- 19
- Episodes
- 2
- Ratings
- Weekly
- Cadence
- 2025
- First episode
About Library Pizza
Library Pizza is a hot and ready podcast about reading with generous toppings, voluptuous stink lines, and just enough grease. Join Mike and a rotating cast of cohosts for weekly conversations about the books we've most recently touched.
- Publisher
- Mike Meginnis
- Category
- arts · comedy
- Language
- en
- Explicit
- Yes
- First episode
- 1 Oct 2025
- Latest episode
- 17 Apr 2026
Latest episodes
19 episodes in the feed.
17 Apr 2026
That's a Whole Lotta Man with Tobias Carroll
This is the nineteenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is Tobias Carroll, a novelist, critic, newsletter author, podcaster, blogger, and columnist at Words Without Borders, where he writes "The Watch List," a monthly roundup of books in translation. He is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and may read more than just about anyone else I know. You can learn more about his work at tobiascarroll.com. Texts and writers discussed include but are not limited to: The Dragon Waiting and The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford (and Isaac Butler's Slate piece on Ford's rediscovery); Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time; Peter David; Stephen King's Dark Tower series; Caroline Bicks's forthcoming Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King; J.R.R. Tolkien; Annie Proulx's The Shipping News; Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, The Road); Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Killing Mister Watson; Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; Tom Robbins; Ishmael Reed; Gayl Jones's Corregidora; Toni Morrison; John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire; Haruki Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun; Jack Kerouac; Raymond Carver; Iain M. Banks; Patrick Rothfuss; Alasdair Gray's Poor Things (and the Yorgos Lanthimos adaptation); Sigrid Nunez's The Friend; John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman; Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de Torchon and Deathwatch (adapted from D.G. Compton's The Unsleeping Eye); Iain Reid's I'm Thinking of Ending Things (and Charlie Kaufman's adaptation); Zach Cregger's Barbarian and Weapons; Joel and Ethan Coen's Barton Fink; Haley Z. Boston's Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen; Steve Erickson; Locus; Robert Christgau; Tricia Romano's The Freaks Came Out to Write; Colson Whitehead; Namwali Serpell; Sam Tanenhaus's Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America; Joan Didion; the National Review; the Know Your Enemy podcast; Robert A. Heinlein; Elizabeth Sandifer; the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies affair; Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone; Brian Eno on art as nourishment; BBC audio dramatist Julian Simpson; Adam Voith's TNI Books and Little Engines; and Todd Dills and The Second Hand. Follow me on Bluesky here, and Tobias here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
20 Mar 2026
The Pleasures of Cultivation with Adam Gurri
This is the eighteenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is Liberal Currents founder and editor Adam Gurri. Follow me on Bluesky here, and Adam here. Texts discussed in this episode include but are not limited to: Mother of Learning by nobody103 Return of the Mad Demon by JP, Ihy, and based on a work by Yu Jin sung Elder Cultivator by Halosty How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard The work of John Rawls generally On Liberty by John Stuart Mill The works of John Locke generally The works of Hans Georg Gottheimer generally A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective by Steven L. Taylor, Matthew Søberg Shugart, Bernard Grofman, and Arend Lijphart Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom by Jacob T. Levy You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
13 Mar 2026
Table for Two: Our Man in the Field Dons the Cowboy Hat of Freedom
This is the sixteenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is my partner Tracy Rae Bowling, our AWP conference correspondent. The main books we discuss are C. Thi Nguyen's The Score and Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Follow me on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
5 Mar 2026
The Story that I Want to Tell with Samantha Hancox-Li
This is the sixteenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is Samantha Hancox-Li, an associate editor at Liberal Currents and the author of a book titled Feminism Is Transhumanism Is Modernity. You can support her on patreon here. Follow me on Bluesky here, and Samantha here. I'll add a list of readings to these show notes later; I reinvented my entire podcast workflow while editing this episode and some stuff hasn't quite come together yet. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
12 Feb 2026
Personal Pan Pizza: The Death of the Book World, plus Orhan Pamuk
This is the fifteenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This episode quotes at some length from Becca Rothfeld's February 10 New Yorker article "The Death of Book World". It also features a reading of an excerpt from The New Life. Follow me on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
29 Jan 2026
Table for Two: The Boyby-Sitters Club
This is the fourteenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. Tracy Rae Bowling and I discuss our local-arts-cinema-hosted Twin Peaks full-series marathon, what we've been reading, getting big into the baked potato, and the work of several movie directors. We also invent a lucrative new concept, the Boyby-Sitters Club. Texts discussed include: C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series Magda Szabó's novel Iza's Ballad Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse The Baby-Sitters Club Michael Berry's Jia Zhangke on Jia Zhangke Histories of China by Frank Dikötter The works of Jia Zhangke and Satoshi Kon generally We'll see you again soon. Follow Mike on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy for creating the podcast's theme music, and to my friend Blorb for the podcast's art.
