The Avid Reader Show

The Paper Wasp is about two women, one beautiful, one plain, one insecure and one quite confident (at different times). It’s about a rekindled relationship in which power shifts, spirituality is embraced or given lip service and plans are made, by both women, plans that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. My point, somehow made in an extremely disjointed fashion, is that it’s hard to know who’s successful, who’s a failure, who knows what their life is about and who doesn’t and then layered on that is the insecurity the reader experiences when she has no idea whether what she is reading is what is really happening.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Damian Barr, author of You Will Be Safe Here, his first novel, published in May by Bloomsbury. Damian is an award winning writer and columnist. Maggie And Me, his memoir won several prestigious awards. Damian writes columns for BigIssue and High Life. He is the creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. I’d love to talk to him for hours about that but we’re here to sell his book, to be unpolished. You know, Sometimes I get a little nervous when a novel straddles two centuries with multiple characters. But no need to fear here. The pieces of this book fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. It may not be the most pleasant of juxtapositions but it is a novel that immediately draws the reader in, not with certainty, but with a subtle questioning that leaves one a bit nervous and unsure, kind of, of one’s own values. We explore and are pulled by the protagonist, Sarah van der Watt and her son Fred through their agonizing journey in 1901 during the second Boer War, where the English established what were the first true concentration camps. Sarah’s diary describes in excruciating detail the nature of these camps. Fast forward to the 2000s and we find ourselves in another “safe” place where young and “different” Willem is forced into another camp, that differs in time and nature but imposes the same torture and inhumanity that we have already explored. Lastly, the reader must come to acknowledge that the stories, both of them, are inspired not only by real events, but beckon us to realize that these events are still happening throughout the world and some are even posted by our own nation. With that, perhaps too morbid introduction, welcome Damian and thanks so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Damian Barr, author of You Will Be Safe Here, his first novel, published in May by Bloomsbury. Damian is an award winning writer and columnist. Maggie And Me, his memoir won several prestigious awards. Damian writes columns for BigIssue and High Life. He is the creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. I’d love to talk to him for hours about that but we’re here to sell his book, to be unpolished. You know, Sometimes I get a little nervous when a novel straddles two centuries with multiple characters. But no need to fear here. The pieces of this book fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. It may not be the most pleasant of juxtapositions but it is a novel that immediately draws the reader in, not with certainty, but with a subtle questioning that leaves one a bit nervous and unsure, kind of, of one’s own values. We explore and are pulled by the protagonist, Sarah van der Watt and her son Fred through their agonizing journey in 1901 during the second Boer War, where the English established what were the first true concentration camps. Sarah’s diary describes in excruciating detail the nature of these camps. Fast forward to the 2000s and we find ourselves in another “safe” place where young and “different” Willem is forced into another camp, that differs in time and nature but imposes the same torture and inhumanity that we have already explored. Lastly, the reader must come to acknowledge that the stories, both of them, are inspired not only by real events, but beckon us to realize that these events are still happening throughout the world and some are even posted by our own nation. With that, perhaps too morbid introduction, welcome Damian and thanks so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Namwali Serpell author of The Old Drift, her first novel, published in March by Hogarth. Namwali has won many prizes in literature. Her writing has appeared in the NYer, Tin House, McSweeneys, the Guardian and in numerous short story anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. Oh and her first book of literary criticism, Seven Modes of Uncertainty was published in 2014 by Harvard. We’ll come back to that later. So welcome Namwali and thanks so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Namwali Serpell author of The Old Drift, her first novel, published in March by Hogarth. Namwali has won many prizes in literature. Her writing has appeared in the NYer, Tin House, McSweeneys, the Guardian and in numerous short story anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. Oh and her first book of literary criticism, Seven Modes of Uncertainty was published in 2014 by Harvard. We’ll come back to that later. So welcome Namwali and thanks so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Janny Scott, author of The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, And The Story of My Father, published by Riverhead in April. Janny is a journalist and the author of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother. She was a reporter for the NYT and a member of the Times reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for the series “How Race Is Lived In America," and “Portraits of Grief” in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center. You’ve probably seen her on Colbert, or Today or Fresh Air with Terry Gross and lots more TV and radio programs, and we’re happy to welcome her to this one. Hi Janny and welcome to the show.

Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Janny Scott, author of The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, And The Story of My Father, published by Riverhead in April. Janny is a journalist and the author of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother. She was a reporter for the NYT and a member of the Times reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for the series “How Race Is Lived In America," and “Portraits of Grief” in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center. You’ve probably seen her on Colbert, or Today or Fresh Air with Terry Gross and lots more TV and radio programs, and we’re happy to welcome her to this one. Hi Janny and welcome to the show.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Bryce Andrews author of Down From The Mountain: The Life And Death Of A Grizzly Bear, published tomorrow April 16th by Houghton Mifflin. Bryce is the author of the memoir Badluck Way: A Year On The Ragged Edge Of The West. He has appeared on PBS and his essays and short work have been published in High Country News, Big Sky Journal and Backpacker. Bryce lives in Montana where he manages a conservation-oriented cattle ranch. Down From The Mountain tells the story of Millie, a really nice grizzly bear, who even has a woods named after her, a loving mother to two beautiful cubs. But Millie, like a lot of other bears in the area near her woods, is lured into the arena now usually reserved for humans and their encroachment into the wild. A very nice man Greg Shock who farms acres of corn to feed his dairy cows, is losing more and more of his acreage year to year to the foraging bears, who crave corn, kind of like us, buying 80 percent of our groceries containing high fructose corn syrup. Corn for the bears is a learned behavior, just as it is for us. Millie and her offspring encounter a situation that is heartrending and the story continues on in an attempt to solve a mystery and to figure out a way that the bears can be kept “safe” from the corn and Farmer Shock can keep his corn and save 8-10 thousand a year. Bryce adopts and adapts a method of fencing that is novel and economic in order to keep the bears out and it works. He is still using it today. The idea of the book is to allow People and Carnivores to live and thrive together in harmony, or if not harmony, then detente.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Bryce Andrews author of Down From The Mountain: The Life And Death Of A Grizzly Bear, published tomorrow April 16th by Houghton Mifflin. Bryce is the author of the memoir Badluck Way: A Year On The Ragged Edge Of The West. He has appeared on PBS and his essays and short work have been published in High Country News, Big Sky Journal and Backpacker. Bryce lives in Montana where he manages a conservation-oriented cattle ranch. Down From The Mountain tells the story of Millie, a really nice grizzly bear, who even has a woods named after her, a loving mother to two beautiful cubs. But Millie, like a lot of other bears in the area near her woods, is lured into the arena now usually reserved for humans and their encroachment into the wild. A very nice man Greg Shock who farms acres of corn to feed his dairy cows, is losing more and more of his acreage year to year to the foraging bears, who crave corn, kind of like us, buying 80 percent of our groceries containing high fructose corn syrup. Corn for the bears is a learned behavior, just as it is for us. Millie and her offspring encounter a situation that is heartrending and the story continues on in an attempt to solve a mystery and to figure out a way that the bears can be kept “safe” from the corn and Farmer Shock can keep his corn and save 8-10 thousand a year. Bryce adopts and adapts a method of fencing that is novel and economic in order to keep the bears out and it works. He is still using it today. The idea of the book is to allow People and Carnivores to live and thrive together in harmony, or if not harmony, then detente.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lucasta Miller, author of L.E.L.; The Lost Life And Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Celebrated “Female Byron”. Lucasta is a British critic, biographer and editor. She is the author of The Bronte Myth. Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Economist and The Independent. She was also a visiting scholar and fellow at Oxford University. L.E.L. was published in March by Knopf. The subtitle of this book, The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” tells us a great deal about this woman, who today is largely forgotten to almost all of us, but in her time was a women and poet who made sure she was heard. She was scandalized, she was worshipped and some say, the most famous woman of her time. How strange I thought as reading, that I never heard of her. Her short life, she was born in 1802 and died in 1838. 36 years old. Close to the lifespans of Byron, Keats and Shelley. L.E.L.’s life was tucked into the Romantic Age of London in the 20s. She was on the rise as Byron’s life and poetry came to an end. This books tells her story in full and gives us a visual and literary look at the London of her time. Letitia was the missing link between the age of Byron and the creation of Victorianism. As noted, this book gives us more than a glimpse of a time and place and the unusual life of a woman who without this work we would be unaware.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Our guest today is Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman author of Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir, published in February by Norton. Jessica has “performed” on PBS, QVC and at concert halls worldwide. Her writing has appeared in the NYTM, McSweeney’s, Brevity and Hippocampus. She teaches creative writing at Northern Kentucky University. Sounds Like Titanic is a book that at first seems as if it is born of the imagination of the author, because so much of it seems unreal, impossible and unbelievable. Once we dive in though, the reader rapidly gains an understanding, albeit with a remaining bit of doubt, that we are dealing with true facts. Not alternative ones. The book is published at an opportune time. It discusses reality, “reality” with quotes and it begins to discuss, maybe because it was published a little early, written a little early, it begins to discuss whatever the hell reality we are living in now. As a backdrop to our present day situation, when Donald Trumps says that his father grew up in a very nice town in Germany, although it’s a fact that his father was born in NYC. And Kim Kardashian is studying to be an attorney, or an unreasonable facsimile of one. So here, not to wander off, as I am wont to do, we have the composer, a charlatan, a naif, a likable man with the smile of a velociraptor. And we have Jessica, young, eager to make her way as a kinda good violinist, in