Lauren Bravo is the author of What Would the Spice Girls Do?: How the Girl Power Generation Grew Up. She was eight when Wannabe came out, and the Spice Girls were a defining and formative feature of her childhood, and, she argues in her book, of her generation of girls. Even if you’re not into the Spice Girls and don’t remember them fondly when you look back on the 90s, Lauren’s book makes some fascinating and important points about identity, feminism, and the power of the girl gang, and our conversation highlights some of those points.
Lauren talked to me about what she was reading back in the days when the Spice Girls were blaring out from her ghetto blaster, her friendship with previous podcast guest Daisy Buchanan, the book she made her boyfriend read while standing over him to make sure he laughed in the right places, and more.
You can listen to the episode here,
or Spotify, or iTunes,
or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Books Mentioned on the Podcast:
What Would the Spice Girls Do?: How the Girl Power Generation Grew Up, by Lauren Bravo
Best Friends, by Francine Pascal
The Baby-Sitters Club, by Ann M. Martin
Anastasia Krupnik Stories by Lois Lowry
Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
I’ll Be There for You: The One about Friends, by Kelsey Miller
Promising Young Women, by Caroline O’Donoghue
The Break, by Marian Keyes
OMG, What a Complete Aisling, by Sarah Breen and Emer McLysaght
Conversations with Friends, by Sally Rooney
Work Like a Woman, by Mary Portas
Crudo, by Olivia Laing
Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
The Diary of a Nobody, by George and Weedon Grossman
Middle England, by Jonathan Coe
Five Days of Fog, by Anna Freeman
The Story of Crossrail, by Christian Wolmar
Unscripted, by Claire Handscombe
(A note on my book links: they usually take you to Amazon, and I get a few pence per sale at no extra cost to you if you click them and buy from there, which will help me make this podcast viable long-term. But better than Amazon, who are, let’s be honest, not the greatest, is Blackwells or Waterstones, or, even better, your local independent bookshop. If you live in the US or elsewhere further afield, you can find UK books at Book Depository (also owned by Amazon) at a good price and with no postage cost, or sometimes at Wordery.com, or you can buy them from Amazon US, or, even better, an independent bookshop.)
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