Thursday, December 26, 2013
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie/Ayana Mathis
This well-reviewed collection of interrelated short stories about an African American family in Philadelphia in the twentieth century has some stunning and visceral moments. Ayana Mathis is a talent to watch.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Tatiana/Martin Cruz Smith
The latest Arkady Renko novel deals with Putin's attacks on journalists and takes place, partly, in the city of Kaliningrad, formerly a German city called Koenigsburg. A fine return to form.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Salman Rushdie: Fund-drive program.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
At Night We Walk in Circles/Daniel Alarcon
A young man tours the provinces of a country very much like Peru as part of a theatrical troupe. A well-written story by the Peruvian American author of Lost City Radio.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
The Unwinding/George Packer
Winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Non-fiction. Rebroadcast.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Book Store/Robin Sloan
Light-hearted cyber-mystery about a fictional bookstore and the cult that surrounds it by one of America's leading internet experts.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Claire of the Sea Light/Edwidge Danticat
A poetic look at a small town in Haiti; a novel under the guise of a series of short stories or maybe vice versa. Beautifully written.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Open Book: Bill English, Artistic Director of SF Playhouse in San Francisco.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Oscar Hijuelos: 2011 Interview with the late author.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Songs of Willow Frost/Jamie Ford
The story of a young orphan and his mother in Seattle in the 1920s and 1930s opens up the story of Chinese Americans during that era, and their lives. A welcome look at a little-known part of American history.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Virgin Soul/Judy Juanita
Former Black Panther Juanita has written a thinly-disguised memoir about her days in the Party during the 1960s, and it's a fascinating tale
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Maddaddam/Margaret Atwood
In Other Worlds/Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood's latest novel, Maddaddam, is the third in her speculative fiction trilogy that began with Oryx & Crake, and deals with how today's world might shape the future. In Other Worlds is a fascinating collection of essays about science fiction and speculative fiction.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Pre-empted for fund drive.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
This Is How You Lose Her/Junot Diaz
Rebroadcast. Now out in trade paperback.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Open Book: Ed Decker, Artistic Director of New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The Telling Room/Michael Paterniti.
The story of the world's greatest cheese and its maker opens the door to a fascinating meditation on the nature of journalism, and of narrative and story-telling (and of cheese).
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Helen Thomas (1920-2013)
1998 interview with the famed White House correspondent, conducted by Richard Wolinsky & Richard A. Lupoff, remastered, edited and produced in 2013 by Richard Wolinsky.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
& Sons/David Gilbert
An examination of the relationships between fathers and sons, the novel & Sons tells the story of an elderly writer and his family and how they interact with one another.
Thursday August 22, 2013
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells/Andrew Sean Greer
The San Francisco based author returns with a novel about alternate realities and times and deals with issues of grief and depression.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
A Marker to Measure Drift/Alexander Maksik
A young African woman on a Greek island deals with the violence in her past as she struggles to survive. A haunting novel, spare and beautiful.
Friday, August 9. 2013
Open Book:
The Accursed /Joyce Carol Oates
Daddy Love/Joyce Carol Oates
The Accursed is an historical fantasy about the Gilded Age, racism, socialism and feminism, one of Oates' best books. Daddy Love is a thriller about a child abduction. Both were published in winter, 2013, and Oates remains of America's best and most prolific authors.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend/Glenn Frankel.
The John Ford western classic, "The Searchers" is dissected as both an exemplar of the American western and the western myth, and as a way of looking at the history of the American West through the eyes of Hollywood and our national memory. A fascinating read.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
The Unwinding/George Packer
Taking a page from John Dox Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, Packer uses the stories of four individuals and a city, along with brief biographies, to tell the story of the unmaking of the United States over the past thirty-five years. In its own way, a masterpiece.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Transatlantic/Colum McCann
Another tour de force performance, this time involving different stories over a hundred fifty year period, linked by a family living in Ireland and America.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Open Book: Richard Matheson (1927-2013), author of What Dreams May Come and other novels. Recorded in 1992, hosts: Richard Wolinsky & Richard A. Lupoff. Never before aired.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Americanah/Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The noted Nigerian author writes about an immigrant to America and her life in the states and back in Nigeria. The book soars when it tells about Nigeria and what a Nigerian feels in the states, and falls back to earth when it gets consumed by the love story.
Anthony Lewis (1927-2013) was a New York Times legal columnist, and author of several books, including Freedom for the Thought That We Hate. This interview was recorded in 2008.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls/David Sedaris
The noted essayist presents another collection of stories, tales, and musings. His stories about visits to China and to an English taxidermy shop in particular stand out.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
The Last Train to Zona Verde/Paul Theroux
The Lower River/Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux has a dual career both travel writer and novelist. Often the two intertwine. His most recent travel book, The Last Train to Zona Verde, concerns a sometimes harrowing trip to East Africa, and his novel, The Lower River, puts some of his own history in a fictional/thriller format. Both are excellent books.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Open Book: John Fisher, artistic director of Theatre Rhino in San Francisco and director of Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, playing at the Costume Shop through June 23rd.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Theatre Special: Hershey Felder, writer/star of George Gershwin Alone, at Berkeley Rep through July 7th.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Against the Grain:
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America/George Packer
Using the format of John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy, Packer has taken the past thirty-five years of American life and dissected it within the framework of five long stories and several short biographies. As a work of history and as a literary endeavor, the book is a masterpiece.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal/Mary Roach
Popular science writer Mary Roach examines the digestive system from the sense of smell to the other end. Often funny and informative, it's also quirky. Main problem: she dismisses probiotics and gluten sensitivity rather than either dealing with them or leaving those doors open. Keeping that in mind, a fun and educational read.
