Kerri's pick
 
 
Book of the week

Is there anything more random and yet more determinative than the geography of where you’re born?

I was reminded anew of this on a recent trip to Cuba – where neurosurgeons, architects and journalists are all waiting tables because they can make more money in a restaurant. 

Imagine what they could be doing if they’d been born 100 miles north in Florida.

“Much of who we are is entirely beyond our control and dependent upon chance," Mark Robert Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, writes in his new book, “The Random Factor.” 

He’s talking about the “lottery of birth.”

Rank’s book examines how often chance and randomness intervenes in our lives even though, as he notes, we are ”steeped in the notion of rugged individualism.”

In other words, while we might allow for the occasional intervention of luck, we like to think that we are largely making our own destinies.  

Mystery character of the month: Uriah Heep created by Charles Dickens 

— Kerri Miller | MPR News

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This week on The Thread
Ask a Bookseller: ‘We Mostly Come Out at Night’ edited by Rob Costello

Emma Presnell of Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Ky., recommends a brand new short story collection that was released just in time for Pride Month.
Samira Ahmed on ‘This Book Won't Burn’

After a family tragedy, Noor Khan is forced to finish her senior year of high school in a small town where she discovers — to her horror — that books are disappearing from the school library.

That’s the premise of Samira Ahmed’s new YA novel, “This Book Won’t Burn.” No stranger to book bans herself, Ahmed joined host Kerri Miller this week on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the freedom to read and how teenagers today are finding the courage to act against a national movement to ban books.
‘Beyond the Light’: Minneapolis artist Layne Kennedy reveals the stories behind photographs in new book

Visual artist Layne Kennedy has had a lifetime of seeing and capturing what he sees. Capturing things most of us may not even notice.

Now, with more than 40 years of work to his name taking pictures often on assignment for publications, he’s collected roughly 150 images and the stories behind them to feature in a new book.
What’s a book ban anyway? Depends on who you ask

The practice of censoring books has been around for centuries. But what does it actually mean to ban a book today? The answer depends on who you ask. Here are a handful of definitions from people entrenched in the issue.
Queenie’s second life on screen gives her more room to grow

An irresistible new Hulu series follows the quarter-life growing pains of a lonely South Londoner. It’s based on a 2019 novel by showrunner Candice Carty-Williams.

British actor Dionne Brown told NPR she felt drawn to the role because of how strongly she related to the novel. “My most visceral and initial reaction was just, I didn’t know that other women felt like this. I didn’t know other Black women felt like this.” So throughout taping she used the book “like a Bible.”
In ‘Consent,’ an author asks: ‘Me too? Did I have the agency to consent?’

Jill Ciment wrote about a relationship she had with a teacher when she was very young — that turned into a marriage — in “Half a Life.” Now, eight years after his death at 93, she reconsiders their relationship in light of the #MeToo movement.
‘Horror Movie’ questions the motivation behind evil acts

Paul Tremblay’s latest tale is dark, surprisingly violent and incredibly multilayered — a superb addition to his already impressive oeuvre showing he can deliver for fans and also push the envelope.
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