The Avid Reader Show

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Philip Goff, whose latest book, his second, is Galileos Error: Foundations For A New Science of Consciousness, published in November last year by Pantheon. His first book, by the way, was Consciousness And Fundamental Reality He is a philosopher and consciousness researcher at Durham University. Galileo’s Error is centered on the idea of panpsychism, a construct, if you will, that consciousness is fundamental and all encompassing and threads it way throughout the universe. Philip admits that this idea sounds a “bit crazy”, the idea that even the most constituent particles of nature, electrons, quarks, gluons contain, retain a certain very simple ability, characteristic of self-awareness, if you will. I may be misstating this theory somewhat, but I don’t blame myself, I blame the concept. One, I may be too ignorant to grasp the concept, two the possibility that all of what Philip posits is wrong.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by O, the Oprah Magazine, Good Morning America/ABC-TV, Good Housekeeping, Bustle, TIME, Marie Claire and The Millions An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything. Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history. Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her. It is a triumph of storytelling both timely and timeless, from a masterful writer at the height of her powers.

An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it. In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize. American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.

An affecting memoir from the country’s youngest sommelier, tracing her path through the glamorous but famously toxic restaurant world At just twenty-one, the age when most people are starting to drink (well, legally at least), Victoria James became the country’s youngest sommelier at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Even as Victoria was selling bottles worth hundreds and thousands of dollars during the day, passing sommelier certification exams with flying colors, and receiving distinction from all kinds of press, there were still groping patrons, bosses who abused their role and status, and a trip to the hospital emergency room. It would take hitting bottom at a new restaurant and restorative trips to the vineyards where she could feel closest to the wine she loved for Victoria to re-emerge, clear-eyed and passionate, and a proud leader of her own Michelin-starred restaurant. Exhilarating and inspiring, Wine Girl is the memoir of a young woman breaking free from an abusive and traumatic childhood on her own terms; an ethnography of the glittering, high-octane, but notoriously corrosive restaurant industry; and above all, a love letter to the restorative and life-changing effects of good wine and good hospitality.

The bird book for birders and nonbirders alike that will excite and inspire by providing a new and deeper understanding of what common, mostly backyard, birds are doing--and why "Can birds smell?" "Is this the same cardinal that was at my feeder last year?" "Do robins 'hear' worms?" In What It's Like to Be a Bird, David Sibley answers the most frequently asked questions about the birds we see most often. This special, large-format volume is geared as much to nonbirders as it is to the out-and-out obsessed, covering more than two hundred species and including more than 330 new illustrations by the author. While its focus is on familiar backyard birds--blue jays, nuthatches, chickadees--it also examines certain species that can be fairly easily observed, such as the seashore-dwelling Atlantic puffin. David Sibley's exacting artwork and wide-ranging expertise bring observed behaviors vividly to life. (For most species, the primary illustration is reproduced life-sized.) And while the text is aimed at adults--including fascinating new scientific research on the myriad ways birds have adapted to environmental changes--it is nontechnical, making it the perfect occasion for parents and grandparents to share their love of birds with young children, who will delight in the big, full-color illustrations of birds in action. Unlike any other book he has written, What It's Like to Be a Bird is poised to bring a whole new audience to David Sibley's world of birds.

"In Dark Towers, David Enrich tells the story of how one of the world's mightiest banks careened off the rails, threatening everything from our financial system to our democracy through its reckless entanglement with Donald Trump. Darkly fascinating and yet all too real, it's a tale that will keep you up at night." (John Carreyrou, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author of Bad Blood) A searing exposé of the most scandalous bank in the world, including its shadowy ties to Donald Trump's business empire

Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work. Ever since Homo sapiens has walked the earth, natural selection has favored perception that hides the truth and guides us toward useful action, shaping our senses to keep us alive and reproducing. We observe a speeding car and do not walk in front of it; we see mold growing on bread and do not eat it. These impressions, though, are not objective reality. Just like a file icon on a desktop screen is a useful symbol rather than a genuine representation of what a computer file looks like, the objects we see every day are merely icons, allowing us to navigate the world safely and with ease. The real-world implications for this discovery are huge. From examining why fashion designers create clothes that give the illusion of a more “attractive” body shape to studying how companies use color to elicit specific emotions in consumers, and even dismantling the very notion that spacetime is objective reality, The Case Against Reality dares us to question everything we thought we knew about the world we see.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Megan Angelo, author of Followers, her first novel. Megan is another fellow Pennsylvanian. It seems like all authors are now. From Madeline Miller, to Kiley Reid, Liz Moore, Vikram Pall-el-kar, and a bunch more. Then Ann Patchett who writes about my home town of Elkins Park. It’s wonderful. Megan’s writing has appeared in NYT, WSJ, Glamour and Elle. Well worth going to the last two and taking a look at what she has written. Fascinating how her work mirrors, in part, the very topic that she concentrates on in Followers. Followers is a novel that at first seems like science fiction, fantasy, alternate history or an imaginative exercise in social commentary. But it is not that at all. It is us. It is real. It is now. It is scary and for old geezers like me, who are behind the wave now, although I pride myself on being pretty aware of what is going on, old geezers may not understand what the hell this book is about, but it is a primer that will wake them up to what the hell is going on. After Trump and for the next 2 years I kept saying “you can’t make this stuff up”. Now I can’t say that anymore because it is so far beyond that. It is a nightmare. That’s why SNL can’t parody Trump anymore. It is beyond parody. Anyway, I am beginning one of my rants, so before I take up anymore time, I will let Megan tell us about Orla and Floss from 2015 to 2051. A 2051 that seems too real. Welcome Megan and thanks so much for joining us today. Sorry about going off like that in the intro.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Megan Angelo, author of Followers, her first novel. Megan is another fellow Pennsylvanian. It seems like all authors are now. From Madeline Miller, to Kiley Reid, Liz Moore, Vikram Pall-el-kar, and a bunch more. Then Ann Patchett who writes about my home town of Elkins Park. It’s wonderful. Megan’s writing has appeared in NYT, WSJ, Glamour and Elle. Well worth going to the last two and taking a look at what she has written. Fascinating how her work mirrors, in part, the very topic that she concentrates on in Followers. Followers is a novel that at first seems like science fiction, fantasy, alternate history or an imaginative exercise in social commentary. But it is not that at all. It is us. It is real. It is now. It is scary and for old geezers like me, who are behind the wave now, although I pride myself on being pretty aware of what is going on, old geezers may not understand what the hell this book is about, but it is a primer that will wake them up to what the hell is going on. After Trump and for the next 2 years I kept saying “you can’t make this stuff up”. Now I can’t say that anymore because it is so far beyond that. It is a nightmare. That’s why SNL can’t parody Trump anymore. It is beyond parody. Anyway, I am beginning one of my rants, so before I take up anymore time, I will let Megan tell us about Orla and Floss from 2015 to 2051. A 2051 that seems too real. Welcome Megan and thanks so much for joining us today. Sorry about going off like that in the intro.

Good Afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Vikram Paralkar author of Night Theater, his second novel the first was Afflictions. Night Theater was published in January by Catapault. Vikram is a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He treats patients with leukemia and researches the disease and the nature and manner in which normal cells develop and how and why they sometimes turn cancerous. And how a specific type of RNA regulates genes. Night Theater is my kind of book. Vikram and I share the same love of Borges, Calvino and Nabokov and I am sure, and I will ask him, whether he also is as much in love with Marquez. In Night Theater a book of magical realism, a doctor drawn in part from Vikram’s profession is portrayed as a man who is irritating and irritable, who is gruff but good, who is thrown into circumstances not of his making both in the real world and the magical world that Vikram creates, in whole cloth, for us in the macabre setting he visualizes.… Because our unnamed protagonist (actually all of the characters are unnamed) is thrust into unusual and unpleasant circumstances, he lives a live of unpleasantness and one in which he hopes (presumably) for release. Then he is thrust once again into one night of horror, deceit, testing and a kind of resolution. The reader is in thrall and also confused and wondering (which is the best kind of book) throughout the narrative and even after the book is put down and the reader walks away still pondering, perhaps for a lifetime, what has happened in the book and in his or her own life. So Vikram welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Good Afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Vikram Paralkar author of Night Theater, his second novel the first was Afflictions. Night Theater was published in January by Catapault. Vikram is a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He treats patients with leukemia and researches the disease and the nature and manner in which normal cells develop and how and why they sometimes turn cancerous. And how a specific type of RNA regulates genes. Night Theater is my kind of book. Vikram and I share the same love of Borges, Calvino and Nabokov and I am sure, and I will ask him, whether he also is as much in love with Marquez. In Night Theater a book of magical realism, a doctor drawn in part from Vikram’s profession is portrayed as a man who is irritating and irritable, who is gruff but good, who is thrown into circumstances not of his making both in the real world and the magical world that Vikram creates, in whole cloth, for us in the macabre setting he visualizes.… Because our unnamed protagonist (actually all of the characters are unnamed) is thrust into unusual and unpleasant circumstances, he lives a live of unpleasantness and one in which he hopes (presumably) for release. Then he is thrust once again into one night of horror, deceit, testing and a kind of resolution. The reader is in thrall and also confused and wondering (which is the best kind of book) throughout the narrative and even after the book is put down and the reader walks away still pondering, perhaps for a lifetime, what has happened in the book and in his or her own life. So Vikram welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Good Afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Emily Beyda, author of this, her first novel The Body Double, published last month by Doubleday. Emily has been the author of the popular advise column “Dear Glutton” for the past few years in The Austin Chronicle. Her articles are online at the paper. They are fun to read. Austin natives have a great resource in Emily’s reviews and suggestions. And as I said, The Body Double is her first novel. The Body Double explores identity, its loss and regaining. In part the transformation of our protagonist is a dream come true, in part it is not a nightmare, but a blurred, confusing and treacherous process. Because we have a narrator who is not necessary unreliable and a second supporting star who definitely is, we are constantly taking guesses, as the reader, thinking what is really going on. The best kind of read there is. We are as intimately involved in Rosanna and Rosanna and Max as the author is and as the characters themselves are. I’ll try very hard in this interview not to mention or extort spoilers, but it is going to be hard. Trust me. This is a book that you should read, not only for your questions as you read, but the questions that remain after you put the book down, probably after you have read it in one sitting, or laying, as I did. Welcome Emily and thanks so much for joining us today.

