Monthly Archives: December 2015

Episode 38 – Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

As you might have noticed, Kait, Renata, and their special guest, Bossy Dame Sophie, read Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and have been listening to the Broadway cast recording of Hamilton the musical non-stop. We want you, too, to be in the room where it happens, so we recorded this special Best Bestseller bonus episode to discuss our love of Hamilton and do some readers advisory for both the biography and the musical. We also played some Founding Father FMK. We hope you’ll be satisfied with the scope of our minds at work on all counts! You don’t have to wait for it–if you’re able to take a break this holiday season, add some more items to your overflowing TBR list!

Readers advisory: Here.

Footnotes: @Lin-Manuel on Twitter

#HamBio on Twitter

Lin-Manuel Miranda Discusses How Hip-Hop Influenced Him and Hamilton

All the Hip-Hop References in Hamilton: A Track-by-Track Guide

How Lin-Manuel Miranda Shapes History

Playlist: The Sounds That Shaped Hamilton

Sophie’s HamilFeels Spotify Playlist

Read Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Genius Annotations for Hamilton

Lin-Manuel Miranda on Jay Z, The West Wing, and 18 More Things That Influenced Hamilton

Coming up next: Bests & Worsts of 2015 (Part 2, Adults and Graphic Novels)

 

* Worst Bestsellers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

(But no pressure, we’re also happy if you get these items from your local library or independent bookstore.)

Filed under Podcasts

Readers Advisory: Episode 38 – Hamilton

Here’s what we suggest in addition to reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and listening to Hamilton the musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Listen to the podcast to hear us talk about some of these titles in more depth!

Continue reading

Filed under Readers Advisory

Episode 37 – Bests & Worsts of 2015 (Part 1, Children’s & YA)

Tune in to our Bests & Worsts of 2015 episodes to hear us discuss these titles and read excerpts from our favorites and least favorites! Please note:

  • We counted things that we read in 2015, regardless of publication year.
  • We didn’t count anything that we read specifically for this podcast, so our worst books are aside from those.
  • For that reason, we picked top 5 favorites and only 1 least favorite–we have this whole podcast to talk about bad books, so for these episodes we’re choosing to focus on the positive!
  • Some of our “worsts” are really just “least best.” Listen to the podcast to hear more detail!

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Filed under Podcasts, Readers Advisory

The Mistletoe Contest

The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans

Update, 12/21/15:

We’ve drawn our winners via RandomPicker.com! Congratulations to:

@lizwise05 First prize: A copy of The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans. This copy is signed by the author and personalized “to Duarte.” We will also send you a candy pairing.
@lisaeckstein Second prize: A used copy of Black Hills by Nora Roberts and a candy pairing.
@narigonia Third prize: A (very) used copy of Whisper of Death by Christopher Pike and a candy pairing.

 

And thanks so much to everyone who entered! We loved reading all your entries. They helped patch the hole in our soul that was eroded by reading The Christmas Sweater. We hope you all have a happy holiday season and receive only enjoyable books as gifts!

 


 

 

Happy holiday season, Best Listeners!

Having read The Mistletoe Promise, we’re so overcome with glad tidings of the season that we wanted to follow in the footsteps of Richard Paul Evans’s character Nicholas and shower everyone with expensive gifts and important cultural experiences. But we don’t have fictional lawyer money here, so instead we’re doing this contest.

We want you to give someone you know the best gift of all: knowledge of our podcast. Just tell someone (or multiple someones, such as all of your Twitter followers!) about Worst Bestsellers. Maybe suggest your favorite episode, or link to your favorite readers advisory page. Maybe just a simple, factual statement: The Worst Bestsellers is a podcast that exists. Whatever you’d like to share about us is fine. Then let us know about it. If you’ve publicly tweeted about us, just include our Twitter handle @worstbestseller in your tweet and we’ll see it and count it as an entry. If you have a locked Twitter account, or if you’ve mentioned us on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, or any other social media platform, please take a screencap and email it to us at worstbestsellers at gmail.com with the subject line “Mistletoe Contest.” If you told someone about us in person, please email us your best emoticon representation of what that person’s face looked like when you told them.

Here are some example entries:

Mistletoe Tweet

Mistletoe Facebook

Mistletoe Email

These entries are all invalid because they are all from Renata, but would otherwise be acceptable.

 

Each method of telling people about us will count as one entry in our contest. (So, for example, you could tweet about us, post about us on Facebook, and tell someone in person for 3 total entries, but if you tweeted about us 3 times, that would just be 1 entry).

You can submit entries any time between Monday, December 7, 2015 through Sunday, December 20th, 2015 at midnight (EST).

Then we’ll put all your names in RandomPicker.com and choose three winners! Winners will be notified Monday, December 21st.

Signed Copy of The Mistletoe Promise

We can’t believe Duarte is willing to part with this.

Renata and Richard Paul Evans

That time Renata met Richard Paul Evans.

 

First prize: A copy of The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans. This copy is signed by the author and personalized “to Duarte.”* We will also send you a candy pairing.

Second prize: A used copy of Black Hills by Nora Roberts and a candy pairing.

Third prize: A (very) used copy of Whisper of Death by Christopher Pike and a candy pairing.

 

* FAQ on this: Renata met Richard Paul Evans at a librarian conference. No, she did not tell him it was for a podcast, or that Duarte is a cat. It was a very cordial exchange.

** A note on the candy pairings: before sending out the prizes, we will contact the winners to check about allergies and candy preferences, but we’ll try to find something you would like that is thematically appropriate to the book.

 

Fine print: We’ll contact the winners to get their shipping addresses, so you don’t need to include that with your entries–we’ll get ahold of you at either the Twitter handle or email address you contacted us with to enter. If we don’t hear back from you after a reasonable amount of time (say a few weeks-ish), we’ll draw a replacement winner.

We’ll mail things internationally, so you don’t need to live in the US to win. You do need to live in this dimension, so most Christopher Pike characters are ineligible.

These copies were purchased by us as individuals and were not provided by the publishers. THANKS FOR NOTHING, PUBLISHERS.

The only limit on entries is, we guess, the number of social media accounts you have at your disposal? We’ve never done this before so hopefully this all works out! We reserve the right to change the rules if something starts to seem shady.

If you have any questions, email us at worstbestsellers at gmail.com or tweet us @worstbestseller. (Please don’t send us a Facebook message because Facebook messaging for a Page is weird and unreliable.)

May the odds be ever in your favor!

Filed under Extras

Episode 36 – The Mistletoe Promise

The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans

Kait, Renata, and their returning guest Caitlin read The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans and unanimously agreed: it’s not nearly as bad as The Christmas Sweater was! In fact we actually… kinda liked The Mistletoe Promise? We liked it almost as much as the heroine of this book likes sweet pork salads, which is a lot. Listen now to hear us learn what exactly a sweet pork salad is, plus an important moral lesson (but not the lesson we were expecting to learn).

Content warning: This book contains infant death, and so does our discussion of it.

Readers advisory: Here.

Footnotes: Fatal Distraction by Gene Weingarten

Cafe Rio Sweet Pork Salads

Alton Brown’s Mincemeat Pie

Special note: We’re having a contest and the grand prize is a signed copy of The Mistletoe Promise. Click here for details on how to enter!

Candy pairing:  Caitlin says Necco wafers, Kait says peppermint bark, Renata says kettle korn.

Coming up next: Bests & Worsts of 2015 (Part 1, Children’s and YA)

 

* Worst Bestsellers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

(But no pressure, we’re also happy if you get these items from your local library or independent bookstore.)

Filed under Podcasts

Readers Advisory: Episode 36 – The Mistletoe Promise

Here’s what we suggest instead of/in addition to reading The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans. Listen to the podcast to hear us talk about some of these titles in more depth!

Continue reading

Filed under Readers Advisory