Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture

Latest Episodes:

Episode 220 — Chelsea Martin Oct 27, 2013

Show notes

Chelsea Martin is the guest. Her new book, Even Though I Don't Miss You, is due out from Short Flight / Long Drive Books on November 1, 2013. Blake Butler says "Someone who should not die is Chelsea Martin." Monologue topics: Mellow Pages Library, mail, suspending disbelief, my current reading taste, experimentalism, immersive reading

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Episode 219 — Davis Schneiderman Oct 23, 2013

Show notes

Davis Schneiderman is the guest. His new novel, [SIC], is now available from Jaded Ibis Productions. [SIC] includes public domain works published under Davis Schneiderman's name, including everything from the prologue to The Canterbury Tales to Wikipedia pages to genetic codes, along with a transformation of the Jorge Luis Borges story "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." [SIC] is part of DEAD/BOOKS trilogy of conceptual works by Schneiderman from Jaded Ibis Press. Other books in the trilogy are Blank (2011), and Ink (forthcoming). Monologue topics: Simple Kind of Life, Gwen Stefani, Chris de Burgh, Lady in Red, Louisiana, nostalgia, emotional breakdowns.

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218. Jesmyn Ward Oct 20, 2013

Show notes

Jesmyn Ward is the guest. She was the 2011 recipient of the National Book Award for her novel, Salvage the Bones, and her new memoir, Men We Reaped, is now available from Bloomsbury. The New York Times Book Review raves "[Ward] chronicles our American story in language that is raw, beautiful and dangerous… [Her] singular voice and her full embrace of her anger and sorrow set this work apart from those that have trodden similar ground… With loving and vivid recollection, she returns flesh to the bones of statistics and slows her ghosts to live again… [It’s a] complicated and courageous testimony." And The Los Angeles Times calls it "Heart-wrenching… A brilliant book about beauty and death… at once a coming-of-age story and a kind of mourning song… filled [with] intimate and familial moments, each described with the passion and precision of the polished novelist Ward has become… Ward is one of those rare writers who’s traveled across America’s deepening class rift with her sense of truth intact. What she gives back to her community is the hurtful honesty of the best literary art." Monologue topics: awards, Alice Munro, The Nobel Prize, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, LSD, Bret Easton Ellis

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Episode 217 — Chris L. Terry Oct 16, 2013

Show notes

Chris L. Terry is the guest. His debut novel, Zero Fade, is now available from Curbside Splendor. Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, says "Chris Terry has bestowed Kevin, the hero of Zero Fade, with an especially acute case of teenage angst, and the results are sweet, painful, and very recognizable to anyone who has survived seventh grade. This is a wonderful book." And Lindsay Hunter says "Reading Chris Terry's Zero Fade offered me a glimpse into a cultural experience that isn't mine, but that I could recognize immediately. Vernacular as world. On the surface, it's just language. But this novel isn't surface. The characters speak in rhythms that reveal emotions not identifiable by just words, but I'll name them nonetheless: humor, sadness, confusion, joy, revelation. It's all here in Terry's first novel, a novel that is practically carbonated, how it sparkles and burns." Monologue topics: the story behind the story, being interviewed, rambling, HPV, cunnilingus, celebrity marital discord

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Episode 216 — Lauren Grodstein Oct 13, 2013

Show notes

Lauren Grodstein is the guest. Her new novel, The Explanation for Everything, is now available from Algonquin Books. It is the official October selection of The TNB Book Club. Tom Perrotta calls it "Very smart and touching and unexpected.” And The Washington Post says “[Grodstein has] fashioned in her smart, assured third novel, The Explanation for Everything, . . . a gripping tale of a biologist who finds himself approaching midlife and suddenly finding faith . . . Grodstein’s real gift is her emotional precision . . . Finding or losing God proves to be an equally destabilizing tectonic shift, and this novel is full of them . . . Their cumulative force will leave you happily unsteady, and moved.” Monologue topics: psychic burden, fear, anxiety, Sisyphus, insomnia, failure, dying alone.

