Three Percent Podcast

Latest Episodes:

TMR: CoDex 1962: "I'm a Sleeping Door" (Part III) Jul 15, 2019

Show notes

We did it! Chad and Rachel Cardasco (with an assist from Tom Flynn of Volumes) talk about the last sections of Sjón's CoDex 1962. It's been quite the season and they bring it home in old school TMR style with a lot of Twin Peaks talk, many many digressions, acknowledging motifs and ideas that may or may not actually be in the text, and having a lot of fun. This is the most sci-fi section of the novel, which makes it a lot of fun. (THE ROBOTS ARE ALWAYS GOING TO TAKE OVER.)

Season 9 of the Two Month Review will kick off at the end of July and will feature Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold. Get your copy now!

And Season 10 will be the first English-language title to be included: Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Sjón and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests. And foll0w Rachel Cordasco on Twitter and at Speculative Fiction in Translation.

And be sure to preorder Brian's book, Joytime Killbox, which is coming out this fall from BOA Editions.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

Three Percent #164: Rapid Expansion Jul 10, 2019

Show notes

Chad shares his stupid dreams, Tom questions translators who work for AmazonCrossing and then want indie bookstores to help them out, and they both marvel over Deep Vellum's acquisition of Phoneme Media and A Strange Object (and the launching of the La Reunion imprint). It's a short episode, but filled with great moments, really lukewarm takes, and a revisiting of James Wood's takedown of Paul Auster.

This week's music is Sault's "Foot on Necks."

As always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to: threepercentpodcast@gmail.com. Also, if there are articles you’d like us to read and analyze (or just make fun of), send those along as well.

And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes!

You can also follow Open Letter, Riffraff, and Chad and on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Riffraff, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

If you don’t already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and other places. Or you can always subscribe by adding our feed directly into your favorite podcast app: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss

TMR: CoDex 1962: "I'm a Sleeping Door" (Part II) Jul 05, 2019

Show notes

Things start to come clear in this penultimate episode of this season of the Two Month Review. We get a new story about Joséf's birth, along with some absolutely incredible writing by Sjón. Lots of parallels and mirroring in this section, and the discussion helps set up next week's conclusion.

The next episode will focus on the first eight chapters of this third volume (pages 345-406). The complete schedule can be found here.

Season 9 of the Two Month Review will kick off at the end of July and will feature Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold. Get your copy now!

And Season 10 will be the first English-language title to be included: Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Sjón and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests.

And be sure to preorder Brian's book, Joytime Killbox, which is coming out this fall from BOA Editions.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

BONUS EPISODE: Becky Crook Jul 03, 2019

Show notes

As part of "Norwegian Month" here at Three Percent, translator Becky Crook (The Black Signs, Monsterhuman, Silence: In the Age of Noise, and many more) came on the podcast to talk about her first cover letter, in which ways she's become a better translator over the past half-decade, what to watch out for in contracts, the difficulties in translating intentional mistakes, Norwegian dream projects, and much more. Emerging and experienced translators are sure to get something out of this, even if it's just the desire to rush out and get ahold of the wild, absurd The Black Signs by Lars Mørch Finbourd.

You can follow Open Letter and Chad on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Chad) for book and baseball talk, and for information about other podcasts and Three Percent articles.

This episode's music is "You're My Excuse to Travel" by Baths.

TMR: CoDex 1962: "I'm a Sleeping Door" (Part I) Jul 01, 2019

Show notes

We're into the homestretch! Today episode, featuring special guest Katie Whittemore, kicks off the discussion of the third and final volume of Sjón's CoDex 1962, "I'm a Sleeping Door: A Science-Fiction Story." More origin myths in this volume, ranging from the epic and literary, to the mundane and realistic. A woman gives birth to a daughter made up of sperm from four men, and we get to see the fate of all four thousand Icelandic children born during 1962, many of whom have mutated. We find out who's been talking to whom and (kind of) why. And we find out about a mysterious geneticist. All of these threads are interwoven in a detailed, intricate way that Brian, Katie, and Chad unwind in a fun, intelligent ways.

The next episode will focus on the first eight chapters of this third volume (pages 345-406). The complete schedule can be found here.

Season 9 of the Two Month Review will kick off at the end of July and will feature Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold. Get your copy now!

And Season 10 will be the first English-language title to be included: Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Sjón and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests. And you can read some of Katie Whittemore's translations here and here.

And be sure to preorder Brian's book, Joytime Killbox, which is coming out this fall from BOA Editions.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

Three Percent #163: What Do You Want Jun 26, 2019

Show notes

Chad and Tom talk about a number of interrelated issues related to the costs of bookstore ownership and being a bookseller. They talk about the recent letter from Chris Doeblin at Book Culture, The Book Diaries, H uman Rights for Translators, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Internet and Book Culture, and the new "Translators on Books That Should Be Translated" feature at Reading in Translation.

