Welcome to Episode 266, featuring an Author Spotlight with Jennifer (Jenny) Putzi, a leading scholar of nineteenth-century American women's writing. She talks with us about her captivating new book, THE RECONSTRUCTION DIARY OF FRANCES ANNE ROLLIN: A Critical Edition, which is out now from UNC Press. Jenny is also co-director of the Black Women's Diaries Project, an exciting digital humanities initiative with a public website that will launch this November. In our “Just Read” segment, we talk about: “The History of Sound” short story in the collection THE HISTORY OF SOUND by Ben Shattuck THE SECRET OF SNOW by Tina Harnesk, translated by Alice Menzies “The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway In #BiblioAdventures, we recap Christopher Myers’ wonderful presentation of his new family memoir, ROBERT SHAW: An Actor’s Life on the Set of Jaws and Beyond, at Mystic Seaport Museum. We spill the tea on what actor Robert Shaw, a lifelong reader and an award-winning author, thought about the novel JAWS by Peter Benchley. We also talk about: Couch Biblio Adventures: Not Dead Yet/Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up and Margo’s Got Money Troubles. Bookstore visits: The Curious Cat Bookshop, a new B&N, Ink Fish Books, and The Yellow House Public libraries: Southington Library, The George Hail Free Library, the Daniel Albert Piercy Library, and the main branch of the New York Public Library. As always, we talk about more books (and screen adaptations) than are listed here. Thanks for listening, and we wish you lots of Happy Reading! https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2026/episode266

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