One Last Cozy Time With Tom Grattan And Maureen Rodgers

This week included the first official day of spring, but as I write this, my house is battered by what feels like 80 mph winds. It's leaving me feeling frustrated and blustered. Even flustered.

That's why I think it's important to bring you one last cozy episode of the podcast before we fold up the Cozy Map for good.

We have two very iconic and legendary guests today: Maureen Rodgers, of Rodgers Book Barn, and Tom Grattan, novelist of "The Recent East" and "In Tongues," which happens to be one of my favorite books of 2024.

In this episode of The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast, I visit one of my favorite places on earth: Rodgers Book Barn in Hillsdale, New York. You might remember from my series about The Cozy Map Of Comfy Places, but I shared a short documentary about the Book Barn.

The podcast features an extended interview with the Book Barn’s legendary owner, Maureen Rodgers, who’s filled this barn with treasures since the 1960s. We talk about how she sources these treasures, what makes a book cozy, and how the book barn industry has changed over the decades.

Also, because I became so laser-focused on making The Cozy Map, I realized that I’d become lost in a different way: I’d lost my touch with reading. I've let all the latest books pass me by.

To help me get back on track, I visit my friend Tom Grattan, esteemed novelist and experienced reader, to snoop around his bookshelves and hopefully obtain some book recommendations.

By the way, "In Tongues" is one of those novels with the rare perfect ending. And you’ll have to listen to this episode all the way through to find out if it also has a good ending.

Click the image above to listen.

In the full, always-free, episode of the podcast, Tom gave us some great book recommendations as we get into spring – but detailed listeners will notice that he said he'd prepared four books to recommend. However, I only included three in that episode. That's because I wanted to save the fourth and maybe even best recommendation for the premium subscribers of the J’Fay Supreme level.

We have an Audio Exclusive today, and you can listen to it below, but only if you’re a Supremer. If you’d like to join the Jiffy Elite, you can purchase a subscription. It really helps support The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast Instagram Feed Website – thank you!

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.