On this episode, Mike Finucane, a campus minister at a high-school in St. Louis, and I discuss how books can help develop empathy. He also gives a great tip from his dad about how to tackle a large non-fiction text. We also confirm that collecting books shouldn’t be considered a bad habit if you love it. We talk about a lot of really intense books but I hope that our discussion will inspire readers to do a deep dive into some of the topics.

Books mentioned in this episode:

What Betsy’s reading:

The Nix by Nathan Hill

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Books Highlighted by Mike:

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Stories of Your LIfe and Others by Ted Chiang

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz

Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle

City of Bohane by Kevin Barry

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us by Ed Yong

Other Books Mentioned in the Episode:

All books available on my Bookshop.org episode page.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

God Knows by Joseph Heller

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Your Duck is My Duck: Stories by Deborah Eisenberg

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

There are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan