S14:Ep275 - Books with Betsy Podcast with Guest Betsy Tomszak + "Characters in Disguise" Book Recs - 3/18/26

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram - @perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button. You can find Books with Betsy at https://www.bookswithbetsy.com/ and on IG at @books_with_betsy   This week, we chat with Chicago resident Betsy Tomszak who by day is a kindergarten teacher who reads lots and lots of picture books. After school hours, though, she is a reader of all kinds of other genres and the host of the podcast Books with Betsy. She was kind enough to invite us to be guests last summer, and we’re finally able to return the favor so she can tell our listeners all about her show. We get the nitty gritty about why she started the podcast and why she wanted to talk to regular readers.    Our book recommendation segment of the show this week is about characters in disguise. Sometimes a disguise is just to mask one’s appearance, but in other situations it is not only a physical disguise but an assumption of an entirely different personality and back story. We offer you historical fiction novels set in Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, a novel based on a medieval legend, a National Book Award winner, and a memoir.   Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 2- My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar  3- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 4- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb 5- Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet  6- So You Wanna Be On Top? by Sarah Hartshorne  7- Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica  8- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Hartman  9- Rules of Civility by Amor Towles  10- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles  11- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver  12- Summerdale by David Jay Collins  13- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai  14- The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy  15- The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley  16- Sundial by Catriona Ward  17- A Five Start Read recommended by Fellow Book Lover Jeanine Neale @jeans_stacked_shelf - Nobody Knows You are Here by Bryn Greenwood  18- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas  19- Master Slave, Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyoon Woo  20- Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear  21- Pope Joan: A Novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross  22- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl  23- The Good Lord Bird by James McBride    Media mentioned:   1- Wuthering Heights (2026) 2- Shrinking (Apple +, 2023 - present) 3- The Good Lord Bird (2020) 4- Jateska Cultural Center - https://jasteka.org 5- Artwork by Vian Sora - -https://jasteka.org/abcs-events 6- Run and Read Chicago - https://www.readandrunchicago.com