In my wanderings through the audio landscape, I've spent a fair amount of time at KQED in San Francisco, where I recently had the privilege of meeting the one and only Ian Shoales.
"I would check the Homeland Security Website a few times a week."
—Alex Gilvarry
Alex Gilvarry is just one floor down from the top of Hotel Vertigo in San Francisco. I saw the poster downstairs, but I didn't get it until he told me; it's where Hitchcock filmed Vertigo, an appropriate accommodation for the author of 'From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant.'
I'm most curious about Gilvarry's fashion background, because he managed to write about fashion in a manner that I found quite engaging. But there is also the matter of how the novel came together. It's quite intricately written and plotted. One can almost imagine one of those pinboards we see in the cop shows, where the obsessive cop (or criminal) has pinned up hundreds of photos and clippings and then used yard to connect them into some vast conspiracy.
02-28-12 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read, Episode 33: Michael Gazzaniga, 'Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Mind'
Click image for audio link.
Here's the thirty-third 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.
"..the potential for tragedy, the potential for redemption..."
—Anne Rice
Anne Rice has the talent to transform darkness into art, but she's lively and just as engaging as any of her creations when she sits down to talk about her work. Her latest novel, 'The Wolf Gift,' is a literate, literally ripping yarn about werewolves in Northern California. She's just as excited about the novel as those who read it will be once they start.
I met with Rice at KQED, and kept the focus on her latest work. This book has the same sense of joyful invention as any of her best works, with a terrific plot and characters we love to be with, even when they are decapitating those in their presence.
Rice talked about the sense of the deep history that informs both her novels and her own literary experience. She's an avid researcher for backgrounds in her novels and an avid reader of Charles Dickens. She can describe his best novels as if they were contemporary horror bestsellers.
05-08-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Clive Barker 'Abarat' : Reading in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Phone Interview with Mark Sundeen : "...over the years, I had heard through my friends that he had stopped using money and was living in a cave..."
04-30-12: Commentary : Christopher Moore Follows 'Sacré Bleu' : A Story in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Christopher Moore : "...it often isn't efficient to tell a story in chronological order..."
04-27-12: Commentary : Lisa Lutz on 'Trail of the Spellmans' : Meta-Fiction is Fun
Agony Column Podcast News Report: SF in SF from February 11, 2012 : Panel Discussion Moderated by Terry Bisson and Interviews with Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake
04-26-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Emmanuel Carrere 'The Adversary' : The Enemy Within
04-23-12: Commentary : T. M. Luhrman Listens 'When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God' : Science and the Supernaturaly
04-18-12: Commentary : Gregg Jones Stirs Through 'Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dreams' : A Dream Of Today From Yesterday
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Gregg Jones : "The Philippinos would welcome us with open arms and greet us as liberators."
04-17-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Caleb Carr 'The Alienist' : Subterranean History
04-16-12: Commentary : Richard Zacks Visits 'Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York' :The Wild, Wild East
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Richard Zacks : "Roosevelt and Riis were out looking, and if they did find a cop, he was talking to a streetwalker."
04-12-12: Commentary : Excess of Excellence : Short Story Edition
Agony Column Podcast News Report: Three Books with Alan Cheuse : 'The Wolf Gift' by Anne Rice, 'Arctic Rising' by Tobias Buckell and 'The Third Gate' by Lincoln Child
