Sam Sacks writes the weekly fiction column for the Wall Street Journal ’s book review, one of the most comprehensively interesting book sections in the media today. Sam has fascinating taste and he does a great job finding books that most people won't have heard of—and on today’s episode he shares some of the best books he has read so far this year. We hope you’ll find a favorite new book during this episode! The Goldberry Books podcast is produced by Goldberry Books. Please stop on by the shop ...
Jul 04, 2023•36 min
Tess Gunty is an award-winning novelist based in Los Angeles, whose fascinating (and acclaimed) debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch , was recently published by Knopf (North America) and Oneworld (UK & Commonwealth) and is a finalist for the National Book Award. For this week’s episode she chatted with David about her creative approach, the books that inspire her most, and much, much more. Here’s to long TBR lists! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or ge...
Nov 04, 2022•40 min
Sports writer, Tyler Dunne has written “the definitive guide to the real men of the gridiron: NFL tight ends”. It’s called The Blood and Guts: How Tight Ends Save Football and it’s available wherever books are sold. This week, Ty joins Bibliography to chat about the state of the NFL, his favorite sports books, and more. You can grab a copy of th e book h e r e . This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substa...
Oct 27, 2022•41 min
Scott Avett is perhaps best known for his work in the acclaimed and much-loved band, The Avett Brothers, but he’s also a very accomplished visual artist who has two exhibitions running concurrently this fall. Scott Avett: Purpose at Random , is showing at the SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, NC until November 2. You can learn more about this show h e r e. Meanwhile, Scott Avett: After the Fact is at the Greenville Museum of Art from October 7 until January 21, 2023. Click h e r e for tickets to this s...
Oct 05, 2022•1 hr 27 min
Sam Sacks writes the Fiction Chronicle for the Wall Street Journal Book Review, one of the best sections in the world of book criticism. He is eloquent in his defense of good books, tactful in his criticism of bad ones, and always interesting in his taste. In this episode, he joins David to chat about several stand-out novels that have been published so far in 2022. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.su...
Sep 21, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Edoardo Ballerini has been in your head—or at least there’s a good chance he has if you listen to audio books. Having narrated more than 350 books (including classics by Dante, Dostoevsky, Eliot, Camus, and others and books by a plethora of popular modern writers like Amor Towles, Jess Walter, Isabel Allende), Ballerini is one of the superstars of the audio book world. So on this episode of Bibliography we talked about how he jumped into that line of work, how he prepares to narrate a book, and ...
Jul 29, 2022•37 min
You know that classic question, if you could have a dinner party with anyone dead or alive, who would it be? Well, Alissa Wilkinson’s new book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women , is her fascinating and perhaps a tad unconventional answer to that question. She has gathered a hypothetical table of women who challenged norms and defied conventional wisdom: Ella Baker, Alice B. Toklas, Hannah Arendt, Octavia Butler, Agnes Varda, Elizabeth David, Edna Lewis, May...
Jul 02, 2022•54 min
“Christopher Beha is one of the most talented young writers at work today.” —Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins This episode’s guest is Chris Beha, author of one of my favorite recent novels, The Index of Self Destructive Acts, which was nominated for the 2020 National book award and is one of the best books about people talking about ideas. Beha is also the author of a memoir, The Whole Five Feet, and the novels Arts & Entertainments and What Happened to Sophie Wilder. Plus, he is the e...
Jun 24, 2022•57 min
David McCloskey knows spy fiction. Having been a CIA analyst in a former life, he knows what makes a spy novel realistic and as a novelist he knows what makes the drama work. His 2021 novel, D amascus Station , is one of my favorite books of recent vintage precisely because it blends the two so beautifully. So on this episode of Bibliography, McCloskey joined the show to discuss some of his favorite books in the genre—new and old—as well as several other books that have defined his reading life ...
May 30, 2022•44 min
Megan Kate Nelson is an expert in the history of the American Civil War, the U.S. West, and popular culture. In fact, she’s such an expert that in 2021 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for her book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the Wes. Her new book, out this Spring, is called Saving Yellowstone and is about the historical context in which Yellowstone was discovered, preserved, and established as a national park. As h...
