Episode 28 - Intellectually Affectionate with Annette LaPlaca

Books with Betsy

On this episode, Annette LaPlaca, a self-proclaimed church lady who loves mysteries and thrillers, discusses her career in editing, how she developed a love of reading in her children, and why it’s ok to have a lot of books. We also discuss the moral and empathetic benefits of a murder book and why people shouldn’t shy away from them.

Books mentioned in this episode:

What Betsy’s reading:

Dearest by Jacqui Walters

Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Books Highlighted by Annette:

Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

The Schwa Was Here by Neal Shusterman

The Storied Life A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

All books available on my Bookshop.org episode page.

Other books mentioned in this episode:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Matilda by Roald Dahl

1984 by George Orwell

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Leap Over a Wall by Eugene H. Peterson

The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta

Puritan Pleasures of the Detective Story by Erik Routley

Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene

Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle

Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun

Moby-Dick by Herman Mellville

Trust by Hernan Diaz

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

The Schwa Was Here by Neal Shusterman

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Emma by Jane Austen

The Keeper of Lost Causes: The First Department Q Novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell

Father Brown: The Essential Tales by G.K. Chesterton

Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas & Mark Olshaker

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro