About Us
At least some of your burning questions, answered.
About the Libraries
Spartanburg County Public Libraries is the library system that serves Spartanburg County, South Carolina, and its close to three hundred thousand residents. The system has ten locations and a forthcoming planetarium, along with a bookmobile and a homebound service. SCPL has been at the center of Spartanburg County’s reading community since it was founded in 1885, and the system offers everything from video games to check out and movie programs for kids to Glow Forges and genealogy classes.
How We Started
Jess and Joseph started the Booklovers podcast in June 2020 in the midst of COVID restrictions to discuss books that had been selected for book club meetings. Carmanita officially joined the podcast for our Lot and Sports Is Hell episode, and departed after the Magical Realism episode. Rea officially joined the podcast starting with our Silence of the Girls episode.
What We Discuss
We’re pop culture obsessives, animal lovers and professional food fans. Our opinions and interests are wide and deep, so the podcast reflects that. We dissect old titles that need a fresh take, brand new stuff that everyone’s talking about, and off-the-beaten-path works that deserve some love. We release episodes every month. The current iteration of Booklovers is focused on sharing our reads with listeners, doing a deep dive on a specific book or topic, and then talking about readalikes in our Reader’s Advisory Corner.
We also keep a running list of all of the titles we discuss, from books to movies to games, on our episode pages, so even if you’re only listening to one episode, you’ll still find the titles you need.
About the Hosts
Joseph Henderson
Joseph (he/him) is SCPL’s Media Specialist, and that fits with his role behind the scenes at the podcast: as our sound engineer, Joseph is the one who edits out the noises of Jess and Rea fidgeting. On air, he represents the academic side of things, analyzing both what we’re reading and the critical analysis around it, making sure we’re all thinking deeply (or deeply enough anyway) about the topics we discuss on each episode.
Joseph likes a challenge as a reader as much as he likes to experience strong emotions. Equally comfortable with the complex experiments of Henry James and Virginia Woolf as he is with puzzles of Percival Everett or Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Joseph likes to read fiction about the endlessly interesting world of the inner life. Whether he's reading his favorite horror writers Paul Tremblay or John Langan, examining a minutely detailed marriage or relationship with Tessa Hadley or Brandon Taylor, he's always looking out for the deeply-felt reality. His nonfiction tastes tend towards the biological sciences (Ed Yong, Michael Pollan), religious history (Peter Marshall, Diarmaid MacCullough), and poetry (too numerous to list here). Needless to say, he has a terrible habit of reading too many things at once but the undefeatable optimism that somewhere down the line it will all connect.
Joseph’s favorite episodes are In the Dream House, To the Lighthouse, and our Stephen Graham Jones episode.
Jess Herzog
Jess (she/her) is the Director of Adult Services at SCPL, but when it comes to the podcast, she fills the role of resident reading researcher and guru for reader’s advisory, which is the fancy library term for the scientific art of helping readers of all types find their next great read. She’s also usually the one nagging the others to stay on script during recording.
As a reader and in life, Jess doesn’t stick to any one thing for too long. She can actually be hard to pin down as a reader because of this. But one thing that can be guaranteed about Jess’s reading tastes: they’re going to be varied, and they’re going to challenge and entertain her. Joseph says she has three criteria for a good book: gross, quirky and funny. That explains why she loves Kurt Vonnegut so much.
Inexplicably, Jess’s favorite episode is Ill Will, but she really loves our Deacon King Kong and Slaughterhouse Five episodes too.
Rea Gajewsky
Rea (she/her) works as a Children’s Assistant at SCPL, where she helps kids find the perfect book to read, but for the podcast, she’s here to keep the reading horizons broad.
Rea is a mood reader to her core and lives by the mantra, "Read at whim." According to her Storygraph, her top reading moods are emotional, reflective, adventurous, and informative. Rea loves books that help her understand herself and the world more clearly. She enjoys reading everything from Victorian novels to nonfiction books about niche topics to heartfelt memoirs - bonus points if there is an audiobook version narrated by the author! And she's always going to push the agenda that middle grade books are not just for kids.
Rea joined the Booklovers Podcast in June 2023, starting with our The Silence of the Girls episode.
Former Cohost
Carmanita Turner
From 2020 to 2022, Carmanita was the Media Collection Development Librarian at SCPL, and she is featured as a co-host on from our Lot and Sports Is Hell episode to our Magical Realism episode.
Carmanita’s deep knowledge of pop culture, film and TV, and games is highlighted in all of the episodes she appeared in.
Carmanita’s favorite episodes are our romance overview <3, our audiobooks episode, and the Borne episode.