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Episode 215 — Ethel Rohan Oct 09, 2013

Show notes

Ethel Rohan is the guest. Her new story collection, Goodnight Nobody, is now available from Queen's Ferry Press. Peter Orner raves “Ethel Rohan speaks in many voices, all of which need to be heard. She goes so deeply into the hearts and souls of her people. And she wounds, she heals, often in the same sentence. Plain and simple, Goodnight Nobody is a great and unique collection of stories.” And Roxane Gay says “Fans of Ethel Rohan’s writing will find, in her latest and outstanding collection, Goodnight Nobody, a writer who has never been more intelligent, more graceful, more moving. Whether it’s a young girl torn between a loving father and an abusive mother, or a photographer who is losing her eyesight while her husband bears witness, or a woman who wants nothing more than a sign from her husband that he sees her, Rohan writes about people searching for a place to belong or a place to breathe or simply, a place to be. In Rohan’s eminently capable hands and words, these stories give us that hope that these searching people she writes will find everything they want or need.” Monologue topics: Americans' reading habits, polls, sex, sexual dysfunction, lying about sex and reading

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Episode 214 — Cari Luna Oct 06, 2013

Show notes

Cari Luna is the guest. Her debut novel, The Revolution of Every Day, is now available from Tin House. Kirkus says "Luna creates an array of complex characters caught up in emotions, relationships and situations far from the ordinary as they examine their commitment to their merged family and explore their own ideals and expectations. Enlightening and marked by inventive subject matter, intense reflection and stark eloquence." And Bust magazine raves "The characters are superbly flawed, and Luna expertly leads us through their vastly different psyches and makes us understand them, even if we don't always sympathize. But just as much as it is a novel of characters, The Revolution of Every Day is the story of a city that's struggling with gentrification, as Cat puts it, 'All the way back to the Dutch and the Indians, yeah?'" Monologue topics: J.D. Salinger, WWII, weird life sandwiches.

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Episode 213 — Jeff Jackson Oct 02, 2013

Show notes

Jeff Jackson is the guest. His debut novel, Mira Corpora, is now available from Two Dollar Radio. Don DeLillo says "It's fine work in its manic pacing and its summoning of certain cultural emblems. Present tense with a vengeance. I hope the book finds the serious readers who are out there waiting for this kind of fiction to hit them in the face." And Dennis Cooper says "Jeff Jackson is one of the most extraordinarily gifted young writers I've read in a very long time. His strangely serene yet gripping, unsettling, and beautifully rendered novel Mira Corpora has within it all the earmarks of an important new literary voice." Monologue topics: BuzzFeed, lists, sensationalism, Room 32, D.R. Haney

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212. Jonathan Lethem Sep 29, 2013

Show notes

Jonathan Lethem is the guest. His latest novel, Dissident Gardens, is now available from Doubleday. The Los Angeles Times raves "Lethem is as ambitious as Mailer, as funny as Philip Roth and as stinging as Bob Dylan...Dissident Gardens shows Lethem in full possession of his powers as a novelist, as he smoothly segues between historical periods and internal worlds...Erudite, beautifully written, wise, compassionate, heartbreaking and pretty much devoid of nostalgia." And Booklist, in a starred review, says "Lethem extends his stylistically diverse, loosely aligned, deeply inquiring saga of New York City (Motherless Brooklyn, 1999; The Fortress of Solitude, 2003; Chronic City, 2009) with a richly saturated, multigenerational novel about a fractured family of dissidents headquartered in Queens...Lethem is breathtaking in this torrent of potent voices, searing ironies, pop-culture allusions, and tragicomic complexities. He shreds the folk scene, eviscerates quiz shows, pays bizarre tribute to Archie Bunker, and offers unusual perspectives on societal debates and tragic injustices. A righteous, stupendously involving novel about the personal toll of failed political movements and the perplexing obstacles to doing good." Monologue topics: travel, the flu, walking, the homeless guy who asked me for my email address

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Episode 211 — Edwidge Danticat Sep 25, 2013

Show notes

Edwidge Danticat is the guest. Her new novel Claire of the Sea Light (Knopf), is the official September selection of The TNB Book Club. Kirkus says “Claire of the Sea Light reads like the work of a writer eager to create another world . . . A sense of the possibilities is tangible, where Danticat delves into parenting, revenge, reconciliation and remorse. Claire Limyè Lanmè is the daughter of a widower who is mulling whether or not to let someone else raise his daughter. In this small town, other mothers and fathers are working through reconciling their feelings about parenthood while readers experience a day in her life. Simultaneously, Danticat masterfully weaves in necessary parts of the past.” And Time Out New York calls it "Breathtaking." Monologue topics: mail, corrections, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lucille Ball.

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