Behind the Bookshelves

Enjoy podcasts about books? You're in luck. Launched in March 2018, AbeBooks‘ podcast series is called Behind the Bookshelves. AbeBooks (a.k.a. ABE) tells the stories behind books and the people who love them. It covers a wide range of bookish topics, and is designed to appeal to anyone who loves reading and adding books to their collection.

We have interviewed authors, booksellers, collectors, librarians, museum curators, bookbinders, professors, and organizers of book festivals.

You can listen to bestselling author David Baldacci explaining why he supports book festivals. You can hear how a food blogger won a book deal from Penguin. A librarian at Indiana University's Lilly Library describes her collection of books covering crime, science fiction, horror and pulp paperbacks. Annie Barrows explains how she became the co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Doris Moskowitz discusses the history of Moe‘s Books in Berkeley. Hilary Atleo describes how her mobile bookshop serves Vancouver. Shawn Sheehy from the Movable Book Society describes the joy of pop-up books. The library manager at the American Alpine Club talks about mountaineering books. William Kalush from Conjuring Arts Research Center sheds light on books about magic tricks.

The host is Richard Davies, who has worked for AbeBooks since 2005. Born in England and now a resident of Canada, Richard brings a personal touch to the podcasts with plenty of anecdotes from his own experiences in online bookselling.

I'm interested in ordinary people doing extraordinary things and how this can relate to the world of books. My job is to help the guests tell stories. One week, we‘ll talk about rare books and the next we will cover bestsellers.

Richard Davies

If you have a suggestion for the show, please email Richard at media@abebooks.com