booktown

Alex Beam interview

On 20 January 2017 I talked with one of my favorite writers Alex Beam about his recent book The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the End of a Beautiful Friendship. I earlier spoke with Alex about Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital before I started archiving these programs and about the process of writing A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books on 2 October 2006, 5 March 2007, 23 July 2007 and 3 March 2008.

To hear this interview, click here.

You may hear a dog barking in the background starting about two-thirds of the way through the interview roughly at the point we begin discussing Eugene Onegin. Tilly the Pyrenees Caterpillar has grown pedantic and snobbish in her years of patrolling the back 40. She seems to object to the common substitution of the name 'Eugene Onegin' for the original Russian 'Yevgeny Onegin'. We try to humor her.

posted by Eric Tomb and others 8:20 PM 0 Comments

John Deaderick and I: favorite books of 2012

For various reasons Cameron Cobden and Alison Jones-Pomatto weren't able to join in our annual discussion of our favorites among the books we'd read in the past year. That left just John Deaderick and myself to hash it out. Here's what we came up with:

John Deaderick

The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Field Gray by Philip Kerr
The Assault by Harry Mulisch
The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski


Eric Tomb

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck
1491 by Charles C Mann
The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber
The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein
The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall

Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, Annie Di Donna
Poems by Anna Akhmatova edited and translated by Lyn Coffin

To hear this program, click here.



posted by Eric Tomb and others 10:27 PM 0 Comments

Carl Mautz interview

On 20 July I talked with Nevada City publisher Carl Mautz about Along the Way: Journey with Chamba Lane. Chamba, who hosted Rabble Rousing on KVMR-FM for many years, died in May 2011. Carl published his collection of travel sketches a year later.

To hear this program, click here.

posted by Eric Tomb and others 4:59 PM 0 Comments

John Deaderick, Alison Jones-Pomatto, Cameron Cobden: favorite books of 2011

On Monday 26 December 2011, Booktown's Readers Panel got together to discuss their favorites of the books they read in 2011.

John Deaderick
Shakespeare by Peter Ackroyd
My Name is Will by Jess Winfield
The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel


Alison Jones-Pomatto
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Tiger's Wife
by Tea Obreht
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
by David Mitchell
Caleb's Crossing
by Geraldine Brooks
Galveston
by Nic Pizzolato
What You See in the Dark
by Manuel Munoz
My New American Life
by Francine Prose
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

Cameron Cobden


True Grit by Charles Portis
A Dance with Dragons by George R R Martin

Eric Tomb
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
The Singapore Grip by JG Farrell
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis
Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
Poems by Anna Akhmatova , edited and translated by Lyn Coffin (This and Independent People were the two indisputably great books I read this year but by the time I got to discussing it I was speaking so slowly and incoherently that my comments weren't worth preserving. I may talk about it on next year's program.)

 To hear this program click here.
posted by Eric Tomb and others 1:00 PM 0 Comments

posted by Eric Tomb and others 9:14 AM 0 Comments

Sarah Rabkin interview

On Thursday 7 July 2011, I talked with Santa Cruz teacher and writer Sarah Juniper Rabkin about her recent book What I Learned at Bug Camp: Essays on Finding a Home in the World (Juniper Lake Press). She will read from and sign her book at 2 PM on Saturday 16 July at Sierra Mountain Coffee Roasters/Tomes, 671 Maltman Drive, Grass Valley.

To hear the interview, click here.

posted by Eric Tomb and others 1:32 PM 0 Comments

Bill Pieper interview

On Sunday 9 January 2011I talked with Nevada City/Sacramento novelist Bill Pieper about his latest novel What You Wish For (Strategic Book Group). He will read from and sign his book at 2 PM on Saturday 22 January at Sierra Mountain Coffee Roasters/Tomes, 671 Maltman Drive, Grass Valley.

To hear this interview, click here.

I talked with Bill about his earlier novel Gomez on 23 January 2006.

posted by Eric Tomb and others 11:51 AM 0 Comments

Hock G Tjoa interview

On Monday 13 December 2010 I talked with Nevada County author Hock G Tjoa about his new book The Battle of Chibi (Red Cliffs), a translation of central chapters of the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He will read from and sign his book at 2 PM on Saturday 18 December at Sierra Mountain Coffee Roasters/Tomes, 671 Maltman Drive, Grass Valley.

To hear this interview, click here.

posted by Eric Tomb and others 9:52 PM 0 Comments

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