Three Percent Podcast

On this week's podcast, Chad and Tom dish about the idea of a Translators Union, Dalkey's Korean literature series, and the Melville House edition of the "Torture Report," as well as a mini-rant about the Serial podcast, and a mini-rave about a dear friend who's passed.   As always, you can write to us at threepercentpodcast@gmail.com with complaints, suggestions, ideas for future episodes, or your own rants and raves. 

We're back! And, actually, now that Tom has a more regular schedule at Albertine we're planning on recording a new episode every other week. More great (sports) book talk! This week's episode centers around John O'Brien's BookBrunch article, "Don't Blame the Readers for Lack of Interest in Translations." It's a piece that understandably upset Tom's French employers . . .

This week's podcast covers four major topics: Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano, Michael Henry Heim and The Man Between, the upcoming ALTA Conference, and Atavist Books. And we barely talk about sports at all! But Tom does have a "rave" that includes a a particularily confusing cover.   As always, you can write to us at threepercentpodcast@gmail.com with complaints, suggestions, ideas for future episodes, or your own rants and raves. 

Finally, after weeks of putting this off, here is the long anticipated podcast about Roberto Bolaño's Little Lumpen Novelita. The reason it took so long to get to this was because of Tom's new job as the Deputy Director at Albertine, the most beautiful Franco-centric bookstore in New York (and/or the whole U.S.). We talked shortly after the official launch of the store, which generated a ton of fanfare. So, in addition to talking Bolaño, we talked about Albertine, it's upcoming festival, and other aspects of Tom's new job. (Just a note of clarification--Tom is still working for New Directions as well.)   Oh, and we also talk a bit about the Royals-A's game that was going on while we were recording. And now I'm safe in saying that I'm really glad all the West Coast AL teams are out of the playoffs and am really looking forward to the ALCS with Baltimore and Kansas City. (We're planning on having Mexican author Alvaro Enrique on the podcast very soon to talk about his work, about his wife Valerie Luiselli's wor

This week's podcast is mostly about a BBC article on Hieroglyph, a collaborative project between scientists and science-fiction writers that was inspired by the Neal Stephenson article "Innovation Starvation." Basically, this is a call to create fewer dystopian novels, and more positive sci-fi ideas that can help inspire the scientists of tomorrow. More or less.    We also read some fan letters (email us at threepercentpodcast@gmail.com), rave about Utopia and rant about film crews.    Finally, just a reminder that we'll be discussing Roberto Bolaño's A Little Lumpen Novelita later this month, and we'd love to hear your thoughts about the book. Email us by September 24th with any questions, comments, thoughts, and we'll incorporate them into our discussion. 

In this podcast, Chad and Tom discuss Tom's recent article in Publishing Perspectives (which he wrote in response to Amazon's infamous letter to readers), along with some thoughts on why we shop at bookstores, and Julian Gough's Litcoin project.    Also, as mentioned at the end of the podcast, Chad and Tom will be discussing Roberto Bolaño's A Little Lumpen Novelita on an episode at the end of September. If you have any thoughts, questions, or opinions about the book, Bolaño, the translation, etc., please send them to threepercentpodcast@gmail.com.    (You can also use that email to tell Chad and Tom that they suck, or to recommend other topics you'd like to hear on the show.) 

With Tom on vacation, Chad recorded a special episode of the podcast with Heather Cleary and Jason Grunebaum, both of whom have a book on the National Translation Award longlist. They talk about Sergio Chejfec's The Dark, Uday Prakash's The Girl with the Golden Parasol, air shows, the future of the American Literary Translators Association, and other non-sports related topics. (Seriously, this is a sports-free podcast.)    As an added bonus, there's a short conversation Chad had with Uday Prakash about his collection The Walls of Delhi.

This week's podcast focuses on two main things: This article by Tim Parks about the sales of Knausgaard's books, and the sale of BookLamp to Apple for an obscene amount of money. 

On this week's podcast, Chad and Tom preview the semifinals of the World Cup of Literature (both suspect Chile will meet the US in the Championship), and then discuss The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair and a New Yorker piece about its limited U.S. success. Also, the Penguin Cup is stupid.    In relation to the rants and raves portion of the podcast, there are videos to be watched from the Estonian sketch comedy troupe that Chad praised.    Be sure and write us at threepercentpodcast@gmail.com with any suggestions, criticisms, etc. 

On this week's podcast, Chad and Tom review the opening round of the World Cup of Literature and make some predictions, talk about the Amazon-Hachette kerfuffle, and discuss the awfulness of The American Outlaws and the awesomeness of a couple Wikipedia pages. (You have to listen to find out which ones.)  And don't forget that we have a dedicated podcast email address now. So, send your podcast-related rants, raves, and ideas to threepercentpodcast@gmail.com.

In this week's podcast we talk about the forthcoming World Cup of Literature and about some of the summer books that we're both looking forward to reading. Almost all are translations; a few are authors you may have already heard of (Knausgaard); and others will be new to a lot of listeners. In our "Rants and Raves" section, Chad raves about a poem (?!--seriously, but it's a really depressing one), and Tom takes down a particular aspect of the Internet.    And don't forget that we have a dedicated podcast email address now, so send your own podcast-related rants, raves, and ideas to threepercentpodcast@gmail.com.   UPDATE   Michael Orthofer succinctly corrected all the bull I said about where the World Cup teams come from and how all that works. So, to clarify:   "First: League strength has NOTHING to do with this (would be perverse if it did, since many leagues are filled with foreign players . . . )   "Second: FIFA has six geographic confederations -- the European one is UEFA, North/Central America CONCACAF

Inspired by Bromance Will's blog, this podcast is all about how New Directions came to publish László Krasznahorkai and how they stuck with him--a situation that resulted in back-to-back Best Translated Book Award victories.    Also, we now have a email address for you to send all your complaints, corrections, and suggestions. Just write to us at threepercentpodcast@gmail.com. So, if you have any show suggestions, or just want to tell us how much we suck, email away . . .   

As a bonus for dedicated Three Percent listeners (both of you!), this podcast features the two Fulbright students studying in the translation program this past year: Ayoub Al-Ahmadi from Yemen and Jan Pytalski from Poland. We talk about their individual projects--both of which are likely to be published by Open Letter in the next few years--cultural differences, the classes they took with me (which were their favorite classes--and I didn't even pay them to say that!), and camel jumping. Yes, camel jumping. (Best part of the camel-jumping video--aside from the actual jumping of camels--is the opening question: "How do you jump over a camel?" "I run fast and jump high." Yup.)

OK, that's a totally lame way to try and combine the two main topics of this week's podcast: Gabriel García Marquez, and the awful amazingness of the NY Times Style section article on soccer's popularity in creative circles. Our conversation ranges a bit to include other authors from "el Boom," contemporary Spanish-language writers, and Beyond the Pampas, a GoodReads reading group focused on Latin American literature. (Currently members are reading "Felisberto Hernández's Piano Stories.) And we end with our new "Rants & Raves" segment, which allows Tom a good space to get things off his chest. 

In this week's podcast, Tom and Chad talk about the works of British writer David Peace. Peace was part of the 2003 version of Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists" (along with Toby Litt, Nicola Baker, David Mitchell, Adam Thirlwell--really solid list), and is the author of nine novels, including the "Red Riding Quartet" (Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty, Nineteen Eighty-Three), the first two volumes of the uncompleted "Tokyo Trilogy" (Tokyo Year Zero and The Occupied City), two books on famous soccer figures (The Damned Utd and Red or Dead), and GB84 about the UK miners' strike. Since Peace's books encompass the main interests of both Tom and Chad--soccer and crime!--they each read a few different Peace books to prep for this podcast. 

In this bonus mini-podcast, Chad and Tom talk about the NCAA tournament, making many definitely wrong predications in over-confident tones. Of course, depending on your level of knowledge of the NCAA tournament (pro wrestling, I think?), you may have to choose a more sarcastic interpretation of the word "bonus." However! If the NCAA Tourney is your bag, then you've hit the jackpot--which is also the name of the thing that neither Tom nor Chad will hit when their brackets get ruined in week one.

This week's podcast is EPIC. With a minimum of digressions, we review every single book on the 2014 Best Translated Book Award Fiction Longlist, providing descriptions, some commentary on its chances of winning, other remarks about the titles we've read, etc. This may be a really long episode, but it's also one of the most informative ones we've done, and I'm willing to guarantee that you come away wanting to buy and read and least two of the books we talk about. 

As an interlude in our 2013 round-up series, Tom and I decided to talk about his recent trip to L.A., where he met with Michael Silverblatt of the amazing Bookworm, and about a couple of recent articles that have been making the rounds in social media and whatnot. Namely, we decided to talk a bit about George Packer's Amazon article in the New Yorker.

This week, we finally continue our series of podcasts summing up the books, music, and movies of 2013. Because summing up 2013 only gets old when we say it does! Anyway, the entire Open Letter office is featured on this podcast, with each of us sharing our favorite albums from last year.    And like with the books podcast, each of us wrote a little (or, in Chad's case, of Biblical Length) post about his/her top 10. Here are the links to Kaija's, Chad's, and Nate's.

Rather than do our normal "favorite books of XXXX" podcast, we decided to focus on four books from last year that we really liked: Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge, Javier Marias's The Infatuations, Keith Ridgway's Hawthorn & Child, and Arnon Grunberg's Tirza. (Chad also snuck in a reference to Julia Deck's Viviane, which is coming out in April.) Then things devolved--as is probably expected by now--into talking about the demise of Bookish.    Additionally, we each wrote a special post to go along with this podcast. You can get to Tom's here, and Chad's here.