The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast

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Episode 134: Authors' Lives

June 11, 2026

What draws us beyond a writer’s books and into their life? Why do some authors inspire us to seek out letters, journals, interviews, and biographies while others remain known to us only through their work? In this episode, Trevor and Paul are joined by Dr. James Bailey, author of Like a Cat Loves a Bird, a new book exploring the life and work of Muriel Spark. Rather than focusing on biography as a genre, the conversation wanders through a variety of questions about writers and readers: what p...

Episode 133: Life Between the Beginning and the End: On the Middle of Books

May 28, 2026

For the second installment in our series on the three pieces of a book, we turn from beginnings to that more difficult territory: the middle. What happens in the middle of a book? Is it simply the space connecting a strong opening to a satisfying ending? In this episode we explore the experience of living inside a book: development, repetition, immersion, wandering, pressure, rhythm. This feels like the space where the book does its work. We discuss the middles of sprawling novels as well sho...

Episode 132: Our Nightstands, Ourselves

May 14, 2026

In this episode, we take a look at the books we have on our nightstands and what they say about us! From the current reads, the aspirational tomes, the comfort books, the neglected books that somehow never leave the stack, and the ever-growing piles of good intentions, what makes a book a “nightstand book” instead of a shelf book? What do our bedside stacks reveal about our habits, ambitions, moods. And how often do our actual reading lives diverge from the readers we imagine ourselves to be?...