KCRW's Bookworm show

KCRW's Bookworm

Summary: A must for the serious reader, Bookworm showcases writers of fiction and poetry - the established, new or emerging - all interviewed with insight and precision by the show's host and guiding spirit, Michael Silverblatt.

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Podcasts:

 Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Colson Whitehead's new great American novel depicts a real underground railroad that transports a fugitive slave to stops that defy time and history, highlighting the daily struggles of black people, past and present.

 Patrick Ness: A Monster Calls | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls – about a boy facing tremendous conflict with a bully at school, well-meaning inattentive teachers, and a dying mother – was actually already a story begun by another writer, who died before finishing it.

 Rabih Alameddine: The Angel of History | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Rabih Alameddine's The Angel of History takes place as much in the protagonist's head as it does in a psych ward where he checks himself in for a bit of rest while he battles the voices in his head.

 Mitch Sisskind: Do Not Be a Gentleman When You say Goodnight | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Mitch Sisskind's Do Not Be a Gentleman When You Say Goodnight is a distillation of nearly fifty years of brilliant comic writing.  

 Peter Orner: Am I Alone Here? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

When novelist Peter Orner's father died, he found himself unable to write. At the same time, his marriage fell apart. He consoled himself by reading and started to write responses to the literature that gave him comfort. 

 Kate Tempest: The Bricks that Built the Houses | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Rapper, poet, playwright and now novelist, Kate Tempest always knew she would write The Bricks that Built the Houses as an accompaniment to the characters in her record Everybody Down. (Rebroadcast)

 TC Boyle: The Terranauts | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

TC Boyle's The Terranauts centers around eight earth explorers who lock themselves up in E2, a biodome created to mimic earth and test the viability of a self-sustained environment. But what happens between the eight terranauts and their mission control has a bigger impact on sustainability than science had counted on.

 Tessa Hadley: The Past | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Tessa Hadley's book, The Past, has at its center a summer vacation home, and the four middle-aged siblings who come together to decide whether to sell it or not. 

 Ann Patchett: Commonwealth | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Ann Patchett's latest novel, Commonwealth, follows fifty-two years in the life of a large family. The idea of the book came to her because as a bookstore owner, she saw that what was missing from the shelves was the story of a big, modern family.

 Jonathan Safran Foer: Here I Am | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

The hero of Here I Am is a pun-loving television writer who is pummeled by the loss of everything he values.  This novel expands a family crisis into a global crisis which threatens the state of Israel.

 Nicholson Baker: Substitute | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Nicholson Baker's Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids was born of a desire to write a book articulating his theories about education – theories based on having had kids in school. Realizing his premise was weak, as he'd never been a teacher, he embarked on the adventure of a lifetime by becoming a substitute teacher. 

 Nadja Spiegelman: I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Since memory is not only malleable but unreliable, which version of the truth will prevail?

 Jacqueline Woodson: Another Brooklyn | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Another Brooklyn, award-winning Young Adult novelist Jacqueline Woodson's first novel for adults in twenty years, tells the story of childhood friends as they grow into women. 

 Marisa Silver: Little Nothing | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

An ugly young dwarf girl transforms first into a beauty, then into a tall woman, then into a wolf. 

 Affinity Konar: Mischling | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

In Auschwitz, the infamous Dr. Mengele conducted horrifying physical and psychological experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Affinity Konar's Mischling (meaning mixed blood) is the story of twin sisters who find themselves imprisoned in Dr. Mengele's "zoo."

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