15 Jan 2026
Sad Glub Glub Sounds with Adam Elkus
This is the thirteenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is Adam Elkus. The Other Side by Alfred Kubin Franz Kafka generally H. P. Lovecraft generally The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria The Glass Bees by Ernst Jünger The Ring novels by Koji Suzuki Neuromancer by William Gibson The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (and other Hammett works) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins Sherlock Holmes generally Ghost in the Shell, directed by Mamoru Oshii Kobo Abe generally Truth from a Lie by Margaret S. Key There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm The SCP Foundation (https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/) "Sovereignty and the UFO" by Alexadner Wendt Philip K. Dick generally Undead Girl Murder Farce (anime) Paranoia Agent, directed by Satoshi Kon Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex The Twenty Days of Turin, again Writing by Venkatesh Rao The train game Mike mentions is called Rolling Line The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 "Successor, Usurper, Replacement" by Alice Sola Kim "Trends of Japanese Science Fiction in the 2000s" by Motoko Tanaka Japan Sinks by Sakyo Komatsu Haruki Murakami generally Evangelion, directed by Hideaki Anno The Count of Monte Cristo anime Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Alan Moore's run with the character Supreme Follow me on Bluesky here, and Adam here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
9 Jan 2026
Table for Two: Reading Resolutions
This is the twelfth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week, Tracy Rae Bowling and I discussed how insane this year is already making us feel, our experiences with various youth programs, and the different kinds of reading resolutions that we might consider. The following are the links to the articles from which we borrowed the resolutions: https://theconversation.com/what-are-your-new-years-reading-resolutions-6-dedicated-readers-share-theirs-269381 https://www.scarymommy.com/lifestyle/new-years-reading-resolutions-2026 https://theeverygirl.com/reading-resolutions/ https://www.penguinteen.com/bookish-new-years-resolutions/ We'll see you again soon. Follow me on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv
25 Dec 2025
Personal Pan Holiday Special: Christmas in Korea
This is the eleventh episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. For this week's Personal Pan Holiday Special, I decided to do something a little bit different, sharing with you an essay that I wrote about my time as a writer in residence in South Korea, plus a guide that I wrote for others who participate in the residency in the future. I hope you enjoy both, and I'll see you next year. Follow me on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
11 Dec 2025
The Ministry of Culture with Buzz Poole
This is the tenth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is Buzz Poole, cofounder of Sandorf Passage. Texts discussed include but are not limited to: Fat Man and Little Boy by Mike Meginnis Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost by Donald Niedekker, translated by Jonathan Reeder Our Man in Iraq by Robert Perišić, translated by Will Firth Cat at the End of the World by Robert Perišić, translated by Vesna Maric No Signal Area by Robert Perišić, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać She Who Remains by Rene Karabas, translated by Izidora Angel The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye Bedbugs by Martina Vidaić, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać Horror and Huge Expenses by Robert Perišić, translated by Will Firth The Case of Cem by Vera Mutafchieva, translated by Angela Rodel Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar James by Percivel Everett Stranger by C. J. Cherryh The works of Magda Szabo in general, of course The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark Ice by Anna Kavan The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated by Daniel Levin Becker The works of C. S. Lewis The Witches by Roald Dahl Buzz mentions writing an article for the Lit Hub that is partly about reading to his son; it's this: "The Wisdom of Sendak: Children Are Wild, Honest, Immoral Beings". Follow me on Bluesky here, and Buzz here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
27 Nov 2025
The Used Book Store, Kansas City, and Thanksgiving Special with Tracy Rae Bowling
This is the ninth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. Last week, Tracy and I took a vacation to Kansas City, where we enjoyed the art museum, two jazz clubs, several eateries, one bar, and one used book store. We discuss our experience and used book stores generally, as well as our respective bachelorette parties and the marital applications of Taco Bell hot sauce. Texts briefly discussed include Jonathan Lethem's The Arrest, Orhan Pamuk's The New Life, Michael H. Bruno's Pocket Pal, and Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel. Also, Lord Jim arguably catches some strays. Follow me on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv
20 Nov 2025
You Can Really Feel the Spreadsheet with Tracy Rae Bowling
