Three Percent Podcast

From the choice of the opening song--"Royals" by Lorde--to the main topic of great midwestern bookstores and Wisconsin's beer culture, this podcast is All About Tom. And it's fantastic. Mostly because we get to talk about a lot of great bookstores.    Some of the stores mentioned in this podcast are:   The Book Stall (Winnetka, IL) Boswell Book Company (Milwaukee, WI) City Lit Books (Chicago, IL) Common Good Books (St. Paul, MN) Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI) Magers & Quinn (Minneapolis, MN) Micawber's Books (St. Paul, MN) A Room of One's Own (Madison, WI) Schuler Books & Music (Grand Rapids, MI)

On this week's podcast, Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times joins us to discuss Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Bleeding Edge. All three of us are Pynchon fans, and all three of us really like this latest book. Although, as we talk about, the fact that we experienced a lot of the cultural items Pynchon references makes this a bit odd . . . Like, Pynchon's watched Office Space? He is aware of Pokemon and Beanie Babies?

This week's podcast is the first one Tom and I have recorded in almost a month. So after a bit of catching up, we talked about David Bellos's new translation of Simenon's Pietr the Latvian, the difficulties of translating "I love you" and all the swears into Japanese, and the list of "The 20 Best Books in Translation You've Never Read." As necessary, we also talked about the baseball playoffs and a cute flowchart.

With Tom back from his relaxing vacation, we decided to catch up and talk about the books we read recently, including Sjöwall and Wahlöö's mystery series, Juan Gabriel Vasquez's The Sound of Things Falling, and Rafael Bernal's The Mongolian Conspiracy, among others. We also talk about Amazon's MatchBook program, making things as easy as possible for readers, and baseball. Because, baseball. 

This week's podcast is a special combo version featuring two separate conversations: one between Chad, Stephen Sparks (BTBA judge, Green Apple bookseller, and excellent reviewer), and George Carroll; and one between Chad and Paul Yamazaki (legendary City Lights). Topics range from soccer to Karl Pohrt to Javier Marias to Jonathan Lethem to other books we're reading this summer. It's always great to hear from booksellers about what they're reading--they're more in touch with what's coming out than basically anyone. Additionally, it's always fun to give a bit more love to these two epically great bookstores. 

This week's podcast is a hodgepodge of opinions, rants, and jokes. We talked about summer music--and our mutual dislike of Robin Thicke--Hawthorne & Child, my trip to Brazil, and bike thieves. And nobody talked about J.K. Rowling or her widely-known pseudonym.    Enjoy! 

At the request of one of Tom's friends, we tried to keep this particular podcast upbeat and cheery . . . and we sort of succeeded. Most of the podcast revolves around "this interview from Publishing Perspectives that Amanda DeMarco did with German publisher Michael Krüger about the 40 years he's spent at Hanser and what's changed over that time. Krüger is a really interesting, brilliant guy, who doesn't shy away from saying some controversial things, so a) this interview is interesting, and b) so is our podcast. 

This post-BookExpo America podcast (with special guest, Bromance Will/Will Evans, the man behind Deep Vellum Press) is all about the good and bad of the country's largest trade show for publishing. Mostly, it's a series of rants--not necessarily about the show itself, but about the crap that craps it all up. From tech-speak nonsense to Mitch "Fucking" Albom, this is one of the funniest and most fiery podcasts we've recorded to date.

On this week's podcast, Chad and Tom make fun of yet another new "social book community recommendation" website. Also, they discuss the awesomeness of a number of San Francisco bookstores (and bookstores in general), on the heels of Tom's first trip to The City by the Bay.

We're back! With our newest and semi-delayed installment of the Three Percent Podcast. This week is a two-parter. First, Chad and Tom run down the list of fiction and poetry finalists for the 2013 Best Translated Book Awards. Yes, it's true that these were announced a couple weeks ago, but, as luck would have it, today (Friday, May 3) happens to be the big awards ceremony, which is taking place at the PEN World Voices Festival in NYC (come one, come all!). So, what better time than now to brush up on the potential winners?   Then, the podcast's main event: Chad and Tom are joined by the one-and-only Richard Nash to talk about Richard's recent article in the Virginia Quarterly Review. The title and subtitle should give you a nice teaser to their discussion: "What Is the Business of Literature?: As technology disrupts the business model of traditional publishers, the industry must imagine new ways of capturing the value of a book."

What is this? The much-delayed "favorite movies of 2012" episode of the Three Percent Podcast? It is! Better late than never, right? Yes, it is. Stop disagreeing, please.   This week, Tom is joined by Nate, and they grit their teeth to discuss The Master (P. T. Anderson) and Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino), after having forced one another to finally watch each other's favorite movies of the year. Also on the docket are the likes of: Rust & Bone, Magic Mike, Killer Joe, Moonrise Kingdom, Argo, and, god help us, Lincoln. (And no one, at any point, talks about soccer.)

