04-07-13 UPDATE:Podcast Update:Time to Read Episode 92: Ruth Ozeki 'A Tale for the Time Being'
Here's the ninety-second episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. The podcasts/radio broadcasts will be of books worth your valuable reading time. I'll try to keep the reports under four minutes, for a radio-friendly format. If you want to run them on your show or podcast, let me know.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
04-06-13 UPDATE:Podcast Update:Time to Read Episode 91: Lawrence Wright 'Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief' [Updated with new Tracking 04-27-13]
Here's the ninety-first episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. The podcasts/radio broadcasts will be of books worth your valuable reading time. I'll try to keep the reports under four minutes, for a radio-friendly format. If you want to run them on your show or podcast, let me know.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
With this episode, I hope to be getting closer to catching up from the gap left by my recent voice loss. If I can finish editing Ruth Ozeki and get her book reviewed and the script for the Time to Read written, we'll be back in what I consider the proper sequence. But next week may be devoted to much reading, I hope!
'A Tale for the Time Being' by Ruth Ozeki, 'Odds Against Tomorrow' by Nathaniel Rich and 'Pandemonium' by Warren Fahy
I was directed to Ruth Ozeki's 'A Tale for the Time Being' by Karen Joy Fowler, a recommendation I took with great pleasure, so I was glad to see Alan Cheuse wanted to talk about it. As we stacked up our choices for this iteration of our conversation, it became clear to me that we had here a gradual journey to science fiction.
The trick to the conversations that Alan and I have for this show is that we both want to discuss the books at length and in depth; we could probably slice and dice the plot so finely that listeners would be inclined to think, "There's a good book I don't need to read."
The trick then becomes to find a way to engage in a conversation about the books that makes their strong points clear without giving away the show, and over the years, we've become quite good at addressing the strengths of the books we discuss and leaving the fun of discovering the books themselves to the reader.
Our other two books were both naturals for me. I loved Rich's first novel, 'The Mayor's Tongue,' but his newest is quite different in everything except the quality of the prose voice, and the setting of New York City, which Rich does not treat well.
Cheuse and I were both fans of 'Fragment,' Fahy's first novel. That's no guarantee that we would like his second, but he brought back what worked for me in his first; interesting, intelligent and intelligently-conceived monsters with a devil-may-care attitude about his humans. Being human in 'Pandemonium' is no guarantee of survival.
"...without intention or recognition, we're playing important roles in the lives of other people..."
— MacKenzie Bezos
I have a very specific goal in most of my interviews, which is to speak as little about the actual events in a book as possible. I told this to MacKenzie Bezos as we sat down to talk about her novel 'Traps,' because to me the less you know about this book going in, the more you will enjoy it.
On the other hand, I do think it is possible to speak about the techniques used within a book in a manner that does not hinge on discussing the plot details. My hope is that readers can listen to an interview either before or after they read the book and enhance their reading experience. To me at least, this all sounds great in theory, but in practice it can be very difficult.
I explained this to Bezos and she agreed to work with me to this end, with, I feel, great success. Bezos is a crafty writer, in both senses of the word. She's smart and kind of sneaky, in a good way, when it comes to putting together an intricate plot that offers lots of surprises, tension and suspense. But she also pays close attention to her craft in terms of prose, characterization, and the gut-level art that pulls the parts into an organic whole.
Bezos also thinks about all the aspects of craft as she writes her book, and in our interview she spoke quite eloquently about the ineffable parts of the creative process, the organic growth of a narrative as you write. In general the type of writing she does is very difficult to talk about if you don't talk about plot, but she's clearly thought enough about her writing process to speak about creating a work without addressing the specifics of the work.
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
