December 25, 2008
Sacred Games/Vikram Chandra
December 18, 2008
The Hour I First Believed/Wally Lamb
A long and involving novel that focuses on Columbine and its aftermath, and America as a whole. Recommended.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky.
December 11, 2008
Somebody/Stefan Kanfer
The first biography of Marlon Brando since his death tries to give a balanced look at the greatest screen actor of his generation. Extremely readable.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
December 4, 2008
Annie Leibovitz at Work/Annie Leibovitz
The noted photographer discusses her work and techniques, with examples from her various disciplines, from fashion to magazine covers to journalism. An informative read, especially for those seeking to emulate her work.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
November 27, 2008
The Wailing Wind/Tony Hillerman
Seldom Disappointed/Tony Hillerman
Rebroadcast of a 2002 interview in honor of the latr mystery author (May 27, 1925 - October 26, 2008)
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
November 20, 2008
"Have You Seen..."/David Thomson
A compendium of brief essays about one thousand films, and an excellent place to glean info about films to rent and films to see, from the famous to the obscure. Thomson's taste is often idiosyncratic, but the book as a whole is extraordinarily valuable.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
November 13, 2008
Songs for the Missing/Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nan's latest novel follows a family as it copes with the loss of a daughter, who disappeared overnight. Well written but extremely grim.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
November 6, 2008
The China Lover/Ian Buruma
Occidentalism/Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit
Buruma's novel, which examines the relationship between Eastern and Western culture in the context of the life story of a real Japanese actress, is hard to put down. It has extra resonance if read in tandem with his extended essay, Occidentalism, and with a viewing of Sam Fuller's film, House of Bamboo, now out on DVD.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
October 30, 2008
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star/Paul Theroux
The Elephanta Suite/Paul Theroux
Theroux revisits the places he saw for his first travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar. Fascinating and often wonderful. Theroux is a great companion on the journey.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
October 23, 2008
The Given Day/Dennis Lehane
An epic historical novel about the year 1919 in Boston, culminating in the legendary police strike and riot. Lehane's strengths lie in the emotional life of his chaaracters and his descriptive abilities.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
October 16, 2008
Man in the Dark/Paul Auster
Travels in the Scriptorium/Paul Auster
Oracle Night/Paul Auster
Three somewhat interconnected novels about the nature of creativity and the writers' life. Auster is a superb stylist and original thinker.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
October 9, 2008
Something to Tell You/Hanif Kureishi
Life in London from the point of view of a Pakistani English Psychotherapist and his family. A fascinating panorama.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky.
October 2, 2008
Thomas Frank rebroadcast.
September 25, 2008
Janis Ian, Part Two
September 18, 2008
Society's Child/Janis Ian
The singer of the '60s classic "Society's Child" as well as the hits "At Seventeen," "Stars" and "Jesse" with an extremely readable memoir of her life as a singer/songwriter.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
September 11, 2008
Panic in Level 4/Richard Preston
Part Two
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
September 4, 2008
Panic in Level 4/Richard Preston
The author of The Hot Zone with a collection of fascinating essays about how man and nature interact. Part One.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
August 28, 2008
The Wrecking Crew: How Republicans Rule/Thomas Frank
A detailed look at how Republican rule has damaged America, from K Street and Abramoff to Brownie and Katrina. An important book.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
August 21, 2008
Away/Amy Bloom
Rebroadcast from 2007.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
August 14, 2008
Netherland/Joseph O'Neill
In post-9/11 New York, a Dutch emigre deals with his failing marriage and his changing life as he is befriended by an emigre from Trinidad. One of the best novels of the year.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
August 7, 2008
The Condition/Jennifer Haigh
Haigh's latest family saga spans 30 years and focuses on a girl, later a woman, with a genetic condition that keeps her from experiencing puberty. A rich character study that occasionally falls into stereotypes..
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
July 31, 2008
When You Are Engulfed in Flames/David Sedaris
Another funny collection of essays from the noted NPR commentator. Of particular note is the extended essay on quiting smoking, which was cut from 80 pages to ten in the New Yorker, but appears complete here.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
July 17, 2008
The Enchantress of Florence/Salman Rushdie
Rushdie returns to historical magic realism in this tale of a Moghul King and the young man who claims to be his nephew. A ravishing return to form.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
July 10, 2008
The Other/David Guterson
A young man abandons his life to live alone in the woods, aided and abetted by his best friend. Well-written, though far drier than Guterson's earlier works.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
July 3, 2008
The Story of a Marriage/Andrew Sean Greer
Greer's latest novel is a brief gem about a couple living in the Sunset District in San Francisco in the early 1950s, dealing with issues of race and sexuality.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
June 26, 2008
Book Review Program
The Ten-Cent Plague/David Hadju. An over all well-researched account of the 1950s attack on comic books, though there are some glaring errors, and the prose is unimaginative. RAL
The Story of Forgetting/Stefan Merrill Block. Superb novel about a family's history with early onset alzheimers. RW; The pieces don't quite hang together. RAL
RW recommends: The Plague of Doves/Louise Erdrich; The Story of a Marriage/Andrew Sean Greer; Netherland/Joseph O"Neill; The Enchantress of Florence/Salman Rushdie
June 19, 2008
The Lazarus Project/Aleksander Hemon
Aleksander Hemon, a Bosnian expatriate now living in Chicago, writes a fascinating cross of memoir and novel in this story which juxtaposes an immigrant murder in Chicago in 1908 with a modern-day road trip to Eastern Europe and Sarajevo in the present day. Hemon is an extremely talented writer.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
June 12, 2008
