STACK with Jake and Ella

Love stories are some of our favourite stories, so this Valentines week, join us for six books to put on your stack - books of toxic first loves, the line between friendship and romance, and stories about loving yourself. It’s all in this episode, alongside Jake’s love of reformer pilates, and Ella’s love of Marian Keyes.

Plus: what to do if you buy someone a book, and they never tell you they’ve read it. Should you chase? 

The books featured in this week’s STACK:

Chosen Family - Madeleine Grey

Talking at Night - Clare Daverley

Isaac - Curtis Garner

Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld

Wild Things - Laura Kay

Rachel’s Holiday - Marian Keyes

Also featured:

Orange - Curtis Garner

Tell Me Everything - Laura Kay

The Split - Laura Kay

Marian Keyes’ writing videos in the vlog section here: https://www.mariankeyes.com/videos/ 

STACK with Jake and Ella is a books podcast helping you cut through the noise to fall in love - and stay in love - with reading. Each fortnight, we’ll be sharing curated lists on a theme of the books that are worth your time.

Please follow us on your podcast player or subscribe on YouTube. Do comment and share and if you’d like to support the podcast even further, we’d love it if you could leave us a review - it’s massively helpful. 

We are @stackpodcast on socials.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stackpodcast/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stackpodcast

Please get in touch if you read any of the books from this week’s episode, or have a bookish problem for our Shelf Help section - you can literally ask us anything!

STACK with Jake and Ella is an independent podcast production.

It is produced by Jake Williams and Ella Horne.

Our theme music was created by Thomas Clarke

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What puts you off a book and what pulls you towards one? This episode is all about the books we thought we wouldn’t like - whether the cover, the topic, or something else - but we’re happy to tell you these are six books we actually thought were great. We deep dive into our own reading tastes and prejudices and create the Venn Diagram of Jake and Ella’s reading taste. 

Warning: there are some hot, and bad, takes in this episode!

The books featured in this week’s STACK:

8.20 Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

12.40 Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellmann

15.22 Yellowface - R. F. Kuang

19.32 The Bee Sting - Paul Murray

22.00 In Memoriam - Alice Winn

27.20 A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J. Maas

Also featured:

One Day - David Nicholls

Heated Rivalry - Rachel Reid

It Lasts Forever and then It’s Over - Anne de Marcken

Second Best - David Foenkinos

Blood Over Bright Haven - M.L. Wang

A Little Life - Hanya Yanigahara

STACK with Jake and Ella is a books podcast helping you cut through the noise to fall in love - and stay in love - with reading. Each fortnight, we’ll be sharing curated lists on a theme of the books that are worth your time.

Please follow us on your podcast player or subscribe on YouTube. Do comment and share and if you’d like to support the podcast even further, we’d love it if you could leave us a review - it’s massively helpful. 

We are @stackpodcast on socials.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stackpodcast/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stackpodcast

Please get in touch if you read any of the books from this week’s episode, or have a bookish problem for our Shelf Help section - you can literally ask us anything!

STACK with Jake and Ella is an independent podcast production.

It is produced by Jake Williams and Ella Horne.

Our theme music was created by Thomas Clarke
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

***This episode contains discussion around death and bereavement - we advise listening with caution or skipping this episode if those topics wouldn’t be right for you right now***
It’s a New Year and our first STACK of the year is here. We’re a firm believer in the power of books to change lives, but which ones specifically? We’re also virtual this episode, hot off the back of seeing Hamnet and desperate to talk about it, and we’re sharing life hacks including how to afford a New Year book haul. Plus: bao buns, surprising stats and discussing whether Stephen Sondheim is a household name.
Plus - we run through the best upcoming 2026 books to add to your TBR. 