This week's intro music is "I'll Believe in Anything" by Wolf Parade, and the outro music is "I Feel Emotion" by Operators.

And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes!

You can also follow Open Letter, Riffraff, and Chad and on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Riffraff, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

BONUS EPISODE: Ben Lindbergh on "The MVP Machine" Jun 25, 2019

Show notes

In this special bonus episode, Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer and Effectively Wild talks with Chad about his new book, The MVP Machine. They talk about the premise of the book—how player development is the new "Moneyball" and is being driven by players and technology—about the process of co-writing, feedback loops for writing, and the mysteries of publishing and its lack of empirical data gathering. Oh, and Willians Astudillo makes a last minute appearance. There's even mention of an influential book on pitching that a pitching guru paid to get translated . . .

You can follow Ben on Twitter and you can purchase The MVP Machine from any and all retail outlets. (Also, Chad highly recommends listening to the Effectively Wild podcast.)

You can also follow Open Letter and Chad on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

This week's intro music is "Stats" by The Baseball Project, and the outro music is "Can You Deal?" by Bleached.

TMR: CoDex 1962 (Pgs 303-343) Jun 21, 2019

Show notes

This week, Tobias Carroll joined Chad and Brian to talk about werewolves, puns that don't exactly work in translation, evil baseball card shop owners, weird Masonic rituals, Party Down South, and Fred Durst and John Travolta's The Fanatic. They also have a lot of praise for Sjón and the wild, fun nature of the second volume in CoDex 1962, and set up volume three: "I'm a Sleeping Door: A Science-Fiction Story."

The next episode will focus on the first eight chapters of this third volume (pages 345-406). The complete schedule can be found here.

Announcements! Season 9 of the Two Month Review will kick off at the end of July and will feature Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold. Get your copy now!

And Season 10 will be the first English-language title to be included: Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Sjón and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests. And follow Tobias Carroll for information about all his writing, including his story in the forthcoming Dostoyevsky Wannabe anthology.

And be sure to preorder Brian's book, Joytime Killbox, which is coming out this fall from BOA Editions.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

TMR: CoDex 1962 (Pgs 257-302) Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

This week's episode covers a lot of ground, from disturbing American racism circa 1917 to codswallop; from werewolves to parliamentary fights, from ghosts to crime/heist narratives. It's a really fun episode that has a good take on this section of the book mixed with some really fun segues and digressions.

The next episode will focus on pages 303-344 (to the end of the second volume of the trilogy, "Iceland's Thousand Years"). The complete schedule can be found here.

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Sjón and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests. And follow Hailey Dezort to improve your PetSmart reading series.

And be sure to preorder Brian's book, Joytime Killbox, which is coming out this fall from BOA Editions. And preorder Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann so that you're prepared for a future TMR.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

Three Percent #162: I Am a Wild Rose Jun 12, 2019

Show notes

Chad and Tom are joined by Mark Haber from Brazos Bookstore and author of the forthcoming Reinhardt's Garden (October 1, Coffee House Press). They talk a bit about Translation Bread Loaf (two thumbs up) and about a special poster for anyone who buys the First 100 from Open Letter, before trying their best to breakdown a nonsensical metaphor that Chad heard at this weekend's The Ladder Literary Conference. They also talk about Reinhardt's Garden, Mark's influences, the voice of the main character, and Chad's "Five Tools for Authors" post. (Also: See the "Five Tools for Translators.") Then, they recommend a slew of books to check out:

Hold Fast Your Crown by Yannick Haenel, trans. by Teresa Lavender Fagan

Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, trans. by Sophie Hughes

The Incompletes by Sergio Chejfec, trans. by Heather Cleary

The Dreamed Part by Rodrigo Fresán, trans. by Will Vanderhyden

Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, trans. by Ottilie Mulzet

"The Revised Boy Scout Manual" by William S. Burroughs

Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T Fleischmann

Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin

Banshee by Rachel DeWoskin

Feeble Minded by Ariana Harwicz, trans. by Annie McDermott and Carolina Orloff

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

The Promise and Forgotten Journey by Silvina Ocampo, trans. by Suzanne Jill Levine, Jessica Powell, and Katie Lateef-Jan

Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold, trans. by Becky Crook

That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile by Azar Nafisi, trans. by Lotfali Khonji

Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage by Yuz Aleshkovsky, trans. by Duffield White

Anatomy. Melancholy. by Edy Poppy

The MVP Machine by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik

This week's intro music is "Scream" by Stef Chura, and the outro music is "Sweet Sweet Midnight" from the same album, but featuring Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest.

And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes!

You can also follow Open Letter, Riffraff, and Chad and on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Riffraff, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

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