I Was Told There'd Be Cake/Sloane Crossley
A funny collection of essays by book publicist Crossley, which deals with life as a member of (still) under 30 generation, growing up and working in New York City.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
June 5, 2008
A Wolf at the Table/Augusten Burroughs
Burroughs' life before Running With Scissors, and his relationship with his father, told from the point of view of Augusten as a small child, and lacking the humor that usually marks his work.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
May 29, 2008
The Story of Forgetting/Stefan Merrill Block
A remarkable first novel about the effects of early onset Alzheimers on a family in Texas. Beautifully written and conceived.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
May 15, 2008
The Plague of Doves/Louise Erdrich
A sprawling novel that has several voices and takes place over several years in which the effects of a murder and lynching are revealed. Written as short stories, the pieces come together as an extraordinary coherent whole.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
May 8, 2008
the thing about life is that one day you'll be dead/David Shields
A book-length essay on how our bodies grow and decompose, with autobiographical anecdotes concerning Shields' relationship with his elderly father. A stunningly original work. Shields is working at the cutting edge of today's literature.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
May 1, 2008
The Jane Austen Book Club/Karen Joy Fowler
Wit's End/Karen Joy Fowler
Fowler's latest novel, Wit's End, is set in Santa Cruz, California and deals with an elderly mystery novelist, web fans, and a strange cult that actualy existed in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
April 24, 2008
Sacred Games/Vikram Chandra
A complex and extremely long novel set in Bombay that at first glance appears to be a crime story but soon evolves into a book about Bombay itself and India, past and present. Not for every taste, but rewarding for those willing to take the plunge.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
April 17, 2008
Lush Life/Richard Price
The author of Freedomland and Clockers returns with a brilliant novel about a murder on New York's Lower East Side, and its tragic aftermaths. Price is fast becoming a national treasure, not only for his work here, but also his work on The Wire.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
April 10, 2008
Dreamers of the Day/Mary Doria Russell
A middle-aged spinster is witness to events in Egypt and the Middle East in the early 1920s as she befriends Lawrence of Arabia, Winston Churchill, and others at the Cairo Peace Conference, where the current Middle East political line-up was created. Russell skirts a fine line between history, didacticism and the novel in a tour de force that works well most of the time.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
Extended edit to come.
April 4, 2008
Open Book: Tony Taccone, Part Two
An Interview with the Artistic Director of the Berkeley Rep Theatre Company. Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
April 3, 2008
We Disappear/Scott Heim
The author of Mysterious Skin returns after a ten-year haitus with a novel based on the last days of his mother's life, and the nature of disappearance. Heim is a very good writer.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
March 27, 2008
Song Yet Sung/James McBride
The author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Color of Water returns with a novel set in the antebellum East Shore of Maryland, a wild place and era encompassing runaway slaves, local fishermen, and bounty hunters. A well-made look at a place and era all but forgotten today.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
March 21, 2008
Open Book: Tony Taccone, Part One
An Interview with the Artistic Director of the Berkeley Rep Theatre Company. Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
March 20, 2008
The Senator's Wife/Sue Miller
Miller's latest bestseller takes us into the heads of a young woman, insecure in her life and her marriage, who moves next door to the wife of an aging ex-Senator. Their stories resonate with one another in several unexpected ways.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
March 13, 2008
His Illegal Self/Peter Carey
My Life as a Fake/Peter Carey
My Life as a Fake is a fascinating tour de force about a hoax about a fictional poet that backfires on its creator when the poet comes to life. His Illegal Self deals with complications that ensue after a young woman gets involved with radicals in the 1960s anti-war movement. Parallels to life today are not hard to find.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
March 6, 2008
Songs Without Words/Ann Packer
The Dive From Clausen's Pier/Ann Packer
Songs Without Words tells the story of two women friends who deal with life's vicissitudes both together and apart. The book deals with the nature of friendship and how it changes and remains constant over the years.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
February 28, 2008
The Commoner/John Burnham Schwartz
A captivating novel about the life of the current Japanese Empress, from her survival as a young commoner during World War II to her days mentoring her son's wife, also a commoner, in modern times.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
February 14, 2008
Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/Anthony Lewis
A history of First Amendment issues, from the birth of the U.S. to the present day, clean and concise.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
February 7, 2008
Swimming in a Sea of Death/David Rieff
A heartbreaking memoir about the death of Rieff's mother, Susan Sontag, and a stunning meditation on how we view death, our own and others.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
January 24, 2008
A Free Life/Ha Jin
War Trash/Ha Jin
A Free Life tells the story of Chinese immigrants in America and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2007. War Trash is a fascinating novel about the life of a Chinese POW during the Korean War.
Interviewer: Richard Wolinsky
January 17, 2008
Review Program
Leni/Stephen Bach. First rate biography of the German film-maker/propagandist. RW &RAL
Oscar Micheaux/Patrick McGilligan. Excellent biogprahy of the early African-American film maker. RAL
Away/Amy Bloom. A young immigrant from Russia makes her away across America in 1925. The best novel of 2007. RW.
The Nine/Jeffrey Toobin. Overrated look at the U.S. Supreme Court. RW
Reviewers: Richard Wolinsky and Richard A.Lupoff
January 10, 2008
Tribute to Norman Mailer Part Two
January 3, 2008
Tribute to Norman Mailer Part One
Ancient Evenings/Norman Mailer
The Armies of the Night/Norman Mailer
The Executioners Song/Norman Mailer
A career retrospective interview with the late Norman Mailer, culled from two interviews recorded in 1995 and 1998.
Interviewers: Richard A. Lupoff/Richard Wolinsky.
Produced by Richard Wolinsky