The books featured in this week’s STACK:
11.57 Solve For Happy - Mo Gawdat
14.50 Open Up - Alex Holder
18.28 East - Meera Sodha
21.06 A Heart That Works - Rob Delaney
23.56 Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkeman
28.49 How Sondheim Can Change Your Life - Richard Schoch

Also featured:
Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell
Land - Maggie O’Farrell
Hooked - Asako Yusuki
What Am I, A Deer? - Polly Barton
Vigil - George Saunders
The Things We Never Say - Elizabeth Strout
People In Love - Claire Daverley

STACK with Jake and Ella is a books podcast helping you cut through the noise to fall in love - and stay in love - with reading. Each fortnight, we’ll be sharing curated lists on a theme of the books that are worth your time.
Please follow us on your podcast player or subscribe on YouTube. Do comment and share and if you’d like to support the podcast even further, we’d love it if you could leave us a review - it’s massively helpful. 

We are @stackpodcast on socials.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stackpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stackpodcast

Please get in touch if you read any of the books from this week’s episode, or have a bookish problem for our Shelf Help section - you can literally ask us anything 

STACK with Jake and Ella is an independent podcast production.
It is produced by Jake Williams and Ella Horne.
Our theme music was created by Thomas Clarke.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve got our Santa hats on! This episode’s STACK is all cosy vibes for Christmas, New Year and the period in between, whatever that’s called. Jake and Ella create a stack containing crosswords, colours and predicting your own murder. Mysteries that are light on jeopardy, and won’t keep you up at night. And a listener question for the Shelf Help section takes an unexpected turn…

The books featured in this week’s STACK:
05.46 The Fellowship of Puzzle Makers - Samuel Burr
07.26 How To Solve Your Own Murder - Kristen Perrin
10.20 Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde
12.30 All The Colours of the Dark - Chris Whitaker
15.30 The Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz
18.35 The Hogfather - Terry Pratchett

Also featured:
Buckeye - Patrick Ryan
Wolf Hall Trilogy - Hilary Mantel
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
The Big Over Easy - Jasper Fforde

STACK is a books podcast helping you cut through the noise to fall in love - and stay in love - with reading. Each fortnight, we’ll be sharing curated lists on a theme of the books that are worth your time.

Please follow us on your podcast player or subscribe on YouTube. Do comment and share and if you’d like to support the podcast even further, we’d love it if you could leave us a review - it’s massively helpful. 

We are @stackpodcast on socials.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stackpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stackpodcast

Please get in touch if you read any of the books from this week’s episode, or have a bookish problem for our Shelf Help section. 

STACK with Jake and Ella is an independent podcast production.
It is produced by Jake Williams and Ella Horne.
Our theme music was created by Thomas Clarke.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ella and Jake pick six tiny books that pack a weird punch, and have fun debating whether they could handle the zombie apocalypse, whether they like to know what’s going on in a book, and a man called Bigolas Dickolas.

The books featured in this week’s STACK:
3.56 Hard Copy - Fien Veldman
6.31 This Is How You Lose The Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
11.10 Heatwave - Victor Jestin
14.23 It Lasts Forever And Then It’s Over - Anna de Marcken
19.07 Second Best - David Foenkinos
21.50 Treacle Walker - Alan Garner

Also featured:
Impossible Creatures - Katherine Rundell
Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing - Matthew Perry
George Orwell’s 1984: An Audible Original adaptation

STACK is a books podcast helping you cut through the noise to fall in love - and stay in love - with reading. Each fortnight, we’ll be sharing curated lists on a theme of the books that are worth your time.

Please follow us on your podcast player or subscribe on YouTube. Do comment and share and if you’d like to support the podcast even further, we’d love it if you could leave us a review - it’s massively helpful. 

We are @stackpodcast on socials.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stackpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stackpodcast

Please get in touch if you read any of the books from this week’s episode, or have a bookish problem for our Shelf Help section. 

STACK with Jake and Ella is an independent podcast production.
It is produced by Jake Williams and Ella Horne.
Our theme music was created by Thomas Clarke.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices