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.
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
