Books on the Nightstand Podcast #187 (for real, this time!)




Books on the Nightstand show

Summary: Is there a statute of limitations on spoilers? We discuss. Also, we recommend John Boyne's The Absolutist and Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles. A little bit of this, a little bit of that:   Thank you so much for your patience during last week's technical difficulties. We are back up and running, though I confess that I had my fingers and toes crossed during our recording session today.  The BOTNS Book Index (http://booksonthenightstand.com/bookindex/) has been updated! Our unending gratitude goes out to our friend Rob Webb, and special thank to Linda Johnson, who has offered to keep the index updated for us. If you haven't yet checked out the index, take a look! You can find it on one of the tabs on the BOTNS website (http://www.booksonthenightstand.com). And now an apology to our UK listeners. I realize that some of the books I've recommended recently have actually been published in the UK with different titles. I hope you weren't driven crazy trying to find the books I mentioned. Trapeze, by Simon Mawer, is published in Britain with the title The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. And Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone is called The Gathering Dark (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12637460-the-gathering-dark) in the UK. As an aside, Leigh wrote a very interesting blog post (http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/05/18/a-tale-of-two-or-twenty-titles/) about her struggle to find a title for Shadow and Bone, and I thought you might like to read it. Winners of two contests have been chosen! Michael has prizes ready to go, so if you entered either the "Create your own Imprint (http://booksonthenightstand.com/2012/03/botns-podcast-171-imprints-and-underappreciated-women-writers.html)" contest, and if your name is Erica, Lisa, Kate, Rebecca or Kimberly, check your email for a note from Michael so that he can send you your prizes. If you entered the "Invent your own Book Truck (http://booksonthenightstand.com/2012/06/botns-podcast-184-booktopiavt-kenneth-c-davis-and-susan-cain.html)" contest and you are named Laura, Elizabeth or Kathy, check your email, too! Lastly, we encourage you to meet other BOTNS listeners in your local area. We have a thriving group of Boston-area listeners (http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/540317) who get together for literary events from time to time. This group was started on the BOTNS Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/4862) group, and I want to urge you all to start your own local thread there and see if you can find some bookish friends in your neighborhood. To Spoil, or not to Spoil?   As soon as I saw this tweet from bookseller (http://www.algonquinbooksblog.com/blog/booksellers-rock-josh-christie-shermans-books-and-stationary/)/podcaster (http://bookrageous.podbean.com/) Josh Christie (http://brewsandbooks.com/), I knew it would be the topic of our conversation for this episode. https://twitter.com/jchristie/statuses/219140309421015040 What's your take on spoilers? Should there be a statute of limitations? Michael talks about how he had Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5759.Fight_Club) spoiled from a t-shirt, and then he goes on to spoil the film The Crying Game (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104036/). So, fair warning!   Two books we can't wait for you to read:   (http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1301755061l/10967535.jpg)    (http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1322844130l/12401556.jpg) John Boyne's The Absolutist is brutally heartwrenching. I can't describe it any other way. It's set during and just after World War I, and is not only about the wars that young soldiers fight on behalf of their country, but the wars that they must fight within themselves. Don't miss this one. Michael (and I) recommend The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. It's a coming of age story in a world where things are changing rapidly, and in a way that has never before been seen: the earth's rotation has started to slow,