Interview with the podcast hosts of Ich lese was, was du auch liest  "Someone Said We’d Eaten Mushrooms"

In their podcast, Martina and Fabienne discuss novels exclusively written by women and authors of color – sometimes over 1,000 pages long or featuring a recipe for fly agaric mushroom cake. In this interview, they share how it all began and what makes for a great discussion.

Every month, one book gets their full attention: the single title that takes center stage in each podcast episode. In Ich lese was, was du auch liest (“I Read What You Read”), Fabienne Imlinger and Martina Kübler dive into novels by women and non-white authors – from Victorian masterpieces to contemporary queer fiction and Nobel Prize winners. In this written interview, the two literary scholars talk about how they choose their books and what makes a good discussion.

Do you remember the moment you decided to start a podcast together?

Martina: Oh yes, we remember it well! We were colleagues at university and often talked about books during our lunch breaks – what we were reading and which titles we especially liked. One day I just asked Fabienne, “Do you want to do a book podcast with me?” – and she immediately said yes.

With that, you joined the growing number of literary podcasts. What kind of gap did you want to fill with yours?

Fabienne: Honestly, we didn’t think much about that in the beginning. We mainly asked ourselves what kind of podcast we would enjoy making, and what kinds of books we wanted to talk about. Pretty quickly, it became clear: we’re especially drawn to novels by women and authors of color – we find them the most interesting both aesthetically and thematically.

Martina: The format also developed quite intuitively. Many literary podcasts are short or cover several books in one episode. But we knew right away: we wanted to focus on one book per episode – it just gives us more space to dive deeper into discussion.

So how do you decide which book to cover in each episode?

Martina: Most of the time it’s pretty spontaneous. Sometimes one of us is reading something and says, “Hey, I’d love to talk about this on the podcast.” That’s how it was recently with Schwindel by Hengameh Yaghoobifarah.

Fabienne: Or sometimes neither of us has read the book yet, but the author or the topic intrigues us. Sometimes we’re blown away – and sometimes we really dislike the book. Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck was one of those cases: nominated for the International Booker Prize, widely praised – but not our thing at all. Still, discussions like that can be fun or at least interesting.

It sounds like you agreed on that one – but opinions can really diverge. Do you remember a book where you completely disagreed?

Fabienne: One?! Countless! For example, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I loved it and was shocked that Martina didn’t find it scary or even particularly good!
But it’s those disagreements that make for the most engaging discussions: you not only have to explain what moved or annoyed you, but also argue why. And often, the very elements in a novel that irritate one of us are the ones the other finds brilliant.

You launched the podcast in 2020. Has anything changed over the years?

Fabienne: Hopefully our editing skills! The first few episodes had some pretty rough cuts.

Martina: Overall, we’ve gotten better with the technical side. And we now talk not only about contemporary literature but also about classics – like Middlemarch by George Eliot. A 19th-century English novel with over 1,000 pages! That was quite a challenge, but also a lot of fun. The style, the omniscient narrator, the philosophical digressions – that kind of thing is rare in contemporary fiction.

Was there an episode that sparked a lot of feedback from your listeners?

Martina: We didn’t get a ton of direct feedback, but our most-listened-to episode was the one on Herkunft by Saša Stanišić. We still don’t really know why.

Fabienne: The funniest comment came after our episode on Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night: because we laughed so much, someone said we must have eaten mushrooms ourselves – which would be fitting, since mushrooms feature heavily in the novel. (There’s even a recipe for fly agaric cake!)

Are there any books or ideas you’re especially eager to cover on the podcast?

Martina: Right now we’re thinking about starting a “Revisiting Favorite Books” segment. The idea is to re-read books that used to be favorites and see whether they still hold up. In one episode, we talked about The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein, which totally blew me away back when I was a student. If you want to know whether I still felt the same way, check out that episode.
 

June 2025