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The Bibliofilles

The Bibliofilles began, as all great modern love stories do, on Facebook during Lockdown. Sophie asked for a recommendation. Chaya prescribed The Song of Achilles. A DM became a dialogue; a dialogue became @thebibiliofilles; and now, finally, a podcast.

Chaya is a barrister, Sophie a former editor. We read across all genres and trends, from classics and non fiction, to contemporary fiction, romantasy and everything in between.

The Bibliofilles: The Podcast is life through books, where we get to ruminate beyond the reviews and reels, with thematic episodes, academic deep dives, classics, cult favourites and viral sensations.

There will be a book club built for those of us who never quite fit the mould. (with a twist, naturally).

Latest Episodes:

Claire Daverley: Why Her Second Novel Nearly Broke Her Jul 27, 2026

Show notes

Do you have a Bren? 💔📖

This month's Bibliofilles Book Club pick is Claire Daverley's hugely anticipated second novel, People in Love the follow-up to the word-of-mouth phenomenon Talking at Night. Chaya and Sophie sit down with Claire to talk about writing a love triangle with no villain, why the ending had to be both "inevitable and surprising," and the pressure of following up a debut that outgrew every expectation.

They get into grief and secondary grief, writing a mother's mental illness with real tenderness, the narrative device readers are going to want to fight Claire over, and the difference between longing for a person and longing for a version of your own life. Plus, before the interview, they revisit their older book club pick, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, and why a novel written in the '90s and set in 2024–2027 feels less like dystopian fiction and more like a documentary.

👇 All books mentioned are linked below 👇

People in Love by Claire Daverley

👉 https://amzn.to/4hsXNeI

Talking at Night by Claire Daverley

👉 https://amzn.to/45jhtuk

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

👉 https://amzn.to/3RueHPx

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

👉 https://amzn.to/4wSMLE3

👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Chaya & Sophie.

#books #booktok #booktube #bookreview #contemporaryfiction #bookclub #clairedaverley #peopleinlove #talkingatnight #authorinterview #bookrecommendations

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What The Movie Didn't Tell You... | The Odyssey Jul 20, 2026

Show notes

Why has The Odyssey survived for over 3,000 years? ⚔️📚 This week, Chaya and Sophie dive into Homer's The Odyssey to explore why it's considered one of the greatest stories ever told. From the hero's journey and Greek mythology to translation debates, feminism, trauma, hospitality, and the enduring question of what makes someone a hero, they unpack the epic that shaped Western literature. They debate one of literature's most divisive protagonists, explore the women at the heart of the story - including Penelope, Athena, Circe and Calypso - and discuss why The Odyssey continues to inspire readers, writers and filmmakers thousands of years after it was first written. 👇 All books mentioned are linked below 👇 The Odyssey by Homer (Emily Wilson Translation) 👉 https://amzn.to/3RFScav Circe by Madeline Miller 👉 https://amzn.to/4vFSCf3 The Voyage Home by Pat Barker 👉 https://amzn.to/4wQWdYM The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler 👉 https://amzn.to/4waEDPu Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 👉 https://amzn.to/4vznuOg The Iliad by Homer 👉 https://amzn.to/44CXNRV The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood 👉 https://amzn.to/44z1QyK 👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Chaya & Sophie. #books #booktok #booktube #bookreview #classicliterature #greekmythology #theodyssey #homer #booklover #bookrecommendations

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What Really Happens Inside Cults? Jul 13, 2026

Show notes

What's the difference between a community and a cult? According to researchers and survivors not as much as you'd think.

In this episode of The Bibliofilles, we're going deep on one of the most fascinating, disturbing and frankly addictive topics out there: cults. We cover the psychology of why ordinary, intelligent people join them, the language that keeps them in, and why the world we live in now has made all of us more vulnerable than ever.

We discuss:

•⁠ ⁠Hannah Murray's (Skins, Game of Thrones) memoir The Make Believe — and how a Reiki healer in LA sent her down a rabbit hole she nearly didn't come back from

•⁠ ⁠Ruby Frankie, Eight Passengers and the cult of influencer culture and how it ended with her in prison

•⁠ ⁠Cultish by Amanda Montell — how the language of cults is already inside your Instagram feed, your fitness studio and your political news feed

•⁠ ⁠The BITE model — the framework built to explain exactly how cults control behaviour, information, thought and emotion

•⁠ ⁠Cult fiction: The Girls (Emma Cline), The Heart Goes Last (Margaret Atwood), Station 11, Arcadia and more

•⁠ ⁠One of our hosts' own family connection to EST — the therapy cult John Denver helped make famous

The uncomfortable argument at the centre of all of this? It's already happened to you.

