Ask a Bookseller

Feb 01 2025 328 ep. 2 mins 11
Ask a Bookseller Podcast artwork

Looking for your next great read? Ask a bookseller! Join us to check in with independent bookstores across the U.S. to find out what books they’re excited about right now.

One book, two minutes, every week.

From the long-running series on MPR News, hosted by Emily Bright. Whether you read to escape, feel connected, seek self-improvement, or just discover something new, there is a book here for you.

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Ask a Bookseller: ‘A More Perfect Party‘ by Juanita Tolliver 

Feb 01 2025 2 mins  
On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Makkah Abdur Salaam of Black Garnet Books in St. Paul recommends the nonfiction book “A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics” by Juanita Tolliver. Abdur Salaam describes i

Ask a Bookseller: 'The Serviceberry' by Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Jan 18 2025 2 mins  
On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Fans of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” were looking forward to her new collection of short essays “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,” which was published shortly before

Ask a Bookseller: ‘The Wealth of Shadows’ by Graham Moore

Jan 11 2025 2 mins  
On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now. Lovers of little-known history, get ready: We’ve got a book that lifts a real-life Minnesota tax attorney out of WWII obscurity and into the limelight with an out-of-the-box plan to defeat the Nazis without ever going to

Ask a Bookseller: ‘Blue Sisters’ by Coco Mellors

Jan 04 2025 2 mins  
On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Part of the superpower of stories is to create spaces for empathy: Between the pages of the book, we get to step into the lives of other people, real or fictional. That’s what Stefanie Chow of Stillwater Books in West War

Ask a Bookseller: ‘Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees’ by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Dec 21 2024 2 mins  
On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now. Rima Parikh of The Thinking Spot in Wayzata, Minn., recommends a book of short and sweet (and savory!) essays, perfect for gifting your favorite foodie. It’s called “Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees” by poet

Ask a Bookseller: ‘Let Us Descend’ by Jesmyn Ward

Dec 14 2024 2 mins  
On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now. Amy Loewy of the Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, La., knew right away which book she wanted to recommend: Jesmyn Ward’s novel “Let Us Descend.”Ward has won the National Book Award for Fiction twice with “

Ask a Bookseller: ‘Modern Poetry’ by Diane Seuss

Dec 07 2024 2 mins  
Julie Schultz of This House of Books in Billings, Montana recommends a book of poetry that made the finalist list for its category of the National Book Awards: Diane Seuss’s “Modern Poetry.” It’s not the first national recognition for Seuss, whose collection “frank: sonnets” won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2022. Both were published by Graywolf Press in Minneapolis.

Ask a Bookseller: ‘No Two Persons’ by Erica Bauermeister

Nov 30 2024 2 mins  
David Stippick of Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, Texas, recommends a novel they call “a love letter to readers.” It’s Erica Bauermeister’s “No Two Persons,” and David says the novel feels a bit like the movie “Love Actually,” in that we follow the stories of multiple characters. Here, they are connected by their experience with a single book.Fictional aut

Ask a Bookseller: ‘North Woods’ by Daniel Mason

Nov 23 2024 2 mins  
On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now. You’ve probably read a multi-generation saga where the story follows a family line through the decades. Have you read a novel that follows … not people, but a house? That’s the premise of “North Woods” by Daniel

Ask a Bookseller: ‘Just Us’ by Minnesota author Molly Beth Griffin

Nov 16 2024 2 mins  
Holly Weinkauf of Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul recommends “Just Us.” It’s written by Twin Cities author Molly Beth Griffin and illustrated by Anait Semirdzhyan.