On 21 December Booktown's Readers Panel got together to discuss their favorite books of the year.
Cameron Cobden couldn't get off work so I recorded some of her comments the day before (the wifi connection failed after a minute and I had to summarize most of what she said). As the working mother of a 1 1/2 year old, she only had time to read a few books and could only recommend one of these:
Freddy and Frederica by Mark Helprin
John Deaderick
The Rage of the Vulture by Barry Unsworth
His Dark Materials by Philip Putnam
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Drood by Dan Simmons
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
Alison Jones-Pomatto
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
Spooner by Pete Dexter
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
Me Cheetah by Cheetah
Love Stories in this Town by Amanda Ward
Alsion also had several other books she enjoyed but felt she didn't have time to discuss:
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
When Will There be Good News by Kate Atkinson
Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Eric Tomb
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
6 novels by Paul Auster
February House bySherill Tippins
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Evolution's Rainbow and The Genial Gene by Joan Roughgarden
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Negro President by Garry Wills
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees and True to Life by Lawrence Weschler
The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel
Links to the books and authors mentioned are coming soon.
To hear this program, click here.
posted by Eric Tomb and others 8:49 AM 0 Comments
Monday 7 December 2009: Scott Sampson, Bryant Simon, Paul Linde
On 7 December I featured books published by the University of California Press. Over the past decade I have talked with more UC Press authors than those of any other publisher. On this program I tried to emphasize the wide range of subjects UC Press covers. The three authors I talked with all write in a very personal manner unlike what you might expect from an academic press. On each of their topics there was another excellent UC press book whose authors would probably also be worth talking to.
I talked with paleontologist Scott D Sampson about his book Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life. Another UC Press author who also attracted me was Richard Milner and his recently published Darwin's Universe: Evolution for A to Z.
I then talked with Bryant Simon about Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America through Starbucks. Another UC Press author who writes about the role of beverages in human society is Patrick McGovern, who recently published Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer and other Alcoholic Beverages.
I finally talked with Paul R Linde, MD, about Danger to Self: On the Front Line with an ER Psychiatrist. A complement to this book would be Philippe Bourgeois and Jeff Schonberg's Righteous Dopefiend, which deals with homeless San Francisco drug addicts as they live their lives on the street.
I didn't even try to talk with Derek Hayes about his Historical Atlas of the United States and Historical Atlas of the American West. I would have spent 15 minutes saying 'these are such beautiful books' and you'll figure that out without me as soon as you see them.
to hear this program, click here.
posted by Eric Tomb and others 5:41 PM 0 Comments