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Three Percent #68: A Few Good Books from 2013
Rather than do our normal “favorite books of XXXX” podcast, we decided to focus on four books from last year that we really liked: Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, Javier Marias’s The Infatuations, Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn & Child, and Arnon Grunberg’s Tirza. (Chad also snuck in a ...
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Chad's 2013 Books
As I mentioned in an earlier post—or two—I ended up reading 111 books last year. A lot of South Korean titles—as part of my judging their biannual translation contest—and a random assortment of other things, both that Open Letter is publishing, or that I wanted to review/think might be BTBA longlist ...
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Let's Capitalize on the Garth Risk Hallberg Thing for a Post
If you’re into book industry news and whatnot, you’ve probably heard the story about Garth Risk Hallberg’s novel, City on Fire. Just to recap though, before the book had a publisher, Scott Rudin, the movie producer behind Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and No Country ...
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Three Percent #66: I Believe You Have My Stapler
On this week’s podcast, Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times joined us to discuss Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Bleeding Edge. All three of us are Pynchon fans, and all three of us really liked this latest book. Although, as we talk about, the fact that we experienced a lot of the cultural items Pynchon ...
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Three Percent #65: Erudition Isn't the Same as Being Intentionally Esoteric
This week’s podcast is the first one Tom and I have recorded in almost a month. So after a bit of catching up, we talked about David Bellos’s new translation of Simenon’s Pietr the Latvian, the difficulties of translating “I love you” and all the swears into Japanese, and this list of “The ...
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Three Percent #63: Spermatic Economy
This week’s podcast is a special combo version featuring two separate conversations: one between Chad, Stephen Sparks (BTBA judge, Green Apple bookseller, and excellent reviewers), and George Carroll; and one between Chad and Paul Yamazaki (legendary City Lights bookseller). Topics range from soccer to Karl Pohrt to ...
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Three Percent #62: The Random Podcast
This week’s podcast is a hodgepodge of opinions, rants, and jokes. We talked about summer music—and our mutual dislike of Robin Thicke—Hawthorne & Child, my trip to Brazil, and bike thieves. And nobody talked about J.K. Rowling or her widely-known pseudonym. Enjoy! And this week’s music is a ...
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