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In this week’s podcast we learn the following: Chad is working through the five stages of grief about Albert Pujols and MSU (he is filled with ANGER); Tom doesn’t read a ton of nonfiction, but when he does, it tends to focus on all things violent (see a theme?); faux-karaoke singers on the subway might suck, but Karaoke Culture is awesome; and book people like to totally flip out at most every opportunity (we are an unstable people).
Anyway, in terms of our actual “Best Nonfiction of 2011” lists, you have to listen to the full podcast to get all the details, but here are a few highlights:
- Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos
Along with The Hour of the Star and Scars, I won’t stop talking about this until my tongue is ripped from my mouth. (So violent!)
- My Life As a Russian Novel by Emmanuel Carrere, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
Carrere is on my proverbial list of “authors I must read,” especially this book, the one he wrote about Philip K. Dick, Lives Other than My Own, The Adversary, Class Trip & The Mustache.
- Rich People Things by Chris Lehmann
I think everyone in America should read this book. Especially people enrolled in Business School. And anyone who doesn’t get the Occupy Movement.
- El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin by Molly Molloy and Charles Bowden
For those who became interested in Mexico and Ciudad Juarez via Bolano’s 2666 . . .
This week’s intro/outro song is “Midnight City” by M83, the first song to be featured both on a Three Percent Podcast and a Victoria’s Secret commercial. Not much of a spoiler here, but I’ll be talking about M83’s epic Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming on next week’s “Best Music of 2011” podcast. And although we don’t usually post videos, I feel obliged to share the video of this song with anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s a perfect complement to the song itself—triumphant and a little spooky, with glowing eyes and a bit of smashing. Enjoy!
As always you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes by clicking here. To subscribe with other podcast downloading software, such as Google’s Listen, copy the following link.
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