This is the eighth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week, Tracy and I get together for a conversation on visual novels, especially The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. Other visual novels you might want to check out: the Danganronpa series, the Zero Escape series, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series, The House in Fata Morgana, Dream Daddy, The Walking Dead, Batman: The Telltale Series, and other Telltale games. Disco Elysium has a lot in common with visual novels, but the writing is better. In the back half of the episode, Tracy and I discuss the books we're reading. Texts mentioned include Heretic by Jeanna Kadlec, God's holy Bible, the works of Eula Biss in general, Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step by Cecile Pineda, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (again!), and Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Plus probably something else I'm forgetting. Follow me on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
14 Nov 2025
Personal Pan Pizza: Three Readings by Mike
This is the seventh episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest unfortunately fell through, so it's going up slightly late, and the format is a bit different. This time I read excerpts from three pieces: 03:05 - "The Guy with the Eyes," a short story by Spider Robinson 13:38 - An excerpt from The Fawn, by Magda Szabó 31:20 - The first chapter of Iza's Ballad, by Magda Szabó Follow me on Bluesky here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
6 Nov 2025
Criminogenic, Prosthetic Eyebrows with Ed, a Normal Man
This is the sixth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is Ed "from Bluesky" Roppel, one of the four cohosts of "Normal Men", the only podcast on Bluesky. He blogs at ed3d.net (https://ed3d.net/). Texts and writers discussed include but are not limited to the Foundation series, Robert Heinlein, John W. Campbell, Ben Bova, Spider Robinson (especially his story "The Guy with the Eyes"), The Sixth Column, L. Ron Hubbard, Orson Scott Card, Neuromancer, Michael Stackpole, The World According to Garp, Seeing Like a State, Moral Mazes, The Uncaccountability Machine, and László Krasznahorkai Follow me on Bluesky here, and Ed here (https://bsky.app/profile/ed3d.net). You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
30 Oct 2025
Parallel Mpreg with Rachel Jane Andelman and Tracy Rae Bowling
This is the fifth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is Rachel Jane Andelman, a writer, performer, and improv coach in the Boston area. She has taught at ImprovBoston and Union Comedy. She currently performs improv with independent casts Tales of Enstonishment and Magic: The Gathering: The Show, as well as her stand-up act, in the Boston area and beyond. Follow me on Bluesky here, and Rachel here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
23 Oct 2025
The Three Acceptable Hats with Ned Resnikoff
This is the fourth episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is my friend Ned Resnikoff, an analyst, researcher, journalist, and consultant with a particular focus on housing and urban policy. Follow me on Bluesky here, and Ned here. You'll learn about his forthcoming book Cities for the People in his pinned post. Ned's newsletter Public Comment is here (https://publiccomment.blog/), and here are the articles we discussed in the pod: The Party Should Throw Them a Party, and Happy Hour Power. The site for Resnikoff Consulting is here. The article "Is Matter Conscious?", by Hedda Hassel Mørch, can be read here (https://nautil.us/is-matter-conscious-236546/). You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
16 Oct 2025
Power: Who Has It, Who Wants it, with Allie, Anne, and Lea
This is the third episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guests are my friends Lea, Anne, and Allie, the cohosts of my favorite wrestling podcast, Tunnel Talk. After an initial tooth and claw struggle for power, we settled in to discuss what we had been reading, dying from gender-induced sleep deprevation, the importance of butter, and more. My thanks to the Tunnel Talk ladies for letting me play host! Follow Mike on Bluesky here, and Tunnel Talk here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
10 Oct 2025
Maybe the Men in My Life are Blessed with Blorb, a Cartoon Pug
This is the second episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is my friend Blorb, who is a cartoon pug. I met Blorb on a discord about professional wrestling, they did the art for this pod, and they are a delight. We talked about a bunch of books, furnipure, Culver's, and everything else. Follow Mike on Bluesky here, and Blorb here. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
1 Oct 2025
Longing for the Clarity of Disaster with Tracy Rae Bowling
This is the first episode of Library Pizza, a podcast about reading hosted by the guy writing this: Mike Meginnis. This week's guest is my partner, Tracy Rae Bowling. We discuss Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland, Yukio Mishima's Beautiful Star, and G-Fest 2025. You can and should join Disc Horse, the Library Pizza discord, at https://discord.gg/UAsDrEeWFv My thanks to Tracy Rae Bowling for the very dignified theme song, and my friend Blorb for the art.
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