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Books on the Nightstand published our final episode in July 2016. This is a place for listeners to find old episodes. 

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  2. BOTNS #148: Your literary Mount Rushmore?

BOTNS #148: Your literary Mount Rushmore?

Sep 27, 2011

 

Hype vs. buzz - when is it too much? Who's on your literary Mount Rushmore? Also, We the Animals by Justin Torres, and Habibi by Craig Thompson.

Hype vs. Buzz

In segment one, we try to differentiate between "hype" and "buzz," largely inspired by a post at the Redbox blog. We think that "hype" is manufactured, and "buzz" is genuine. Examples of this are The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. Both books received incredible word-of-mouth months prior to publication, but from our vantage point, that was genuine buzz created largely by booksellers and bloggers who had read and loved those books. We look at some of the reasons that people may not want to read books or see movies that are getting "too much buzz" or being "too hyped." Please share your thoughts with us in the comments.

 

Your literary Mount Rushmore? (7:51)

In our Goodreads group, we have a thread called "What do you want us to talk about?" where we troll for episode ideas when we're stuck. Dennis had a great one:

How about a "Literary Mount Rushmore".

I think it would be fun to do a call-in show about the four authors you'd put on your personal Literary Mount Rushmore. I'd leave off any qualifiers to make the answers the most interesting and diverse.

We had a lot of fun with this topic. We hope you do, too. Please call our voicemail line: (209) 867-78323 and tell us which 4 authors would be on YOUR literary Mount Rushmore.

Michael's literary Mount Rushmore:
William Boyd
Jeffrey Eugenides
Donna Tartt
J.K. Rowling

Ann's literary Mount Rushmore:
Agatha Christie
Anton Chekhov
William Shakespeare
J.R.R Tolkien

Please do call our voicemail line by October 15th if you can -- we will put all of your calls together for a podcast that will air on October 19th.

Two books we can't wait for you to read: (16:17)

We the Animals Habibi

I need you to read We The Animals by Justin Torres. I don't really want to say much more than that. As I was reading this book, I sent a twitter post: "We the Animals, wow! My heart was broken by page 5, stomped upon by page 17."

Michael raves about Habibi by Craig Thompson, a graphic novel set in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. The story of a young woman who is sold into slavery, and the young child she finds and cares for. The art is beautiful and evocative, and the design of the book is stunning.

One last thing: if you are at all interested in the details of the Books on the Nightstand retreat, Booktopia 2012, please sign up for the newsletter -- we will be announcing details via the email list on Friday, September 30th.