Each week, freelance writer and lifelong bookworm Alli Hoff Kosik will challenge a guest to reread a literary throwback or to experience for the first time ever a book they may have missed as a kid. After that, they’ll be asked to spill all the feels and all the opinions about that book on the air for your podcast-listening pleasure. Every Tuesday, you can find us breaking down an old school read from our tween and teen days on a new episode of the show. We’ll cover everything from The Baby-Sitters Club to Holes, Nancy Drew to Harry Potter. This time around, we’re a little wiser (yay!), a lot older (ugh.), and of legal age to drink wine… so we’ll have a lot to say. Happy Reading!
On Episode 256, Alli and her guest cover not just one throwback read, but a whole series of them! Adventurers and decisive bookworms, this one’s for you, because it’s time to take a walk down memory lane to chat about the Choose Your Own Adventure series. This episode offers lots of insight into the history…
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On Episode 255, Alli and her guest consider Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey’s Cheaper By the Dozen… and it’s absolutely nothing like the romp of a Steve Martin movie you remember from your childhood. Instead, the book that inspired the movie(s) opens up conversations about the problematic nature of efficiency experts, narcissism, the…
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Buckle up for some real darkness this week, listeners, because we’re heading back to the world of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events! Episode 254 is all about the fifth installment in the series, The Austere Academy, in which the Baudelaire orphans are dropped off at an absurdly horrendous boarding school. Join Alli and…
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Join us on Episode 253 for a nostalgic journey back to Beverly Cleary’s Klickitat Street, more specifically, a discussion about the 1968 classic Ramona the Pest. Alli and her guest discuss their favorite Ramona-isms, fangirl over this self-aware young heroine, and chat about the many things that Cleary gets so incredibly right about childhood. Kara…
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Grab your favorite pens, markers, and stickers and prepare to jump back into the pages of Amelia’s Notebook! Listen to Episode 252 for a cozy, nostalgic visit back to the days of handwritten documentation and old school creativity. It’s a super fun ride that features discussions about likability, sass, jelly roll noses, and more. Mikki…
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SSR is BACK from summer break and jumping right into a conversation about 2009’s Beautiful Creatures, a southern gothic novel that explores witchcraft, first love, and teen angst. Tune in to hear Alli and her guest discuss everything from revisionist history and slut shaming to the “not like other girls” trope and iPods. They also…
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Five years of the podcast and 250 episodes… it’s a big week! And what better way to celebrate than by revisiting one of Alli’s deep cut childhood favorites, Joan Bauer’s Hope Was Here? Join the party as Alli and her guest take a sweet walk down memory lane with the help of this Newbery Honor…
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The subject matter of Episode 249 is HEAVY because it mirrors the equally heavy subject matter of Lurlene McDaniel’s long career in YA “sick lit.” More specifically, Alli and her guest chat about Six Months to Live, the 1985 novel that began the Dawn Rochelle series. In it, seventh grader Dawn is diagnosed with cancer…
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The SSR Podcast has spent no shortage of time on Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club and their idyllic life in Stonybrook, Connecticut… but what happens when we take one member of the BSC to the west coast? Well, you get the California Diaries series. On Episode 248, Alli and her guest discuss the first installment…
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On Episode 247, Alli finally gets the chance to revisit a book that’s been at the top of her personal SSR wish list for years: Bloomability by Sharon Creech. With the help of her guest, Alli follows main character Dinnie on a journey from her nomadic life in the U.S. to a Swiss boarding school,…
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