Good Afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Emily Beyda, author of this, her first novel The Body Double, published last month by Doubleday. Emily has been the author of the popular advise column “Dear Glutton” for the past few years in The Austin Chronicle. Her articles are online at the paper. They are fun to read. Austin natives have a great resource in Emily’s reviews and suggestions. And as I said, The Body Double is her first novel. The Body Double explores identity, its loss and regaining. In part the transformation of our protagonist is a dream come true, in part it is not a nightmare, but a blurred, confusing and treacherous process. Because we have a narrator who is not necessary unreliable and a second supporting star who definitely is, we are constantly taking guesses, as the reader, thinking what is really going on. The best kind of read there is. We are as intimately involved in Rosanna and Rosanna and Max as the author is and as the characters themselves are. I’ll try very hard in this interview not to mention or extort spoilers, but it is going to be hard. Trust me. This is a book that you should read, not only for your questions as you read, but the questions that remain after you put the book down, probably after you have read it in one sitting, or laying, as I did. Welcome Emily and thanks so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lily King (which is a lovely name) author of Writers & Lovers which will be published tomorrow by Grove Press. Lily’s first novel was The Pleasing Hour, a NYT notable book and winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover award. Her second was The English Teacher, her third was Father Of The Rain, a NYT editor’s choice. Her fourth was Euphoria, this time, deservedly a NYT 10 best books award, Times best 10 Fiction books of the year Writers & Lovers is a portrait of an artist as a young woman. Casey Peabody, our protagonist, just lost her Mom, took off for Massachusetts in 1997, no plan, no money. She used to be an incredible golfer, she works at what sounds like a great restaurant, Iris. She lives in what I would call a hovel, rides a banana bike, like I used to have, till it got stolen, and is incredibly funny. She’s got two boyfriends, potential diseases and a loose hold on reality (as do I) and a potential great American novel. And we, or at least I, love her.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lily King (which is a lovely name) author of Writers & Lovers which will be published tomorrow by Grove Press. Lily’s first novel was The Pleasing Hour, a NYT notable book and winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover award. Her second was The English Teacher, her third was Father Of The Rain, a NYT editor’s choice. Her fourth was Euphoria, this time, deservedly a NYT 10 best books award, Times best 10 Fiction books of the year Writers & Lovers is a portrait of an artist as a young woman. Casey Peabody, our protagonist, just lost her Mom, took off for Massachusetts in 1997, no plan, no money. She used to be an incredible golfer, she works at what sounds like a great restaurant, Iris. She lives in what I would call a hovel, rides a banana bike, like I used to have, till it got stolen, and is incredibly funny. She’s got two boyfriends, potential diseases and a loose hold on reality (as do I) and a potential great American novel. And we, or at least I, love her.