S15:Ep282 - Love and Other Monsters with Guest Emily Franklin + Shakespeare Inspired Book Recs - 7/22/26

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 Emily Franklin at www.emilyfranklin.com or on IG at emilyfranklinauthor   At the end of May, we attended a Carmichael’s book event featuring author Emily Franklin, who has written numerous books. Her latest titled Love & Other Monsters is about a time in history that most English majors look on with awe and wonder. Her novel is about the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori traveled to Switzerland and, as the legend goes, told scary stories to each other, which ended up leading to the first vampire story and the book we now know as Frankenstein. But Franklin’s novel focuses on a member of the party who doesn’t get any acknowledgement—Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairemont. Emily did a great job making the Carmichael’s audience want to learn more about Claire’s story, so we invited her on to share it with our listeners.     And for our book recommendation segment of the show, we are talking Shakespeare, the Bard, the Swan of Avon, Willy Shakes.  Shakespeare is such a touchstone in literature in ways that we don’t regularly think about like classic phrases and tropes.  But you don’t have to be (or not to be) a Shakespeare scholar to enjoy the books we talk about this week.  We have a historical mystery, witty nonfiction, historical fiction, a memoir, a middle grade novel, and a novel in verse.  All are influenced in some way by Shakespeare’s plays or the man himself.     Books Mentioned In This Episode: 1- Love and Other Monsters by Emily Franklin  2- Grandma Joy & Me: A Journey of Healing , One National Park at a Time by Brad Ryan  3- The Humming Room by Ellen Potter  4- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett  5- Summer of 1816: A World Without Summer by Nicholas Day  6- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley  7- The Vampyre by John Polidori  8- Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Mushrooms Taught Me About Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival by Maria Pinto 9- Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman 10- Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbly Weiden  11- Wisdom Corner by David Heska Wanbly Weiden  12- A Five Star Read of Fellow Book Lover Joshua  - Devotions by Mary Oliver  13- Daughter of Fair Verona by Christina Dodd  14- Much Ado About Mistletoe by Christina Dodd  15- Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson  16- By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult  17- Enter the Body by Joy McCullough  18- Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench  19- The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt    Media Mentioned  1- The Bride (2026) 2- Guillermo de Toro article about Frankenstein: "Why Vampires Never Die" - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31deltoro.html