May 12, 2022•50 min
Austin Kleon is an enthusiast, a man of joy, who takes great pleasure in contemplating the creative process and who has built a loyal following by sharing his love for books, music, movies, comics, journaling, notebooks, brush-pens, and so much more. He’s a man with eclectic tastes that are both curated and wide-ranging, and so he is an ideal guest for a podcast like this. Kleon joined the show recently to discuss his life in books, his own book writing process, books he reads with his kids, and...
Apr 26, 2022•58 min
William Kent Krueger is the author of the Cork O’Connor series of mystery books about a detective who is part Irish, part Ojibwa and who solves crimes on the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota. Eighteen books in, it is one of the most beloved active crime series. Book eighteen, Lightning Strike , came out last fall, and the next iteration, Fox Creek , is due out autumn 2022. As with each of his last nine books, this new title is sure to be a New York Times best seller. Of course, some of you mi...
Apr 15, 2022•39 min
One of David’s favorite books last year was Michelle Nijhuis’ Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction , a fascinating history of the way human knowledge about species extinction (and survival) has evolved. There was a time, she writes, that scientists (and human culture at-large) simply didn’t understand the way animals lived and died. Most people figured that even creatures that seemed to be getting scared with find a way to come back. But then in the twentieth century things ...
Mar 15, 2022•54 min
This week’s guest is Josh Ritter, novelist, musician, all around highly intelligent gentleman. In 2006, he was named one of the "100 Greatest Living Songwriters" by Paste magazine and his music has won numerous accolades. His albums The Animal Years and So Runs the World Away are both extremely important to me. But of course we’re here to talk books, including his own. His first novel, Brights Passage, came out in 2011, and then earlier this autumn, his second novel was published. It’s called TH...
Dec 15, 2021•36 min
Walter is the author of seven novels, one book of short stories and one nonfiction book. His work has been selected three times for Best American Short Stories as well as the Pushcart Prize and Best American Nonrequired Reading . He’s been published in, Harper's , Esquire , McSweeney's , Tin House , Ploughshares , the New York Times , the Washington Post and many others. He began his writing career in 1987 as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Spokesman-Review where he was a finalist for...
Nov 26, 2021•1 hr 13 min
Best known for his David Robicheaux series of novels, James Lee Burke is a New York Times best selling author many times over, who has been awarded two Edgar Awards for best novel, as well as the Grand Master Master Award, by the Mystery Writers of America. His novels have been translated into almost every language in the world and his stories of the Deep South and American West make him on the essential American novelist of the last half century. His newest book came out this fall and its calle...
Nov 19, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Kate Baer is a #1 New York Times bestselling poet and author of What Kind Of Woman, a book that Publishers Weekly describes as “ confident and fearless.” Her new collection of poems, I Hope This Finds You Well , is out this week and is inspired by critical messages and comments she has received over the past year, primarily on Instagram. Baer created the poems in the collection by deleting words from the original more-ugly messages such that what is left over is a poem. Erasure poetry is not new...
Nov 11, 2021•46 min
Wiley Cash is a NC-based writer whose new novel is called When Ghosts Come Home . It’s the story of a NC sheriff named Winston Barnes who is forced to reckon with a complicated and strange murder investigation on the NC coast that is instigated by a mysterious plane crash. Cash’s previous award winning fiction includes A Land More Kind Than Home , The Last Ballad and This Dark Road to Mercy and he has received numerous awards including the Southern Book Prize, The Thomas Wolfe Book Prize, The Ap...
Nov 04, 2021•41 min
Alexandra Andrews is the author of Who is Maude Dixon , a delightfully twisty new mystery that has been described as heir to Patricia Highsmighth’s legacy (think Strangers on a Train or The Talented Mr. Ripley ). It's the story of a young woman who works in publishing, is disillusioned with her prospects, and suddenly finds herself as the assistant for an Elene Ferrante-like novelists. Suddenly, the two of them are caught up in an international mystery complete with mistaken identities, cliffsid...
Oct 27, 2021•48 min
Ron Rash is one of the Carolina's most beloved authors, known in equal measure for his novels and his short fiction. He's the author of Serena, an award-winning 2008 novel about love and timber in depression-era North Carolina, and Something Rich and Strange , a 2014 collection of stories, and most recently 2020's In the Valley , a collection of stories and novella that follow up on Serena . Rash has won several awards for his writing, has been anthologised multiple times in the Best Short Stori...
