10-05-12 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read Episode 68: Robert D. Kaplan, 'The Revenge of Geography'
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Here's the sixty-eighth 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.
10-05-12: A 2012 Live Interview with Joann Rose Leonard at Capitola Book Café
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"...how our beliefs color and change how we think about things..."
—Joann Rose Leonard
It's one thing to interview an author in a studio, or an office; that is alone; it is quite another to put an author up in front of a bunch of people, some of whom they may know. The first setting is confessional; the second is communal, and a very different feeling. It's intimate versus open.
'The Healer of Fox Hollow' is a bit of both; it is a novel about community and a novel about the intimate spaces of belief and understanding. All this goes to saying that Joann Rose Leonard managed to accommodate both at our appearance at Capitola Book Café.
We talked about the origins of her story, and her methods of research. We also talked about the actual writing, which involved more drafts than you might think. As well, touched on the eternal debate between the outliners and the surfers. I always find it interesting how many of those who do not outline envy those who do, and the reverse feelings as well. It is certain that there is no right way to write a novel – other than to both start and finish it!
10-02-12: Malinda Lo Reads from 'Adaptation' at SF in SF on September 16, 2012
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"I'll begin with the epigraph, which is from Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species."
—Malinda Lo
It's a hell of an epigraph; start out a novel titled 'Adaptation' with a clip from Darwin, and you're setting the reader's expectations pretty damn high. But listen on; Malinda Lo's reading makes it clear that her novel is going to live up to those expectations.
Lo and I talked afterwards about her fondness for the mystery genre and the TV series The X-Files. They're both particularly clear in the sections she chooses to read here, but then, I'd have to add another influence, though I'm sure it's likely too old for her. There's a great bit in the reading that will remind some of us of the movie Panic in the Year Zero.
If you're getting the feeling that Lo is working in the science-fiction horror genre from a variety of angles, then you're on the right track. She reads and writes in the perfectly crisp, clear voice that makes the fantastic portions of the narrative seem so realistic. Like many excellent writers, she makes it look easy. Apparently, the novel is being targeted to the YA audience, thought this is not necessarily apparent from what I heard here. You can hear this reading and then, like me, order up a copy of 'Adaptation.' As soon as I get mine, I hope to speak to Lo at length about it. Here's the link to the MP3 audio file.
10-01-12:A 2012 Interview with D. T. Max
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"...for me there was a really funny, strange opportunity to write a biography about someone who listened to the same music as me."
— D. T. Max
I met D. T. Max at the Capitola Book Café to talk about his new book 'Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace'; his ride over the hill had not been easy. This meant I was set up and ready to roll when he arrived, and I was quite at home once again in the back office, where the sound can be quite superb. There's a little, rickety chair that I have to be careful about. I tend to lean back and rock forward in chairs, a bad habit. In this chair, it can lead to disaster, this time, thankfully avoided.
But the whole feel of that office is perfect, stuff with books and posters. There cold hardly be a better place to talk about a book on the life of David Foster Wallace. I think he would have liked the clutter.
Max's work is beautifully crafted, and it was easy to talk about how be came to write such a well-balanced book. It was nice that our conversation did not cover the same ground as our earlier chat on the phone; they compliment one another rather nicely. As he wrote the biography, Max did not follow any of the easy temptations. He could have over immersed himself in the minutiae of the work; or he could have tried to sound like Wallace himself. Instead, there's a clarity to the biography sort of appropriate simplicity that has a finely detailed feel.
It does not hurt that Wallace's life, for all his brilliance, has much the feel of average, middle-class, mid-Western Americana. Max translates that into a work that feels not a little like Dickens cutting a swath through the great minds of late 20th century American literature; DeLillo, Franzen, Pynchon, Wallace himself. Max captures that life and voice. You can hear Max's voice by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
09-18-15: Commentary : William T. Vollman Amidst 'The Dying Grass' : An Epic Exploration of Simultaneity
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
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