🎧 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

📚 Join our Substack for exclusive bonus content

⭐ Like, comment, subscribe it genuinely makes a difference

#Cults #TrueCrime #BookTok #Psychology #HannahMurray #CultPodcast #BookRecommendations #AuthorInterview #Memoir

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Jodie Harsh: The Story I Couldn't Keep Inside Jul 06, 2026

Show notes

She's been sober for 16 years. Before that, she was deep in London's club scene, doing d*ugs with celebrities, DJing alongside Alexander McQueen, and watching people around her not make it out alive.

In this episode, DJ, producer and author Jodie joins us to talk about her debut memoir "You Had to Be There: An Odyssey Through Noughties London, One Night at a Time" and she does not hold back.

We talk about:

•⁠ ⁠Sneaking into the London Astoria at 15 with a fake ID and finding her "tribe"

•⁠ ⁠Falling into a*diction on the dance floor and getting sober at 25

•⁠ ⁠Losing friends to a*diction, including Amy Winehouse a year after she got clean

•⁠ ⁠Structuring her entire memoir around the clubs that raised her Astoria, Turnmills, Fabric, Pasha

•⁠ ⁠Why she refused to read any other memoirs while writing her own

•⁠ ⁠Getting "discovered" by a literary agent she didn't even know she had

Plus a rapid-fire book recommendations round covering Elena Ferrante, Donna Tartt, Barbara Kingsolver and Sarah Waters.

This is glamour, grief, queerness, addiction and recovery no filter, no spin.

📚 Subscribe to our Substack for the bonus tier from this episode she's spilling things we can't put on YouTube

Jodies Book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Had-Be-There-Noughties-ebook/dp/B0F6TM7XST/ref

👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Chaya & Sophie.

#BookClub #BookTok #BookRecommendations #Memoir #Addiction #Sobriety #LondonNightlife #BookTok #PodcastClips #AuthorInterview #RecoveryJourney

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Why Are We All Obsessed With Unhinged Women Jun 29, 2026

Show notes

We sat down with the incredible Imani Thompson to talk about her debut novel Honey and wow, did it deliver! 🍯📚

We talked about how she crafted Yrsa as a loveable, relatable, yet terrifying protagonist (think Villanelle from Killing Eve), why she leaned so heavily into humour to explore such dark themes, and how she wove critical race theory and Afropessimism naturally into a propulsive, page-turning plot.

We also get into the real world inspirations behind the book from incel culture and the manosphere to Audre Lorde's landmark essays on anger and the influence of Jamaica Kincaid's writing. Imani also opens up about her experience working at Daunt Books while editing the manuscript, her late night writing process, and gives us a very exciting first look at her second novel, set in Dorset and inspired by the Bibby Stockholm asylum seeker barge.

Before the interview, Sophie and Chaya also sit down to discuss this month's classic pairing Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and why its themes of race, colonialism, and female identity connect so powerfully with Honey. In this episode we chat about: 📖 What inspired Honey & the creative process behind it 😤 Female rage, the manosphere & incel culture in fiction 🎓 Cambridge as a setting & intersectionality in literature 🌊 Why we paired it with Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys ✍️ Imani's late night writing habits & what's coming next 🗓️ Next Month's Book Club Picks: - People in Love by Claire Daverley - Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler 📌 If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a review it really helps! 🎧 Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & YouTube 👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Chaya & Sophie. #BookClub #ImaniThompson #Honey #FemaleRage #BookTok #BookRecommendations #CampusNovel

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Looksmaxxing | Has Wellness Gone Too Far? Jun 22, 2026

Show notes

When does wellness become a problem? This week on The Bibliofilles, we're diving into one of the most urgent cultural conversations of the moment looks maxing and optimisation culture and exploring it through the lens of literature.

From viral influencers using extreme methods to "engineer" attractiveness, to the Fitbit-ification of reading via Goodreads targets, we unpack how the obsession with maximising every aspect of life is quietly making us miserable and why fiction saw it all coming.

👇 All books mentioned are linked below 👇

Rouge by Mona Awad
👉 https://amzn.to/4uBKo73

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
👉 https://amzn.to/44gkf2Z

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
👉 https://amzn.to/4fOQddP

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
👉 https://amzn.to/4ozSWdn

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
👉 https://amzn.to/4ovIFPe

Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
👉 https://amzn.to/4oAQ9At

Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy
👉 https://amzn.to/4uOMOiV

We also discuss the backlash to Steven Bartlett optimisation obsession, the incel-to-mainstream pipeline of looks culture, and why reading itself has been infected by optimisation thinking.

Perfect for: fans of feminist literary criticism, cultural commentary, book recommendations, and anyone who's ever felt exhausted by the pressure to self-optimise.

🎧 Subscribe on Substack for extended essays and exclusive bonus content including our viral extra with Maggie O'Farrell!

👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Chaya & Sophie.

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