Oct 20, 2021•42 min
In this episode of Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed, David chats with historian, Christopher Hull, about his new book Our Man Down in Havana: The Story Behind Graham Green's Cold War Novel. Although he's obviously best known for his many wonderful novels (and screenplays), Greene spent most of his adult life working for Great Britain's secret service. He was an adventurer, and a bit of rogue, and in many ways his work in the world of espionage met a deep-seated psychological need. In ...
Jul 13, 2019•56 min
In this episode of Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed, David chats with novelist David Joy about what it's like to be a regional novelist and whether that was something he set out to be when he first started writing fiction. They discuss the authors that influenced his work, how his neighbors have responded to his novels, and much more. Remember: subscribe, rate, review! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this wi...
Jul 03, 2019•45 min
In this episode of Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed, David chats with author and teacher Callie Feyen about her book, The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet, in which she contemplates her time teaching Shakespeare to a group of students who didn't seem ready for it. They discuss her classroom strategies, her own love of Shakespeare, her love of libraries, and much, much more. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss t...
Jun 17, 2019•53 min
Join David Kern and guest Levi Stahl (marketing director for University of Chicago Press and a wonderful books-based Twitter follow) for a conversation about some great summer reads. They start by chatting about what makes for a good summer read, then dive in to their own lists. Here are some of the books discussed on this show: A Month in the Country, by J. L. Carr Novels and stories by Craig Rice Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo series, Lymond Chronicles, and King Hereafter The Canterbury Ta...
Jun 06, 2019•1 hr 2 min
In which David chats with Paul Sahre, one of the world's foremost book cover designers. Sahre's designed covers for the likes of Chuck Klosterman and Malcolm Gladwell, and he's done updates for Hemingway and Spark, among others. In this conversation, David and Paul discuss the process of designing a cover, some of his favorite covers of all time, and much more. Remember: If you like this episode be sure to subscribe, rate, review! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This i...
May 31, 2019•1 hr 6 min
In this episode, longtime book critic and former editor of Books and Culture , John Wilson, joins the show to discuss the three finalists for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize: Richard Powers' The Overstory , Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers , and Tommy Orange's There There . They discuss what makes each book appealing, some of their flaws, and what these choices say about the contemporary literature world at-large. Remember: Subscribe, rate, review. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out infor...
May 22, 2019•51 min
Welcome to Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed from the Close Reads Podcast Network. Each week David Kern will be chatting with authors, biographers, designers, collectors, critics and other people who help make book's so worthy of our attention. In this episode, David chats with novelist Christian Kiefer about his new novel, Phantoms , a page-turner that weaves the "splintered stories" of two broken families torn apart by two key twentieth century wars, the cruelty of Japanese internmen...
May 16, 2019•59 min
Welcome to Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed from the Close Reads Podcast Network. Each week David Kern will be chatting with authors, biographers, designers, collectors, critics and other people who help make book's so worthy of our attention. In this episode David chats with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson, author of Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoesvsky, and the Search for Influence (among other books), about Dostoevsky's gambling problem and the impact that it had on his life and his work. Th...
Apr 22, 2019•49 min
Welcome to Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed from the Close Reads Podcast Network. Each week David Kern will be chatting with authors, biographers, designers, collectors, critics and other people who help make book's so worthy of our attention. In this episode David chats with Warren Farha, proprietor of one of America's most beloved book stores: Eighth Day Books, in Wichita, Kansas. They talk about the life of a bookshop owner, the landscape of bookshops, choosing books for the stacks...
Apr 02, 2019•27 min
Welcome to Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed from the Close Reads Podcast Network. Each week David Kern will be chatting with authors, biographers, designers, collectors, critics and other people who help make book's so worthy of our attention. In this episode David chats with Cory MacLauchlin, author of the book Butterfly in the Typewriter, about the tragic and wild story of John Kennedy Toole and his beloved novel, A Confederacy of Dunces. Conversation explores the book's tremendous ...
Mar 21, 2019•1 hr 18 min