the world, given an extraordinary opportunity and the meshing of her talents and the Composer’s overarching plan together is what gives the excitement and to be precise, the meaning of this book. And even more, because of the time it takes place in, gives us a viewpoint from then and then from now back again. And for good or for worse, the book is a gnomon pointing to our times and, in my opinion, the doom that awaits us. And with that peculiar fatalism that I oft times introduce to this, welcome Jessica and thanks for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Our guest today is Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman author of Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir, published in February by Norton. Jessica has “performed” on PBS, QVC and at concert halls worldwide. Her writing has appeared in the NYTM, McSweeney’s, Brevity and Hippocampus. She teaches creative writing at Northern Kentucky University. Sounds Like Titanic is a book that at first seems as if it is born of the imagination of the author, because so much of it seems unreal, impossible and unbelievable. Once we dive in though, the reader rapidly gains an understanding, albeit with a remaining bit of doubt, that we are dealing with true facts. Not alternative ones. The book is published at an opportune time. It discusses reality, “reality” with quotes and it begins to discuss, maybe because it was published a little early, written a little early, it begins to discuss whatever the hell reality we are living in now. As a backdrop to our present day situation, when Donald Trumps says that his father grew up in a very nice town in Germany, although it’s a fact that his father was born in NYC. And Kim Kardashian is studying to be an attorney, or an unreasonable facsimile of one. So here, not to wander off, as I am wont to do, we have the composer, a charlatan, a naif, a likable man with the smile of a velociraptor. And we have Jessica, young, eager to make her way as a kinda good violinist, in the world, given an extraordinary opportunity and the meshing of her talents and the Composer’s overarching plan together is what gives the excitement and to be precise, the meaning of this book. And even more, because of the time it takes place in, gives us a viewpoint from then and then from now back again. And for good or for worse, the book is a gnomon pointing to our times and, in my opinion, the doom that awaits us. And with that peculiar fatalism that I oft times introduce to this, welcome Jessica and thanks for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, published in April by Norton. Lori is a psychotherapist who writes the Dear Therapist advise column for The Atlantic. She also writes for the NYTM, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN and NPR. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is optioned for a TV series and it is perfectly structured for one. The book, which is a memoir of sorts, deals with a therapist, Lori, whose own life, in a flash becomes a crisis of sorts. So while tending to the needs of her various patients, she is also at sea about her own life and thus seeks out the therapeutic advice of a therapist of her own. Throughout these pages, we meet and become confidants of many of those folks that come to see her each week. John, Julie, Charlotte, Rita, Lori herself and her therapist Wendell. We also come across some other finely drawn characters and friends. Her professional suite mates, her professional consultation group, her best friend, her son, her parents and Cory, her stylist (my favorite character). The idea behind some of this is that therapy cannot only change the life of the patients, it can also trigger thoughts and questions in the mind of the therapist herself. Lori has the courage in this book to expose herself, her problems, how she deals with them, sometimes in not the most positive ways and her journey to understand and to process the issues that lie beneath the surface of what seems to be the need for a simple psychological tune-up.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, published in April by Norton. Lori is a psychotherapist who writes the Dear Therapist advise column for The Atlantic. She also writes for the NYTM, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN and NPR. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is optioned for a TV series and it is perfectly structured for one. The book, which is a memoir of sorts, deals with a therapist, Lori, whose own life, in a flash becomes a crisis of sorts. So while tending to the needs of her various patients, she is also at sea about her own life and thus seeks out the therapeutic advice of a therapist of her own. Throughout these pages, we meet and become confidants of many of those folks that come to see her each week. John, Julie, Charlotte, Rita, Lori herself and her therapist Wendell. We also come across some other finely drawn characters and friends. Her professional suite mates, her professional consultation group, her best friend, her son, her parents and Cory, her stylist (my favorite character). The idea behind some of this is that therapy cannot only change the life of the patients, it can also trigger thoughts and questions in the mind of the therapist herself. Lori has the courage in this book to expose herself, her problems, how she deals with them, sometimes in not the most positive ways and her journey to understand and to process the issues that lie beneath the surface of what seems to be the need for a simple psychological tune-up.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Nathan Englander, Author of kaddish.com, published by Knopf, tomorrow the 26th. And also Nathan will be speaking and reading from kaddish.com at the free library on Wednesday, March 27 at 7:30 PM. You can visit the free library website to purchase tickets. Nathan is the author of Dinner At The Center Of The Earth, the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, the best-selling story collection For The Relief Of Unbearable Urges and the novel The Ministry Of Special Cases. He is the recipient of the Frank O’Conner International Short Story Award and a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, NYT, the Atlantic and the Post as well as in many collections of The Best Of series. He is the writer in resident at NYU. kaddish.com is the story of a complicated man, a tortured man, a man whose love is transcendent as is his guilt and shame. Because he neglected his duties as a son after the death of his father, he has failed as a good Jew, even though he attempted to rectify his lack of fortitude and gratitude by participating in a scheme that goes wrong, goes awfully wrong and he spends a great deal of his time as a converted man in trying to make good the promise that he had willfully broken years before. Whether he succeeds or not is for you to find out. Or maybe Nathan will tell you at the library.