honestly so nice to have dedicated time to talk about books with my best friends, and I also got so many good book recs through that! I think something like that is a great alternative if you don’t have time to read more or don’t have the same taste in books as your friends!!

Thank you for showing my sketch, I'm so glad you liked it enough to share it here! This episode made me want to eat variable peach desserts and visit the book shops of Nova Scotia!

Heya, a human who works with websites here 🙋‍♀ Most website editors do not use tables due to poor scalability on different devices. You can try to use "Lists" - a structure similar to a product page view. Or you can make it via the blog feature, where each entry is a separate shop. Then, you can organise them beautifully in SS via many blog page layouts. The big Pros of using blog entry will be visual appeal + tagging, and filtering. You and your visitors can sort and filter all entries (by location, feel, or whatever you like). Yay! It's an idea out of thin air for the Van merch, but would you consider making handmade knit scrunchies with a Van charm? I feel this might click with your personality, + each scrunchie takes about 15 minutes to make. You can listen to the Audiobook and prepare a few for each trip. It would be a great personal touch.🙆‍♀

When Ariel discusses launching the mini truck I couldn't help from picturing her (or a member of the royal family, obviously) breaking a bottle of champagne over it like it's a ship launch.

In my book club, everyone has read the book every month since we started in January 2020 and it has never been negative AT ALL so I was so shocked by all the confessions! It is such a joy for us even on our 5th year! It helps that we only have 3 members and we are all big readers who read multiple books a month anyway. But if anyone wants to get started, something that I think really helped with our consistency/success was setting parameters. We discussed what types of books are allowed to be nominated (under 500 pages, not a part of a series, fiction, etc.) and as we've gone, we've learned what everyone likes and have tried not to nominate something that we know someone won't jive with (one of us hates horror, one hates romance, etc.). We rotate whose turn it is to nominate books and the current nominator gives 3 options, which the other two will discuss and choose from, usually avoiding anyone being too disappointed in the final pick. The nominator is also the one who will host when it comes time to discuss the book. December of every year, we don't assign a book (because it's such a busy time) but we still meet up and do a recap. This is when the reads of the year are awarded "Best Writing Style" or "Most Forgettable", etc. (there's like 20 'awards' haha), and we discuss which books or authors really stood out. We check in and make sure everyone is still happy with everything and decide on if we want to make any changes/adjustments for the next year. Then we discuss books we read outside of book club that year that we think the others might enjoy. Soon, we're going to hit book #50 and go out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate! I want everyone to have the positive experience we have had with a book club - it's been such a wonderful, consistent thing in our lives despite all the crazy changes that have happened in the last 5 years.

Truck merch idea: every bookish person loooves a tote bag! I’m also a big big fan of the little book size tote bags (perfect to protect your current read) (like the little ones from Daunt Books or the drawstring bags from Shakespeare & Company in Paris). Shouting this out cause I would love an Ariel Book Truck tote!!! 🤍

I really like my book club's structure, in case anyone wants inspiration. It's just three people (me and two close friends) and we pick books off *each other's* TBRs. We all keep up our storygraph TBRs and rotate who picks off of which TBR. That way at least two people are very actively interested in each book we read.

Project Hail Mary is available through my library as an audible book. I use Libby of course and there are several Audible books I can’t get, but I can get PHM. Maybe Audible’s contract with certain books changes geographically.

Oh also, a lot of markets I go to accept payment through PayPal/venmo with a QR code for customers to scan and bring up on their phone to pay. I don’t know what they experience is like from the vendors POV, but as the customer, it was super easy! 😊

Hi Ariel and Raeleen - you will never guess what happened! I found a copy of Albatross in the wild in the U.S.! I had just sold some books and was quickly browsing the shelves at my local used bookstore because I only had a few minutes and I was about to give up when "Albatross" on the spine jumped out at me!! It's an ex-library copy stamped "Calgary Public Library September 2019." Based on the stickers it looks like someone ordered it off Thriftbooks so I'm guessing that's how it originally crossed the border lol. And now it lives with me in Traverse City, Michigan 😊

Regarding why you can’t get a table for your site: 1) Tables are a NIGHTMARE for accessibility. They can be made accessible to those who use screen readers, but automating the accessibility is almost impossible - the user has to know what they’re doing. So that may be part of it. 2) The other part of it is that they don’t resize well for mobile users - and modern website builder apps/companies promise mobile-friendly templates.

