Joel Golby's Book Club

Joel reads Middlesex, a swirling multi-generational novel that sees a Greek family migrate to Detroit and struggle with their middle class status. The basis of pretty good novel - and it won the Pulitzer - but does Joel rate it?

Joel's broken two of his rules this time round by reading a book that is 1) a hardback, and 2) came out this year. It's Miranda July's All Fours, a book where the narrator is supposed to spend a load of money on a life-changing road trip, but ends up blowing all the cash on renovating a motel room just outside town to look like a Parisian hotel suite.

What's the best writing snack? How important is it to plan your character arc? What do you make of The Hardest Geezer book announcement? Joel answers your questions!

In this episode, Joel's picked out another book that everyone seemed to read before he did. Jenny's Offill's Weather came out in 2020 and is set around the inauguration of Donald Trump's presidency and it's a book that feels like it's set in 2016, but does it hold up in 2024?

Joel watched a great TV show based on Benjamin Myers' 'The Gallows Pole' only to find out that everyone had been reading Benjamin Myers for years. This week, he's reading the 2014 novel set in idillic Northern English countryside, Beastings.

Joel's got really into heading down to his local pond and counting the different types of flowers and fish he can see after reading a mind-altering set of essays on exploration, faith and nature by Anne Dillard. Good for him!

Joel's got the answers to all your questions on reading, writing and books in general.

A self-confessed "Egg Head To The Bones", Joel has picked up A Hologram For The King for the first time in 11 years. But will he love it as much as he did the first time? Probably, yes.