Friday,May 31, 2013
Open Book: Carey Perloff, Artistic Director of A.C.T., director of Arcadia, thru June 16th.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
LIttle Green/Walter Mosley.
Easy Rawlins, Mosley's most famous character, presumed dead in his last book, returns to confront Los Angeles and hippies in 1967. It's to Mosley's credit that these books are far more than mere mysteries. They open a door to the African-American experience in history and are highly recommended.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Present Shock /Douglas Rushkoff
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Song Without Words/Gerald Shea
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Against The Grain: .
Virgin Soul/Judy Juanita
Former Black Panther Judy Hart tells the fictionalized stories of her days as one of the original Black Panther sisters in Oakland and San Francisco. Works as both memoir and novel. Fascianting.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Burgess Boys/Elizabeth Strout
The Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge returns with a novel about two brothers from Maine, dealing with family and societal issues. Extremely readable.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Against The Grain:
Tiger Writing /Gish Jen
The novelist, in a series of lectures given at Harvard University, discusses the ways in which views of the self in Western Europe and America differ from the rest of the world. (50 min).
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Beautiful Ruins/Jess Walter.
Rebroadcast from August 2012.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Against The Grain:
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend/Glenn Frankel
Fascinating look at the John Ford western in the context of history and myth.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Open Book: Tony Taccone, Artistic Director of Berkeley Rep in Berkeley.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The Great Movies II/Roger Ebert
Tribute to Roger Ebert (1942-2013). The three volumes of his Great Movies series form a brillliant syllabus for the informed movie goer. Highly recommended.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Against The Grain
Present Shock/Douglas Rushkoff
Media theorist Rushkoff discusses in his book, Present Shock, the difficulty of coping with everything happening at once from Twitter to our e-mails, and that we lose ourselves if we focus too much on trying to keep up.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
The Fun Parts/Sam Lipsyte
Dark humor highlights this collection of short stories by one of literature's more intriguing young talents.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Against The Grain
How Literature Saved My Life/David Shields
Cultural critic David Shields argues that the narrative novel is dead, and because of changes in technology and culture, we should be championing new forms of fiction.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
City of Devi/Manil Suri
A thriller and a gay novel taking place in the near future in Mumbai. Plays out almost as a Bollywood film.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Against The Grain
Song Without Words/Gerald Shea
A memoir about life as a partially deaf man, and an important book for a subset of Americans who use hearing aids and have difficulty hearing.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Against The Grain
The Accursed/Joyce Carol Oates
Daddy Love/Joyce Carol Oates
The Accursed is a hybrid of an historical novel, a gothic, a horror novel and a fantasy about bigotry in 1906 Princeton, New Jersey. Daddy Love is a thriller about a kidnapping. Joyce Carol Oates is in top form for both.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Home Land/Cory Doctorow
Home Land is a young adult novel, a sequel to Little Brother, which imagines a parallel United States, similar in most ways to ours, and a young computer whiz who gets caught up in issues of internet freedom, globalization, and other contemporary issues. Doctorow is an expert on internet freedom and electronic frontiers.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Insane City/Dave Barry
A very funny light thriller from the noted humorist, set in Miami and featuring snakes, orangutans, wedding parties, Hatian refugees, billionaires and assorted crooks and scoundrels.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Against The Grain
Going Clear/Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright's extraordinary expose on Scientology, Going Clear, forms a backdrop for his views on the nature of religious belief. His play, Fallaci, recently at Berkeley Rep (March 12-April 2, 2013), looks at belief in the context of journalism and the responses to 9/11.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Tenth of December/George Saunders
An extraordinary collection of short stories by one of America's reigning masters of the form.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Fund Drive program: Amy Wilentz
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Fund Drive program: George Saunders
Friday, February 8, 2013
Open Book: Loretta Greco, Artistic Director of the Magic Theatre and director of Se Llama Cristina, playing through February 24, 2013.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie/Ayana Mathis
This well-reviewed collection of interrelated short stories about an African American family in Philadelphia in the twentieth century has some stunning and visceral moments. Ayana Mathis is a talent to watch.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Farewell, Fred Voodoo/Amy Wilentz
Amy Wilentz writes the Letter from Haiti column, which has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Nation and elsewhere. This book is her story of Haiti after the earthquake three years ago. The style is elliptical, but the images and opinions are striking. An excellent look at Haiti today., .
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The Hummingbird's Daughter/Luis Alberto Urrea
Queen of America/Luis Alberto Urrea
This two volume novel tells the story of Urrea's aunt Teresa who was known as the Joan of Arc of Mexico and has since faded into history.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Any Day Now/Terry Bisson
Science fiction writer Bisson's latest novel is part-memoir and part-alternate history novel, taking place in a United States where Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King are not assassinated.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Open Book: Jasson Minadakis, Artistic Director of Marin Theatre Company and director of Waiting for Godot, playing Jan 24-Feb. 17
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Astray/Emma Donoghue
Room/Emma Donoghue
Room is the story of a kidhapped woman and her young son, from the point of view of the son; unforgettable and impossible to put down. Astray is a collection of short stories based on news items collected over the years.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
The End of Your Life Book Club/Will Schwalbe.
A former editor at William Morrow and other companies, Will Schwalbe and his mother, as she was ill with cancer, devised their own book club. This memoir tells the story of not only the book club, but also of health care, cancer, and loss.
