On 12 May I talked with Patrick Symmes, author of The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile, which has just been published in paperback by Vintage Books, and with George Johnson, author of The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (Knopf).
To hear this program, click here.
posted by Eric Tomb 4:34 PM
Monday 28 April 2008: Tobias Woff/David Ambrose
On 28 April I talked with novelist, memoirist and short story writer Tobias Wolff about his most recent book Our Story Begins: Selected and New Stories (Knopf). Wolff will appear in conversation with Pam Houston at 7:30 PM on Thursday 8 May at the Crest Theater in Sacramento as part of the California Lectures series. The interview was followed by a recording of novelist and short story writer T C Boyle reading Wolff's story Bullet in the Brain. The reading was part of a New Yorker series in which some of the magazine's writers pick their favorites from stories other writers have published there. To hear the full recording, including a discussion of Bullet in the Brain by Boyle and New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, click here.
I then talked with English author David Ambrose about his first novel The Man Who Turned Into Himself, which has just been republished in paperback by Picador.
To hear this program, click here.
posted by Eric Tomb 3:20 AM
Monday 14 April 2008: Wen Huang/Darryl Hickman
On 14 April I talked with Wen Huang, translator of The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up (Pantheon) by Chinese dissident author Liao Yiwu.
I then talked with master acting teacher Darryl Hickman about his book The Unconscious Actor: Out of Control, In Full Command (Small Mountain Press). Hickman will appear at the Book Seller in Grass Valley at 3 PM on Saturday 19 April. Admission is free but seating is limited. For more information call Karen Leigh Sharp at 530-292-1626.
I finally mentioned two upcoming events celebrating National Poetry Month:To hear this program, click here.
- The Nevada County Poetry Series April reading features frank andrick and R D Armstrong (aka Raindog) and will take place at the Off-Center Stage of the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley at 7:30 PM on Thursday 17 April. More information at 432-1896,
- A 3-hour poetry Open Mic will take place at Coffeetown, 134 South Auburn Street (next to Booktown Books and Tomes) in Grass Valley from 4 to 7 PM on Saturday 19 April. More information at 263-3627.
posted by Eric Tomb 12:44 PM
Monday 31 March 2008: Gayle Greene/James Van Eaton
On 31 March I talked with Gayle Greene, Professor of Literature and Women's Studies at Scripps College, about her new book Insomniac (University of California Press), an impassioned, often angry account of the current state of insomnia research and treatment by a lifelong sufferer.
I then talked with local bookseller and author James Van Eaton about his 'epic fantasy' novel Down the Darkening Road (iUniverse).
I finally mentioned LitLovers, an online book site primarily geared toward book groups.
To hear this program, click here.
posted by Eric Tomb 9:14 AM
Monday 17 March 2008: the books I expected to discuss
On 17 March I planned to feature three books that touched on various aspects of evolution. Unfortunately, the two interviews I was working on misfired and KVMR replaced Booktown with special St Patrick's Day programming. These are the books that I had in mind:
- Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, edited by Raphael D Sagarin and Terence Taylor (University of California Press). A collection of papers, some vivid and provocative, some dry and technical, that relate questions of national security (especially as affected by terrorism, epidemics and natural disasters) to immunology, population ecology, network theory and other specialties, all in the light of evolutionary theory.
- A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, MD, Fari Amini, MD and Richard Lannon, MD (Random House). Instead of examining human emotions as they play out in our modern social vacuum, the authors point out that love is simply one of the things that mammals do. Unlike reptiles, who bear their young in dismbodied eggs and whose brains are oriented toward survival, mammals have evolved the emotionally sensitive limbic region of the brain to trigger the responses they need to nurture their extremely vulnerable offspring. Even after the later development of the more abstractly intellectual neocortex, patterns established in the limbic region still determine how humans--children, adults an all their combinations--relate to one another.
- The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-two Species of Extinct Humans, created by G J Sawyer and Viktor Deak, with text by Esteban Sarmiento, G J Sawyer and Richard Milner (Yale University Press). This is a book I've been waiting for for decades. It describes all known hominid species from seven million years ago to the the present. About a third of the book is devoted to a stunning physical reconstruction of most of the species and an imaginative narrative of their environment and lifestyle. The rest covers the fossil record in enough detail that even a beginner can begin to speculate on how particular bones might fit together and how one combination might differ from and possibly evolve from another (the authors give a wide variety of professional opinions for those not ready to guess on their own).
posted by Eric Tomb 3:34 PM
Monday 3 March 2008: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni/Alex Beam
On 3 March I talked with novelist, poet and children's writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about her latest novel The Palace of Illusions (Doubleday), a retelling of the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata from the point of view of Panchaali (aka Draupadi), the main female character. Divakaruni will appear at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park at 7:30 PM on Tuesday 4 March. On Wednesday 5 March she will make two Bay Area appearances: at the Mechanics' Institute Library in San Francisco at 12:30 PM and at the Sunnyvale Library at 7 PM.
I then talked with Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam about the book he is writing about the Great Books movement, A Great Idea at the Time. This is the fourth of a series of conversations in which we follow the progress of the book from conception to publication (the first was on 2 October 2006, the second on 5 March 2007, the third on 23 July 2007). The book is nearly finished and we plan to talk for a final time when it is published in November.
To hear this program, click here.
posted by Eric Tomb 9:18 PM
Lisa See Interview 24 February 2008
On 24 February I talked with Lisa See, best-known for her novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (Random House), about her most recent novel Peony in Love (Random House). Snow Flower is this year's Roseville Reads selection and See will appear at the Riley Library in Roseville from 1:30 to 3:00 PM on Saturday 1 March. Peony was recently selected for Teenreads.com's Ultimate Teen Reading List. Parts of this interview may be broadcast on the KVMR Evening News this week, but it will not appear on Booktown itself.
To hear this interview, click here. You will notice that I disconnected all the telephones in the house to prevent interruptions but forgot to turn off the cats.
posted by Eric Tomb 6:03 PM
