You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

Hello, I'm Harriet Gilbert.

Thank you for downloading a good read, the podcasts,

where two guests and I recommend books we love and describe why we love them.

We don't always see eye to eye, but I hope you'll find some great reading suggestions here.

Hello, it's good to be back, and with books today that explore the many forms a family can take, whether in Oxford, Los Angeles or Barbary Lane, San Francisco.

With me to introduce their good read, our two writers. Jill Hornby is the author of a

quartet of best-selling novels, among the most recently Miss Austin and Godmisham Park. She's also

written the biography of Jane Austen for young readers. The journalist and novelist Paul Burstyn

hosts the award-winning LGBTQ-plus literary salon Polari and was a long-time AIDS activist with Actup London.

His memoir, We Can Be Heroes, came out last week.

Jill Hornby, would you start us off? What have you chosen as a good read?

I've chosen Commonwealth by Anne Patchett.

It came out several years ago. It's her seventh novel.

And it's, I suppose it's a domestic novel, it's what you'd call a domestic novel, which

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