A Double Shot of Nancy Pearl
Nancy Pearl returns to Seattle’s NPR station KUOW.org after a month break with a fitting book suggestion, Avid Reader: A Life, Robert Gottlieb (Macmillan/FSG; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample).
She describes it as “a memoir of a man who loves to read and has made his career centered around books and reading.” Gottlieb, as we have previously reported, was editor-in-chief at S&S and Knopf and then ran the The New Yorker. His life is steeped in literary stories.
The book is “a high class gossip column … a literary gossip column … [Gottlieb] knew everyone and he worked with everyone,” she says, but it is not a book that settles scores and the author comes across as someone you’d like to know.
The audio is not available for download, but can be heard here.
Also back from a break is Nancy’s Book Lust series of author interviews on the Seattle Channel.
She sits down with Maria Semple, whose Today Will Be Different (Hachette/Little, Brown and Company; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), a LibraryReads pick, was published this week.
Focusing on Semple’s process, the interview amounts to a brief writing workshop, sprinkled with insights into the new book. She says that rhythm is important to her writing, something she admires in Philip Roth, who she calls “the king of the change up.”
Talking about favorite recent books, she points to Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (HarperCollins/Ecco), recently released in a tie-in edition in anticipation of the upcoming film.