My friend & I have started the most casual book club ever. Basically we talk about books we want to read soon and then when we do, we read them at our own pace and then eventually get back together to discuss. Sometimes we text updates throughout and make sure to include a page number before the comment so we aren’t spoiling anything. It’s worked great and is so fun. Sometimes one of us is reading a book the other has already read and we can talk about it even though we haven’t read it at the same time.

I love how Ariel's peachy highlights look now! It's getting even prettier as it fades 🥰 When we say "peach color" in Japanese, we think of a very soft pink (not orangey) like how your highlights look now so it feels like you finally got the peach hair to me 😂♡

I am in a book club through my local library that is run by one of the librarians (Courtney). I love it because we don't have to worry about what book we are going to read next or setting anything up. We just read the book and come to discuss. Courtney will do research about the author/book and she always has good tidbits to tell us and she will set up different bookish games as well. It is very chill and we aren't pressured to finish/read the book if we don't like it and it's so much fun to hang out with everyone each month.

Project Hail Mary is available as audiobook in my library in Coventry (UK), so maybe there is hope for some people!! Worth looking for sure :)

Hello, Raeleen and Ariel! I just wanted to mention an Orwell related book that recently came into my radar and that maybe Ariel would like to know about, if she hasn't already! It's called Wifedom, by Anna Funder, and talks about Orwell's wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy, how she was actually a brilliant writer who really influenced his work, but was kind of forgotten? Also, Funder goes through letters from Eileen to her best friend in her investigation, which I thought was an extra Ariel touch! AND it is in the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, which is happening for the first time this year! Anyway, I would love to know if Ariel has heard of this book and if she might be interested in reading it. Sending love from Brazil!

Thanks for another enjoyable episode! Re: Audible-only audiobooks, I agree, I don't understand why that's allowed. It seems terrible for accessibility for one thing, and in general I try to avoid Amazon. I wanted to add: my library has several audiobooks you can borrow that I think are considered Audible exclusives. Including Project Hail Mary (read by Ray Porter, so I'm pretty sure it's the same as the Audible one)! They're on BorrowBox and are called Bolinda Audiobooks. I don't know why my library has this option and yours apparently do not, that's a real shame. I didn't realise that PHM is only available via Audible in Canada until you said so. (If anyone reading this knows why Bolinda has the rights to distribute Audible audiobooks to some libraries, I'd love to know. I can't seem to find out why online.)

I haven't wanted to dye my hair at all, but with every new episode, I am more and more tempted to... you guys are truly influencers

On audible originals not being available at the library: They very much are available where I live! I use Libby and Borrowbox in Australia and both So You've Been Publicly Shamed and Project Hail Mary are available to borrow as audiobooks from my local library. Unsure if that's just an Australian thing though.

Hi:) Giulia here, from Italy:)) I just wanted to give you an internet hug, because I've been following you for years now, and you always make me calm and laughing at the same time Thank you! I also love books btw heheh I'm just gonna leave a book recommendation here: "Comme un roman" by Daniel Pennac ♥️ I don't know its English title (in Italian it's "Come un romanzo"). This book really saved my reader life, at a time where I was stuck AND feeling guilty about it. It made me cry and love. Also, it was one of the few things my ex did right ;) lol Big hug!

Because there was no early release this week I ended up watching this (which I normally don’t do) and I LOVED IT. The graphics are so freaking cute I can’t handle it!!! Also love the aesthetics of both of the rooms you’re in, very 70s vibes! Ariel I’m sure you’ve thought of this but there has to be a way you can tie together your new website and your minibus to bring more recognition and business to both. Maybe contacting the bookstores and asking to host a small event that would bring them business and you too…. Would be so cool if you took your bookbus to all (or the remaining) bookstores on your list and somehow collabed with them.

I’m in 2 different book clubs. One is at an indie store and we read fantasy/scifi books. All the books are voted on at the end of each year. All the picks for this year are really interesting and I’m excited to read them. And the other book club is with 3 of my friends. After we ran out of books we wanted to read we created a shared note and add books as we find them. If you want to read the book you put your name next to it. If a book has votes from all four of us it’ll be selected to read. We have 6 additional books waiting to read doing it this way.

Recording an audiobook for a loved one is SUCH a great gift idea!!! This has genuinely rocked my world, there will never be a birthday without a gift in my future lol

My book club has a good system where we rotate which person chooses the book. When it's our turn, we each pick 3-4 books and everyone votes on which to read. We are also a large enough group (about 10 people) so if people miss sometimes, we still have a good group.

