- 99
- 3 030
BooksPodcast
United Kingdom
Приєднався 26 лип 2024
A series of interviews with authors that attract our attention. We have no agenda and no preferences, other than we enjoy good writing. There will be no self-help books, no cook books and few, if any, My Triumph Over Adversity books; however, there will be interesting ideas and enlightening conversation that we hope gets you thinking.
Joanne Harris – Moonlight Market
If you can’t see it … is it real? “What does real mean? Is love real? Or magic, or hope, or joy, or the quest for enlightenment? Are any of those things less real just because they’re woven in words?… Fairy stories matter. They’re how we understand what’s true.” Joanne Harris is serenely unconcerned with the subdivisions of literary genre. Her new book is, yes, a fairytale, but one that breaks through into the real world, the world of the Sightless Folk - as the fairy Folk call us. The war between the Daylight Folk and the Midnight Folk is waged, as it were, in the negatives rather than in … Continue reading → (bookspodcast.com/1365-2/)
Переглядів: 59
Відео
Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction
Переглядів 33Місяць тому
Where are we?!? Why deep South but far North? Why do some maps orient East or South, but never West? When did direction change from being where things came from to where we were going? Is the North Pole a real place? Who gave the cardinal directions their familiar one-syllable names? (It was Charlemagne - it’s always Charlemagne.) How do we know which way is which? Jerry Brotton’s delightful ne...
Robin Choudhury - The Beating Heart: The Art and Science of Our Most Vital Organ
Переглядів 252 місяці тому
What lies within? Every culture places the heart at the centre of personhood. It beats independently of our volition and when it stops we are dead. But if it were no more than a muscular pump it would hardly feature so widely in our visual imagery and iconography. The human heart, Robin Choudhury tells us, has been “…the dwelling place of the soul, the source of life, a furnace or fermentor pro...
Evie Wyld - The Echoes
Переглядів 544 місяці тому
The sins of the mother are visited upon the children The Echoes is many things in Evie Wyld’s new novel. It is the rural backwater in Australia where Hannah grew up, and it is also the shape of the book, as the past reverberates down the generations. Philip Larkin said that man hands on misery to man, but for Evie it is mothers who seem to do this. Among the achievements of her novel is to show...
Marcus Chown - A Crack In Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centr...
Переглядів 556 місяців тому
Black holes aren’t black! If there is one thing everybody knows about black holes it is that they are so dense that even light can’t escape. And yet, as Marcus Chown explains, black holes are some of the most prodigiously luminous objects in space. So they’re not holes. And they’re not black. But they are among the most fascinating and counter-intuitive objects in the universe. Not to mention t...
Scarlett Thomas - The Sleepwalkers
Переглядів 386 місяців тому
You tell yourself “It’s OK, it’s OK … ” but it’s really not! Scarlett Thomas is a tricky novelist to categorise. She has a playful, restless, sleeves-rolled-up approach to writing, in which she seldom ducks the dark turn and the big idea. And you can’t doubt her commitment. She once earned an MSc in Ethnobotany by way of research for a book. Tim has been a fan since the intriguing and dazzling ...
Death and the Victorians - Adrian Mackinder
Переглядів 96 місяців тому
The origins of modern death Let’s face it - nobody did death like the Victorians. From Highgate Cemetery to the high drama of seances, from Jack the Ripper to Madame Blavatsky, from Waterloo Station to Brookwood Cemetery (there was an actual train!) the Victorians invented our modern response to death, its iconography and its - yes - romance. The advent of industrialisation and the explosive ex...
Alwyn Turner - Little Englanders - Britain in the Edwardian Era
Переглядів 356 місяців тому
End of Empire History sometimes provides us with neat dividing lines. Queen Victoria helpfully died just weeks into the new century, making way for a new era, but the nightmarish Twentieth Century didn’t really get into its stride until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Between those landmarks is the Edwardian era. There is apprehension abroad. The nation is anxious about anarchists and te...
Howard Jacobson - What Will Survive of Us
Переглядів 516 місяців тому
Being in love is an act of carelessness of your own safety. It’s risk! Sam and Lily are middle-aged lovers in Howard Jacobson’s new novel and, in bed, they talk as much as anything else. Jacobson is rightly celebrated for his dialogue and, as so often before, it is rich with allusion and steeped in his passion for English literature. The novel is explicitly and unabashedly a love story and love...
Philip Norman: George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle
Переглядів 1516 місяців тому
Was George Harrison really the “Economy Beatle”? Philip Norman wrote Shout!, the first grown-up biography of The Beatles, shortly before John Lennon was murdered. People told him he was crazy, that The Fabs were yesterday’s news, that everybody already knew everything there was to know about the band. He wasn’t crazy. Fifty-three years after they broke up The Beatles are still an industry, or a...
The Dictionary People - The Unsung Heroes Who Created The Oxford English Dictionary
Переглядів 66 місяців тому
A goldmine of nutters, obsessives, murderers, vicars and, above all, readers! In a time before the internet, the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary was the Wickipedia of its day, crowdsourcing its contributions from thousands of readers across the world. Over decades, millions of slips inscribed with words and quotations poured into a metal shed in an Oxford garden to be assembled int...
