Tell Me What You’re Reading

Howard Altarescu
Tell Me What You’re Reading

Talking about books on the streets of New York, in the mountains of the Catskills and on the road. I find that when I ask people about what they’re reading, they tend to start talking about books generally and then start talking to others about books. Encouraging the discussion of books cannot be a bad thing! “Books are a sort of cultural DNA, the code for who, as a society, we are, and what we know. All the wonders and failures, all the champions and villains, all the legends and ideas and revelations of a culture last forever in its books.” @susanorlean, The Library Book

  1. 2023/11/07

    Ep. #50 Amy Shearn and Hannah Oberman-Breindel - To the Lighthouse

    I enjoyed talking with Amy Shearn and Hannah Oberman-Breindel this summer when they were in the Artist-in-Residence writing program at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, and even more so on our recent podcast discussion of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which is considered to be one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century.  I had not previously read any Virginia Woolf and I had not studied literary modernism. Despite being uninitiated, I was struck by the way Woolf captured the human condition and, in a realistic way, the unstructured non-linear thought processes of her characters. Written in 1927, the novel spans the time from just before to just after World War I The story itself, which has numerous autobiographical overlaps, revolves around the Ramsey family and their guests at their summer home by the sea in the Scottish Hebrides. Lots goes on, but only in the sense that life goes on, and it’s all really great.  Our podcast discussion was very much in the vein of Woolf’s stream of consciousness narrative style, depicting “the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator, “an overlapping of images and ideas”. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary,  “The method of writing smooth narrative can’t be right. Things don’t happen in one’s mind like that, we experience, all the time, an overlapping of images and ideas, and modern novels should convey our mental confusion instead of neatly rearranging it. The reader must sort it out”. And we did try to sort it out!

    51 分鐘
  2. 2023/08/13

    Ep. #46 Steph Kent: Hamnet - A Novel of the Plague + The Call Me Ishmael Project

    Steph Kent, co-founder, with her husband Logan Smalley, of the Call Me Ishmael project joined me to discuss Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, the book I have recommended more than any other over the last few years.  Hamnet is a work of fiction, but it’s based in part on certain core facts on which O’Farrell builds this beautiful, devastatingly sad story, albeit with a sweet ending, of the impact of Hamnet’s death on his family, and its relationship to the writing of Hamlet. The book is a master class in the use of detail to tell a story, and the production of Hamlet produces a beautiful, poetic and moving conclusion. I frequently describe Hamnet as one of the best books I have ever read. Shakespeare is never mentioned by name in the book. I realized who Hamnet’s father was when I read of his letters home reporting on rival playhouse owners, crowds and costumes. Leaving Shakepere’s name out of the narrative is a useful tool to avoid Shakespeare stealing the limelight, which is left to his wife Agnes, who is a strong, mystical and intriguing presence throughout the book. I greatly admired Agnes, and I also was deeply moved by the grief of both Agnes and Shakespeare over the loss of their son.  Steph and Logan’s Call Me Ishmael project invites readers to celebrate the books they love. Anyone can call Ishmael at 774.325.0503 and leave an anonymous voicemail message about their favorite book. Thousands of readers have called and over a million readers have listened to this library of stories.  Steph and Logan joined me on the podcast in November 2019: Ep. 20: The Call Me Ismael Project; Steph Kent and Logan Smalley

    32 分鐘
4.9
(滿分 5 顆星)
14 則評分

簡介

Talking about books on the streets of New York, in the mountains of the Catskills and on the road. I find that when I ask people about what they’re reading, they tend to start talking about books generally and then start talking to others about books. Encouraging the discussion of books cannot be a bad thing! “Books are a sort of cultural DNA, the code for who, as a society, we are, and what we know. All the wonders and failures, all the champions and villains, all the legends and ideas and revelations of a culture last forever in its books.” @susanorlean, The Library Book

若要收聽兒少不宜的單集,請登入帳號。

隨時掌握此節目最新消息

登入或註冊後,即可追蹤節目、儲存單集和掌握最新資訊。

選取國家或地區

非洲、中東和印度

亞太地區

歐洲

拉丁美洲與加勒比海地區

美國與加拿大