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The Thread's Must-Read |
"Origin" by Dan Brown Buy this book Last night, just before the curtain rose on our Talking Volumes season finale with Dan Brown, I ran into a friend in the audience. When I told him I was surprised he’d come, he sniffed and smiled and said, “I don’t read Dan Brown. I don’t really know who he is, but a friend gave us their tickets so here we are.” I’ve heard variations of this since we announced our Talking Volumes season last summer. One member of the Twin Cities “literati” said she was shocked we would put Dan Brown on the same roster with writers like Amy Tan and Jacqueline Woodson. “Who is booking these shows?” she asked with chagrin. “We are,” I replied rather tartly. “It's Stephanie Curtis and me, and we’ll have a sold-out audience full of people who love to read.” And we did. Last night I met people who had never been to Talking Volumes before and who rarely had the time or the interest to catch a writer at a bookstore. But they’d shelled out a couple of ten-spots for a ticket, driven into downtown St. Paul on a windy, chilly night, and squeezed into a theater seat next to a thousand other kindred spirits. They did this all because Brown’s writing sparks their curiosity and encourages them to think more deeply about faith and science and technology. It entertains them, as all great stories — from Homer to Hardy, Twain to Tan to Tyler — set out to do. Now, who’s going to argue with that? -Kerri Miller |
This Week on The Thread |
The 2017 National Book Award winners For Jesmyn Ward, who won the fiction prize for "Sing, Unburied, Sing," it was her second National Book Award. More |
What happens when evolution stops? Louise Erdrich's novel starts "Future Home of a Living God" by Louise Erdrich Buy this book Louise Erdrich began writing "Future Home of the Living God" fifteen years ago. She pulled her early manuscript out of oblivion when events began to repeat themselves. More |
A book for our post-truth times “Bunk" by Kevin Young Buy this book Poet and critic Kevin Young attempts to make sense of a worsening surge in hoaxes — from plagiarism to fake news — in a new deeply researched history. More |
Cartoonist Reza Farazmand walks us through his brand of weird "Comics for a Strange World" by Reza Farazmand Buy this book NPR asked the artist behind the popular webcomic "Poorly Drawn Lines" to share the thinking behind a few of the hilariously deadpan comics from his latest book. More |
"The Martian" author builds a colony on the moon “Artemis" by Andy Weir Buy this book "Artemis" imagines the first moon settlement as a mining town and tourist trap. "I had a lot of fun doing the world building," Andy Weir says. More |
Reclaiming stories passed down from slavery "The Annotated African American Folktales," edited by Henry Louis Gates and Maria Tatar Buy this book The new anthology, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar, aims to make century-old stories — of flying Africans, quizzical animals and even Uncle Remus — available to new generations. More |
"It's that boldness, that straight talk which makes this book memorable" "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race" by Reni Eddo-Lodge Buy this book In 2014, British journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote a blog post about how tired she was of engaging with oblivious white people about race. That post went viral, and it's now the basis for her new book. More |
Um, uh, huh? Are these words clues to understanding human language? “How We Talk" by Nick Enfield Buy this book Tiny filler words in human rapid-fire conversation hold the key to understanding how language is unique, according to a new book. But anthropologist Barbara J. King raises some questions. More |
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