This week's podcast is a bit of a hodge-podge: We start out talking about the concept of selling used ebooks, then Tom gets to express his admiration for Javier Marias's new novel, The Infatuations, and Marias in general, and finally we talk about Houellebecq, which, as can only be expected, is controversial. Oh, and there is some talk about the NCAA Tournament. Naturally. 

This week's podcast is a look at the 25 titles on the Best Translated Book Awards Fiction Longlist. Tom and I discuss each title, talking about which books we've read (or want to), and which ones we think will make the list of 10 Finalists. For those of you who aren't that familiar with all of these books, I highly recommend checking out this handy guide that Typographical Era put together, with short descriptions of all 25 books. 

This week, Chad talks with special guest George Carroll about the enchanted lives of literary sales reps, Seagull Books, the Seagull School of Publishing, László Krasznahorkai's forthcoming books, and . . . the UEFA Champions League.

On this week's podcast, we welcome National Book Critics Circle board member Carolyn Kellogg to talk about the NBCC awards, the changes to the National Book Award (which set me off on a bit of a paranoid rant), Bookish and its suckishness, and a variety of other literary topics.    I also want to add a bit of an update. Since the time we spoke, I've finished HHhH and most of NW, and contrary to all the niceties expressed on this podcast, I'm pretty bummed out about the NBCC finalists for fiction. Both HHhH and NW are staggeringly mediocre and should be replaced by Satantango and Maidenhair. Then again, the sheer literary quality of a list of books including these two masterpieces along with Lydia Millet's Magnificence would be so mind-blowingly amazing that no future list could ever match up. In other words, the NBCC chose to middle-mind the shit out of their list of finalists to save you--the readers--from experiencing too much literary joy all at once. That's the best explanation I can come up with, since,

So, it's been a while. Due to some technical difficulties, we haven't been able to post a podcast for the past few weeks. But thanks to the whizbang IT department at the University of Rochester, our 10,000 year old iMac is up and functioning again. Which means that 2013 can finally officially start--thanks to our preview podcast. This week, Tom Roberge and I discuss a bunch of 2013 books that we're excited about. Our preview includes everything from Javier Marias's latest, to 18% Gray (and the faux 18% Gray) to the new Laszlo Krashnahorkai to Yoko Ogawa's Revenge and Mo Yan's Sandalwood Death and, as always, is a mix of incisive literary observations and irreverence and soccer talk. 

This week's podcast features Chad, Nathan Furl, Kaija Straumanis, and Will Cleveland talking about their favorite albums of 2012. (And sometimes 2011.) It's a pretty tight podcast, featuring thirteen different artists and some interesting insights into why we each like different styles of music. Oh, and of course we digress a bit to talk about awful job postings and whatnot.    Supplementing this podcast, we'll be posting the top 10 lists for all four participants over the course of the day, giving you a wealth of music to check out over the holiday break. To help you out, Spotify users can check out the 108-track playlist of our colective favorite songs. 

In this week's podcast (Tom's last one of of the year), we discuss the translations we did (and didn't) read from 2012, including Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin, Satantango by Laszlo Krashnahorkai, Woes of the True Policeman by Roberto Bolano, and Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa. This kicks off the beginning of our "best of" podcasts for this year. Next week we'll talk about music, and in the new year, Tom will be back to discuss the best movies of 2012.  Since I mentioned this a million times during the podcast, here's the list of books I'm looking forward to reading over the next couple months:   Woes of a True Policeman, Roberto Bolano Death Sentences, Kawamata Chiaki Investigation, Philippe Claudel Revenge, Yoko Ogawa Encyclopedia of a Life in Russian, Jose Manuel Prieto Ariadne in the Gortesque Labyrinth, Salvador Espriu The Map and the Territory, Michel Houellebecq Atlas, Kai-Cheung Dung Black Flower, Young-ha Kim LoveStar, Andri Snaer Magnason Traveler of the Century, Andres Neuman Mathematique, Jacques

This week's podcast is focused on crime and detective books--both fiction and nonfiction. First off, we talk I monologue about Errol Morris's A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald and my recent Twitter fight with Joe McGinniss about this case, then we move on to talking about Wolf Haas's Brenner and God and what makes this book (and detective books in general) fun to read. 

After a bit of a hiatus, Tom Roberge and Chad W. Post are back to discuss what we mean when we say that a book is "difficult." They use a range of examples, from Finnegans Wake to Mrs. Dalloway to define a few different categories of reading "difficulty," such as, not being compelled, and having to read a book like a puzzle.    For a Three Percent podcast, this one is pretty serious, and even more interesting than usual. And for those who are interested, here's a list of all the books/artists discussed this week:   Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin Finnegans Wake by James Joyce The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolff P.T. Anderson's movies The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Hawthorne & Child by Keith Ridgway Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger A Wilderness of Error by Errol Morris