Mike Jay - Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind
Переглядів 196 місяців тому
Don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it! 😉 We are familiar with some of the names: William Burroughs in the 1950’s. Timothy Leary in the ‘60’s, Hunter S Thompson in the ‘70’s, those two guys who started the craze for smoking cane-toad venom in ‘90’s. Investigators who became their own guinea pigs. But “the heroic tradition of discovery”, as Mike Jay puts it, has a much longer and more interesting ...
Neil Jordan - The Well Of Saint Nobody
Переглядів 186 місяців тому
Have you never forgotten someone you’ve slept with? Neil Jordan is best known as an internationally famous film director, of course - The Crying Game, Mona Lisa, Interview With The Vampire and many others. But he is also an accomplished novelist. The Well Of St Nobody is a story of legend, of music and eroticism, of consequences and of identity. “The girl who had walked her mother through those...
Cathi Unsworth - Season Of The Witch: The Book Of Goth
Переглядів 216 місяців тому
Margaret Thatcher and Goth Culture It was the Age of Thatcher, and beyond the playgrounds of the red-braces wide boys and the Sloane Square privileged, it was grim. Unemployment was a weapon in the class war. The Yorkshire Ripper ran riot. Bitter industrial disputes divided communities, while the police was brutally remade into a national instrument to break the miners. And maybe you remember t...
Lawrence Krauss - The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos
Переглядів 336 місяців тому
Lawrence Krauss - The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos
Barry Forshaw - Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films: A 21st Century Guide
Переглядів 166 місяців тому
Barry Forshaw - Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films: A 21st Century Guide
Steve Richards - The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success And Failure From Butler to Corbyn
Переглядів 226 місяців тому
Steve Richards - The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success And Failure From Butler to Corbyn
Joel Meadows - Tripwire 30th Anniversary
Переглядів 36 місяців тому
Joel Meadows - Tripwire 30th Anniversary
David Hepworth - Abbey Road: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio
Переглядів 146 місяців тому
David Hepworth - Abbey Road: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio
Louise Willder - Blurb Your Enthusiasm - an A-Z of Literary Persuasion
Переглядів 86 місяців тому
Louise Willder - Blurb Your Enthusiasm - an A-Z of Literary Persuasion
Nick Wallis - The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster...
Переглядів 586 місяців тому
Nick Wallis - The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster...
Rachel Gross - Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage
Переглядів 296 місяців тому
Rachel Gross - Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage
Howard Jacobson - Mother’s Boy: A Writer’s Beginnings
Переглядів 56 місяців тому
Howard Jacobson - Mother’s Boy: A Writer’s Beginnings
Dr Thomas Halliday - Otherlands: A World in the Making
Переглядів 1226 місяців тому
Dr Thomas Halliday - Otherlands: A World in the Making
Prof Francesca Stavrakopoulou - God An Anatomy
Переглядів 1,7 тис.6 місяців тому
Prof Francesca Stavrakopoulou - God An Anatomy
Nicholas Wapshott - Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market
Переглядів 226 місяців тому
Nicholas Wapshott - Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market
Robb Johnson - The People’s Republic of Neverland: The Child Versus The State
Переглядів 36 місяців тому
Robb Johnson - The People’s Republic of Neverland: The Child Versus The State
bravo..like this book podcast, good audio production..
Thank you very much, painter08. We love getting feedback. It is brilliant to know that we're reaching you. And thank you for the note on production. I will make a point of letting the producer know. I hope you've checked out our recent posts - we discussed Joanne Harris's new novel with her last month, and we have a couple of exciting interviews lined up, including Ian Leslie on his book about the relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. If you have not yet subscribed - remember it is free.
This book was wild, I did enjoy it a lot but the ending has let me some questions about what happened with Richard and a few things... The best part of the book is how well described the situations happened during the book.
Algorithm be damned.
Thank you for listening and for commenting. We are very happy to hear from you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Keep listening! Best regards, Tim
You must read this book if you really want to know the god you are worshiping.
Your wellbeing includes the knowledge of the absolute. A simple clarity, the feeling of gratitude and a peace which is everlasting.
Who is sincere about knowing the truth of the absolute?
To live without knowing what our wellbeing expects of us and all our gods is a bad strategy leading to a bad outcome for everyone.
Your wellbeing was there before anything had an existence.
Believing and disbelieving are two sides of the same calamity.
Great interview. Great author
Good sound
Thank you for that. I will let Johnny, the producer, know. He is a terrific producer and an excellent editor. It is a joy to work with him.
Wow. Great podcast. I just can’t believe the absolute madness that was going on. I’ve been watching lots of the public enquiry and it’s so obvious that people are still lying to cover their backsides. I also find it very strange that there is not a place where I can see an ongoing commentary or opinion on the enquiry even if was balanced opinion looking at both sides.
Thank you so much for your comment. We love knowing that we have got through! We have been following this story for some time, and fell upon Nick's book as a starving man upon food (a little while before Toby Jones and Monica Dolan brought the story to the wider public.) It's a really important story. And almost hard to believe. As you note, some of the miscreants are still lying about it and trying to evade their responsibility. We would be very interested to hear your views of the other interviews on BooksPodcast. Again - thank you.