Over the last several weeks, our Professional Book Nerds podcast has had several #1 New York Times bestselling authors join the show, while also providing book recommendations for our library partners and end users alike. Here is a recap of the latest episodes to help you get caught up.

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Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult’s recently released Small Great Things became her ninth straight title to debut at #1 on the NYT bestseller list and she joined Adam & Jill live on stage at the Cuyahoga County Public Library in front of 600 people to discuss the book, Jodi discusses race relations in America, how she approached this topic, her research process and much more in this unique, live interview.

David Levithan

David Levithan, author of The Lover’s Dictionary and countless acclaimed YA novels, sat down with Adam and shared his stories about his life in literature as both an author and an Editorial Director ad Scholastic. He provided unique insight on the process of how a book gets made and explained why he writes a story for his friends every Valentine’s Day.

James Dashner

James Dashner, of Maze Runner fame, joined Adam and Jill on stage in front of 400 rapid young fans and shared how the Maze Runner came to be, his surprise with how readers took to the series and much more. He recently released The Fever Code to provide closure to the series and he even gave us some breaking news about the latest Maze Runner movie.

 

The Books we Love to re-read 

Given that we work in an office full of book lovers it goes without saying that we have stories we adore so much that we want to rediscover them. A number of previous guests joined Adam and Jill to share the books they find themselves returning to frequently.

 

Books written during #NaNoWriMo

November is known, in the “lit world” as National Novel Writing Month, a time when writers challenge themselves to write every single day with the goal being a 50,000 word novel completed in one month. It’s a daunting task that many people can’t make it through but it makes writing a social experience and several incredibly well known books have come to be because of #NaNoWriMo. Jill and Adam discuss some of these books while lamenting how hard this Herculean writing challenge is.

 

Page to Stage

It’s no secret that our Professional Book Nerds are big Broadway fans. What may come as a surprise, however, is just how many theater productions have their roots in books. Join Jill, Adam and Megan as they share their favorite “page to stage” adaptations and discover musicals that even they had no idea have bookish origins. Singing is kept to a minimum, we promise.