POD: Book Clubs

Where the Crawdad

Striking and evocative

Where the Crawdads Sing is an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heart-breaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising murder mystery all in one. Delia Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

With themes of abandonment, loneliness, resilience and the power of nature, there’s plenty to discuss about this book. Find out more about the author, her story and the landscape of the marches in the resources below.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

PODCASTS

Interview With Delia Owens

(22 mins )

Delia Owens talks to Moms Don’t Have Time To Read Books Podcast, about her life in the wild, the importance of female friendships, mastering Instagram and how it took 10 years to publish this amazing novel.

Play

The Book Club Review Podcast of Crawdads

(37 mins )

Kate and Laura sit down to chat about the books read most recently by their book clubs. What did they make of them? Did they spark debate? And did they love them or loath them, they always they try to answer the big question: were they great book club books? Find out what Kate’s book club thought about Where The Crawdads Sing.

Play

VIDEOS

“Where the Crawdads Sing” author Delia Owens

(7 mins )

An interview with Owens at her home in Idaho.

Watch

The Flora and fauna of the North Carolina marshes.

(6 mins )

Set in the fictional eastern North Carolina town of Barkley Cove and its surrounding marshes. The novel is an insight into life there. This video showcases the areas nature, landscape, plants and animals.

Watch

ARTICLES

Book Club Questions for Where the Crawdads Sing

Great questions for your Book Club to use to further discussions about the book. From bookclubchat.com

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Shrimp and Grits Casserole

Looking for something authentic to serve your Book Club guests ? Try this recipe from the Taste of the South magazine.

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The Dark History Behind the Year’s Bestselling Debut Novel

Your book club may have read Where the Crawdads Sing. But how much did a long-ago murder in Africa influence Delia Owens’ first novel ? Laura Miller for Slate.

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Retired biologist’s ‘painfully beautiful’ debut novel becomes year’s surprise hit

Publishing experts are baffled by the scale of the book’s success as the story resonates beyond political boundaries and in defiance of falling sales of adult fiction.

Read Article

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Book Club Kit

Delia Owens Website

The Nickel Boys

Heartbreakingly good

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The Nickel Boys, his follow up book, won Colson a second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2020. He brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. The book was named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best fiction books of the decade.

Th story is set at a time when the civil rights movement was spurring change, but progress was slow and certainly didn’t infiltrate the book’s fictional Nickel Academy where much of the story takes place. The Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school for boys, is based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

American Dirt

Incredible or insulting

When American Dirt came out, it was an Oprah’s book club pick and became The Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. It was optioned for a film adaptation by Clint Eastwood and was lauded by many as the ‘great immigration novel’. However since then it has received harsh criticism, particularly from many Latinx writers for what they felt was its stereotypical portrait of migrants from Mexico and Central America. The controversy caused Jeanine Cummins to cancel her book tour and all events due to death threats and more.

There’s so much to discuss about this novel, so in addition to reading the book why not enrich your book club meeting by exploring the US/Mexico crisis further with podcasts and videos from the frontlines and discussions about the potential consequences of telling a story that is not your own.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

Educated

Astonishing self-invention

Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days in rural Idaho with radical survivalist Mormon parents. She didn’t get a birth certificate until she was nine and had no medical records because her father did not believe in doctors. She and her six older siblings worked in her father’s junkyard. As she grew older, her father’s beliefs became more extreme and one of her brothers grew violent.

At 17, she decided to educate herself as a means of escape. Within 10 years she had earned a PhD in intellectual history and political thought from Cambridge but was estranged from her parents and half of her siblings. Now 31 and still living in Cambridge, Educated is her first novel and is about the transformative power of education and the price she had to pay for it.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

Where the Crawdad

Striking and evocative

PODCASTS

(22 mins )

(37 mins )

Kindle Paperwhite

VIDEOS

(7 mins )

(6 mins )

HelloFresh meal plan offers

ARTICLES

XTRA

Book Club Kit

Delia Owens Website

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