Ep. 66: Kate Stayman-London (Author of One to Watch) + Book Recommendations
Sarah's Bookshelves Live
Sarah Dickinson
4.9 • 732 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2020
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 66, Kate Stayman-London (author of One to Watch) talks about how The Bachelor / ette franchise inspired her book, diversity in the franchise, and shares her biggest fear before her book came out.
This post contains affiliate links, through which I make a small commission when you make a purchase (at no cost to you!).
Highlights
- How Kate got from writing for Hillary Clinton to writing fiction about reality TV.
- The novel Kate thought she was going to write before she ended up writing One to Watch.
- The Bachelor season Kate was watching when she got the idea for the book.
- Kate’s biggest fear about One to Watch before it came out.
- The real life Bachelor incident that caused her to have to take her fictionalized version of something similar out of the book.
- Random House’s legal department’s view of the book.
- What happened when she went on Reality Steve‘s podcast.
- Why Kate chose to focus on body type diversity in One to Watch rather than any of the other types of diversity (racial, sexuality, etc).
- The prejudice overweight women face in daily life.
- What changes Kate would like to see The Bachelor / ette franchise make re: body type diversity (and diversity in general).
- Kate answers listener questions.
- The book Kate feels is One to Watch‘s “big cousin.”
Kate’s Book Recommendations [37:50]
Two OLD Books She Loves
- Chemistry by Weike Wang | Buy from Amazon
[38:09]
- The Grisha Series by Leigh Bardugo | Buy from Amazon [39:42]
Two NEW Books She Loves
- Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner | Buy from Amazon [42:16]
- Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory | Buy from Amazon [44:33]
One Book She DIDN’T LOVE
- Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin | Buy from Amazon [46:43]
One NEW RELEASE She’s Excited About
- Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Release Date: November 24, 2020) | Buy from Amazon [50:23]
Last 5 Star Book Kate Read [52:06]
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid | Buy from Amazon [51:42]
Other Books Mentioned
- One to Watch
by Kate Stayman-London (My Review) | Buy from Amazon
[2:00]
- It’s Not Okay
- Bachelor Nation
by Amy Kauffman (My Review) | Buy from Amazon
- Shrill
- The Ninth House
- Six of Crows
- Crooked Kingdom
- Shadow and Bone
- Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner (My Review) | Buy from Amazon [43:58]
- The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory | Buy from Amazon [41:12]
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson | Buy from Amazon [48:31]
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline | Buy from Amazon [50:32]
Other Links
About Kate
Kate is a novelist, screenwriter, and political strategist. She served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has written for notable figures ranging from President Obama and Malala Yousafzai to Anna Wintour and Cher. When not writing or traveling, Kate can be found obsessively ranking Taylor Swift songs, laughing loudly with friends over really good bottles of wine, and of course, watching reality TV. She lives in Los Angeles.
Next Episode
There will not be a new episode next week since the podcast is on a bi-weekly schedule.
The following week, there will be a full length episode featuring Kelly Jensen talking about libraries & COVID (airing September 30).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. I'm Sarah of the blog Sarah's Bookshelves. Each week I'm |
| 0:15.5 | talking with one bookish guest about two old books they love, two new books they love, one book they don't love, and one new |
| 0:22.7 | release they're excited about. We're going to get real and sometimes a bit snarky about all things |
| 0:28.3 | books. If you like the show, I'd really love your support. Spread the word to your reader friends, |
| 0:33.8 | subscribe to the show, rate and review it wherever you listen to podcasts, or get bonus podcast episodes |
| 0:40.8 | by supporting the podcast on Patreon. There's a link in the show notes and in my Instagram bio to my |
| 0:47.5 | Patreon page. Let's get rolling. Hey everyone, welcome to a full-length episode of Sarah's Bookshelves Live. |
| 0:55.9 | Today we're talking about a book that's fun but still deals with really important issues. And it joins my two forms of |
| 1:02.1 | entertainment together, books and reality TV, specifically the Bachelor franchise. Kate Stamen |
| 1:09.0 | London, author of the debut novel and now USA Today bestseller |
| 1:13.5 | One to Watch, is joining me today. Kate is a novelist, screenwriter, and political strategist. |
| 1:19.5 | She served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign |
| 1:25.0 | and has written for notable figures ranging from President Obama to |
| 1:30.3 | Malala Yousefzai to Anna Wintour to share. She lives in Los Angeles where she's currently |
| 1:36.5 | melting in an uncharacteristic 100 plus degree heat. Welcome, Kate. Hi, it's so nice to be here. |
| 1:46.8 | So glad to have you and I hope you're surviving out there. I know y'all aren't used to that kind of thing. So I'm a huge fan of |
| 1:53.3 | The Bachelor and The Bachelorette in all of the surrounding shows. So I was really excited when |
| 1:58.0 | I first heard about One to Watch. And for y'all, One to Watch fictionalizes |
| 2:03.7 | a Bachelor-type show called Main Squeeze in the book. And it features a plus-size blogger as the |
| 2:10.3 | lead of the show. And I love a book that reads fun and light, but that deals with serious topics. |
| 2:19.4 | And One to Watch really hit that exact right spot for me. |
| 2:22.6 | So it was a super bright spot in my summer. |
... |
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