NPR's Book of the Day - TopPodcast.com

Latest Episodes:

Author Azar Nafisi says books can help you really live Mar 21, 2022

Show notes

Author Azar Nafisi has written a love letter to literature and reading in Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. She does this in a series of letters to her late father who passed on in 2004. Nafisi says that reading can help us really live and also help us, and has helped her, survive challenging times. Nafisi told NPR's Scott Simon that literature's purpose is to let us experience new worlds: "to come out of yourself, and join the other."
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Lights, camera, method acting! Mar 18, 2022

Show notes

Our books today give the reader a peek into showbiz. Sarah Polley was a child actor but that led to her being put into many dangerous situations, which she details in her new memoir, Run Toward The Danger. She told NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer that she's not sure kids should be acting in a professional environment at all. Next, Isaac Butler deep dives into method acting in his new book The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. Butler told NPR's Scott Simon that method acting can create some beautiful performances but it's not an excuse to be terrible.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Two mothers clash over integration in 'What's Mine & Yours' Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

At the center of author Naima Coster's novel What's Mine & Yours are two struggling mothers. Jade is a Black single mother who is trying to provide a better life for her son, and Lacey May is a white mother who is trying to give her daughters the life she never had. Their stories will intertwine over decades, starting with when Lacey May opposes the integration of her daughters' school – the same school Jade is trying to get her son into. Coster told NPR's Audie Cornish that fiction gives us a window into other people's lives but that does not mean we have to condone their actions.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Poet Warsan Shire hopes you can make the voices in your head your friends Mar 16, 2022

Show notes

Somali British poet Warsan Shire has had many projects, including running a popular Tumblr page and collaborating with Beyoncé. Now, she is out with a new collection of poems called Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head. That title is an ode to how she was raised, having to take on a lot of responsibility from a young age. But Shire told NPR's Sarah McCammon that it's also an ode to the children who are able to turn those voices into their friends instead of struggling with them as she has.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Author NoViolet Bulawayo's novel 'Glory' draws inspiration from the Orwellian Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

Author NoViolet Bulawayo's new novel Glory is quite openly based on Orwell's Animal Farm and the 2017 coup in Zimbabwe that ousted then president Robert Mugabe. Horses rule the country, dogs are the military, cows, goats, sheep, and pigs are the everyday people. The government that has been in control of the country Jidada for 40 years has fallen to rebellion. But, as these things go, it quickly turns sour. Bulawayo told NPR's Scott Simon that "it is simply an issue of the leadership kind of forgetting [...] why the people they – that fought to serve – made the sacrifice that they did."
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Former Attorney General William Barr says he was just doing his job Mar 14, 2022

Show notes

The former attorney general under former President Trump, William Barr, is out with a new memoir called One Damn Thing After Another. In it, he agrees with President Trump on many things: modern day culture wars and that the progressives are dividing the country. But Barr also gives his own version of the events of the Trump White House and disagrees with the former president about the "stolen election." Barr told NPR's Steve Inskeep "after the election, [Trump] didn't seem to listen to anybody except a group of sycophants who were telling him what he wanted to hear."
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Nikole Hannah Jones and Adam Rubin aim to make children's books more accessible Mar 11, 2022

Show notes

Our interviews today are both children's books and even though they are about wildly different topics, they both aim to make reading more accessible for kids. Nikole Hannah Jones, with the help of Renee Watson, has turned the 1619 Project into a picture book called Born On The Water. They told NPR their goal was "to say to young people - to young Black Americans, you belong here." Next, Adam Rubin has written a collection of short stories that are all different but have the same title: The Ice Cream Machine. Rubin told NPR's Rachel Martin that there are so many ways to tell a story.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Author Bernardine Evaristo confides in the reader in new memoir, 'Manifesto' Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

Author Bernardine Evaristo wrote the Booker prize winning novel Girl, Woman, Other. But before she did, like way before, she was incredibly unsure of herself or how she - as someone with a Black father and white mother - fit into her mostly white town. Even still, Evaristo always knew she had something important to say. She lays out those early struggles and how she overcame them in her new memoir, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up. Evaristo told NPR's Michel Martin that she has always been a private person but sharing so many of her secrets for the reader was very liberating.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Author Tessa Hadley writes a juicy tale of the bourgeois in 'Free Love' Mar 09, 2022

Show notes

Author Tess Hadley's new novel opens with an affair, but that's not really what the book is about. Free Love is set in the 1960s just outside of London and it starts with a wealthy woman in her 40s, Phyllis, sharing a secret kiss with a much younger man who is not her husband (gasp). The kiss has unintended consequences and Phyllis has to figure out what she really wants out of life. Hadley told NPR's Elissa Nadworny that being part of the bourgeois is not something she's familiar with, but she loves to write about it because she doesn't think that world exists anymore.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

We travel to Iceland with its first lady on International Women's Day Mar 08, 2022

Show notes

There is an Icelandic word, sprakkar, that means outstanding women - and those women are at the heart of the book Secrets Of The Sprakkar: Iceland's Extraordinary Women And How They Are Changing The World. Iceland's first lady and author, Eliza Reid, interviewed women from all walks of life to find out what makes being a woman in Iceland so great. Reid told NPR's Leila Fadel that not everyone knows Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Equality Index for the past 12 years, so she set out to change that.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

NPR’s Book of the Day

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

NPR’s Book of the Day

Related Podcasts

1

2

3

4

5

6