06-15-13 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read Episode 101: Michael Pollan, 'Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation'
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Here's the one-hundred-first episode of my series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. Hitting the one-year mark, I'm going to make an effort to stay ahead, so that podcast listeners can get the same sort of "sneak preview" effect that radio listeners get each Friday morning.
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.
06-11-13:A (Casual) 2013 Interview with Robin Sloan
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"These people deserve to be part of these stories."
—Robin Sloan
Sometimes you can tell a conversation is going to go well, and that no matter what the author writes, you're going to really enjoy the reading. And that was clearly the case when I sat down to talk with Robin Sloan about his novel 'Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store.' The energy in the air is in energy in the book, and even on his website.
For this reader, Sloan and his novel evoke those tilted doorways in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. There's something pleasingly off-kilter about the man, and his book. He seems to have an Escheresque sense of gravity and a logic-defying ability to always be going downhill. He's cleary having funa nd that means that you're going to have fun.
I asked Caligari, er Sloan, about creating new archetypes, and his sense of world building. Sloan bolth plays by the rules of reality and writes his own rules for reality in 'Mr. Penumbra's 24-holur Bookstore.' He also quite cunningly plays to the fact that readers, who buy books, like bookstores, and books about bookstores. That archetype has been around for a while, and it is always fun see a writer re-invent it with the verve that Sloan brings to the page.
06-10-13:Podcast Extra: Matt Taibbi on Oil Price Fixing and Wall Street Reform
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"...this entire debate can come down to sematics..."
— Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi faces a very difficult writing challenge every time he finds a new subject to write about. Take for example, the financial crisis that enveloped the world back, say, six short years ago. The causes and effects were mind-bogglingly complicated, to the point of being hard to read about. In 'Griftopia,' Taibbi managed the singular feat of unraveling these knots in a manner that was a total hoot to read. He's still at it, for Rolling Stone.
In two recent posts (he's updated twice since we spoke), he talked about the oil price fixing scandal that we all probably suspected was going on, and the arcane and intense methods used by the financial industry to derail, prevent and defang any attempt to regulate it.
Taibbi and I talked about both of these matters, and in conversation, as in print, he manages to be scathingly clear and scorchingly entertaining at once. What's interesting to me, and should be to readers and listeners alike, is the power of the written word to explore what are arguably two of the most important news events that get nada, zip, zero, zilch coverage in any of the mainstream media. Taibbi's writing is it. This stuff is essential if we are going to have any hope of maintaining a representative democracy instead of a aristocratic theocracy.
Karen Joy Fowler is a literary superstar, with a bestselling novel, 'The Jane Austen Book Club,' that was adapted into a hit movie. As we sit down to talk about 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,' she's her usual calm and friendly self. She seems like the fabulous college professor who knows all the cool stuff, the great genre fiction and literature; everything excellent and fun to read.
I've known Fowler for a few years now; I met her shortly before she moved to Santa Cruz. I've known this book was in the hopper for quite some time, and even much of what it was about. But it still knocked me out when I finally had the chance to read it, because Fowler is such a talented writer. Much of the book is quite funny. It made me laugh out loud often and with great pleasure. And the more somber moments work with all the eloquence that life itself summons, usually when we are least prepared to deal with it.
It was quite a treat to sit down and talk with Fowler about the book, and not quite as challenging as I thought it would be. On one hand, I was loath to discuss too directly much of what happened in the book. As with any book, reading this book and experiencing the events as the author intends — with some surprise — is preferable. This is to say; I thought it would be harder to talk about the book without just spilling directly into the exciting bits.
But Fowler has created a novel that is really easy to read, utterly unforgettable, and yet, when you start to break it down and talk about it, it proves to be quite complicated. There is a lot to talk about in terms of technique, composition and creation that does not address the central events and themes here.
Fowler took an unusually long time to write the book, and unusually, she can quite precisely pin down the date on which it began. As readers, I hope that you encounter this book cold. Partway through this interview, a bit more than 40 minutes in, we give way and discuss events that are best heard about after reading the book. There's plenty of warning in the interview itself. You can easily listen to most of this interview, be better prepared for the book, and then come back for the final segment.
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