Raeleen, if you like “Just Kids” (I think you will) and want to read more from Patti Smith, try “M Train.” There’s also “A Book of Days” with over 365 of her photographs taken over the course of a single year.

I love Hanif Abdurraqib! Highly recommend listening to his books as audiobook, he is a terrific narrator. Im so excited to listen to his new book.

I’m confused, the first day of spring was the 19th this year. And Ostara and spring are the same thing…

Ariel, I'm really excited about the book truck even though I live in Serbia and it's almost impossible right now (or in the near future) for me to go to Canada. 😊 I'm glad you can make this project happen, and it inspires me to do something similar in my area in the future maybe. 😊 I've read Project Hail Mary this time of the year two years ago and it's safe to say that it instantly became one of my favorite sci-fis of all time, even though I didn't like The Martian when that came out. ☺

Omg no way, I happen to have chosen the last week of June for my vacation and I had planned to go to Halifax, I'll definitely come to the pop up 😮😮😄😄

I enjoy reading books that "star" bookclubs and the best ones are the ones where the book is secondary to the relationships of the members. I feel like most don't bother reading the same books at the same time. They are just weekly dinners where they talk about whatever they're reading. They may choose a theme of book to read, but I don't think anyone is there to do a real literary analysis of the books. This is the kind of bookclub I'd want to join.

I was tuned out during the first few seconds of the podcast episode because I was setting up my yarn for crocheting and was suprised when y'all mentioned a 'fight from last episode,' I was like "HUH? DID I MISS SOMETHING???"

I'm so here for the book truck saga! 🤩

Project Hail Mary is available on the Libby App from public Libraries

I have run a vegetable stand using only a cash box and a square and it is kind of awkward handing people your phone to enter their pin but I would say 95% of people tap and I would just show them my phone screen with their total but keep it in my hand. Sometimes even when they inserted their card I would just turn my phone towards them and look away. It’s probably easier to operate a square with an iPad that you like leave on the table but it’s definitely possible with your phone

I would love to see bookmarks made for the mini truck with the custom paper Ariel has, could be really cool and custom

So happy to hear that the book truck merch will be available online so that we can support it from overseas! 🚚📚

So exciting to see that you are adding Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore back into your collection Ariel! Robin is my cousin and I love seeing people reading his work 😃.

I had a book club with my best friends and it was great while it lasted but I totally agree that you have to let it go when it loses momentum! But my best suggestion if you want a bookclub that doesn't feel like homework is to to join one with a really specific theme that you like - I joined a feminist science fiction book club, and while I haven't liked every single book, I have always been interested in reading the books that come up.

Just wanted to say that we take your seriously with any hair! You work for yourself so go nuts! 😊 I think your audience will take you seriously when you are true to yourself. Which, by the way, you appear to be!🎉

I’m so excited about the Nova Scotia bookshop website! I’ll be there next months. I’ve visit quite a few in the area but I’m excited to find more I didn’t know about 😊

Oh Raeleen! I finished “Last Night At The Telegraph Club”not too long ago & absolutely loved it. I know for sure that you will love it too. The only done side I had was that it was kind of long near the end, but I did love the ending!

Bold of you to assume I have friends for a book club 😌. Loved the podcast ❤

I’ve never seen that cover for Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, it’s usually the neon yellow one. I really enjoyed that book. I want to read his other book Sourdough….maybe this year.

just in time to see it while I eat dinner 🤌🏻

two legends back at it for another week lets go!!!!

The only book club I joined was via a game discord and never again. We had very different taste and I really wasn't vibing with the choice of books (YA romance with the UGLIEST cover known to man. If you're french you know what kind of book I talk about). After several attempts I simply said "Hey folks I think I'm gonna quit the book club because I'm not vibing with our choice of books" and they basically answered "Well just go, we don't need books snob anyway". Okayyyyyyy😅

As a small business owner, we only take cash or etransfer. Makes things super simple for us and alleviates the cost of a debit/credit machine

Don't know how useful this is for Canadians, but barnes and noble has cds of project hail mary 😂 maybe libraries can get cds of stuff that are audible only 🤷🏻‍♀️ This only works if you still have a cd player though

Help! 😅 A few weeks ago Ariel mentioned a poetry book and read a poem from it about peeling an orange. I didn't catch the title of the book back then and when I looked on the website it wasn't up yet. Naively I thouhgt "I will look it up later", but of course I forgot and now I can't for the life of me remember either title or author name or which episode it was on, but I would really love to read that poetry book! Can anyone help me? 😄 Thanks a lot in advance! 🙏

I'm almost willing to bet money that Raeleen will dnf Last Night at the Telegraph Club (but I hope you prove me wrong and love it) 😂 I was so excited about it, but I ended up being soooo bored, and I tend to enjoy a book where not much happens, which I don't think Raeleen does 😂

I normally listen to the podcast elsewhere, but as someone who work in the arts and disability sector, the thing about audible taking the copyright of the audio for new books means that people who are visually impaired or blind would be forced to pay if they wanted to read the book.

Hi Ariel, for accepting payments for your bookmobile I would recommend a sum up machine. I use one for selling at art markets. It has somewhere to insert a card and people can put their pin on the machine and can also tap! Maybe something to look into to see if that would suit you but it works for me!

I keep picking up Japanese books, but I find that I actually don't enjoy the formulaic 4-6 chapter novel structure where the same thing happens, but in a slightly different way. It's cute, until it's not. This style of book ends up being a 3 star for me in almost every instance.

Memory Piece is SO GOOD!

ariel i see SquareSpace sponsoring content creators all the time - i feel like it'd be worth trying to get in touch with someone there to see if they can give you a free domain and such :P 'Kamogawa Food Detectives' sounds like what i thought of 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold' - a sweet idea but kinda repetitive!

I highly recommend How to Make an American Quilt and Joy Luck Club, both books and then movies. Same theme of women stories and how they are now. Joy Luck Club is a bit more traumatic. Both are great!

No charts! My guess would be that because it’s tough to make a chart that scales responsively (resizes to fit your browser window and device so you don’t have to pinch and zoom). Like if you have a bunch of horizontal columns, at some point they will need to stack vertically to be readable on your phone.

Raeleen most times people at work never noticed when I changed my hair either. I think the majority of people are oblivious lol.

I'm not gonna lie, i gasped when i saw the title for this week's episode-ariel is making me wanna start a low stakes, little book club with my best friends

Did u see Robin Sloan has a new book out this year called Moonbound 😊

Love them film how to make an American quilt ! Xxx

Ariel! You've inspired me to make a list of all the independent bookstores in New Jersey. I already have a website that I barely use (turns out I don't really like blogging and I hate marketing [it's an author website for a novel and some short stories I wrote]) and, not to brag, but it has table/chart capabilities ha (WordPress). So why not make a tab with a list of awesome bookstores!

Sports Book Rec: Panenka by Ronan Hession!

Greetings from Texas

I really don't want this to come off the wrong way, so I'll preface this by saying that I love you girls and I absolutely mean no offense: you both look absolutely gorgeous but... it's not that visible? Since you didn't go full peach with the whole head, it doesn't change the whole hairstyle that much, so maybe that's why people are not noticing! Also, having color in your hair doesn't make you any less professional or anything like that, so I don't think you need to worry about it at all! Just wanted to put it out there :D

I like your hair!

The title made me laugh😂I just finished binging the last year of episodes, so this pro-book club development shocked me 😄😄

Last night at the telegraph club is very good 10/10 recommend

It's funny I read Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by accident, sort of, you see I produce radio plays each year and last year we were doing Dr J and Mr H, so I thought, maybe I should read it. I had read Treasure Island and liked it so why not. I did enjoy it, when we were doing the play, it was part of the dialogue he didn't just push her over, he stomped on her, that is why we felt it was terrifying, but that was the adaption, it makes sense though, because pushing a child over you wouldn't need the police.

If the website goes well, will you expand to other maritime provinces?? So much fun

Did you fight? Love the pod

Hi Ariel and Raeleen!!! I actually have a bit of a bookish issue I’m hoping you can help me solve! I’m a member of your bookmark subscription club and although the bookmark arrived at my parents house, when my mom tried to send the package to my address (I’m a college senior so didn’t want to keep that address for the full year) it got lost in the mail! Unfortunately the beautiful bookmarks and stickers are now missing in action. Is there anyway you all would be able to help me? I have been such a big fan of yours for years love you and no worries if not!

Raeleen, definitely stick straight hair for the emo themed party.

I’m so confused by the stairs behind Ariel. It has nothing to do with the podcast lol but i know that’s not in her house 😅

Cash only! 💚💵