You Must Read This
"You Must Read This" presents conversations with writers about the books they love to read and recommend.
A Wild, 'Burning' Journey Back To Old Mexico()
October 15, 2009 Author Oscar Casares never used to be a reader — until the excitement of The Burning Plain and Other Stories showed him what he had been missing.
Loving This Book 'Warps The Mind A Little'()
September 29, 2009 Author Julia Glass fell for John Dufresne's "funny-sad novel," Love Warps the Mind a Little, despite herself.
On All Things ConsideredPlaylist
'Sargasso' Re-Imagines The Madwoman Of 'Jane Eyre'()
September 10, 2009 Jean Rhys' 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea endeavors to create a back story to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Though author Sara Paretsky usually resists such "vampire novels," she fell hard for Rhys' heart-chokingly urgent tale of Rochester's Madwoman.
When It Comes To Food, You Can't 'Beat This' Book()
August 3, 2009 According to author Elizabeth Berg, Beat This! is more than just a cookbook — it's a humor book, a self-help book and a kind of bible.
Bradbury's Fiction Reignites An Author's Faith()
July 30, 2009 Author Alice Hoffman says the world rendered in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 "is a place of great heart and wisdom, a universe of huge imagination where nothing is off-limits."
A Delightfully Evil Tale Of Pirates And Children()
July 7, 2009 Finding a book that makes you feel like a kid again is no easy feat, but author Andrew Sean Greer says he found just that in Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica.
Head In A Fog? Reach For 'Herzog'()
May 18, 2009 There's a little thing author Jeffrey Eugenides does when he can't write. When he's feeling sleepy, when his head is in a fog, he reaches across his desk, digs under the piles of unanswered mail, and unearths his copy of Herzog by Saul Bellow.
In Praise Of Ondaatje's Gloriously Intoxicating 'Lion'()
May 12, 2009 Author Kamila Shamsie owns two copies of Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion so that no matter where she is, she can always slip into the novel's vital, heart-stopping world.
Iceland's Stoic, Sardonic 'Independent People'()
May 4, 2009 The main character in Halldor Laxness' novel Independent People is querulous, contrary, hard-hearted and stubborn — but author Christina Sunley can't get enough of him.
'Unquiet Mind' Reveals Bipolar Disorder's Complexity()
April 13, 2009 Author Melody Moezzi says Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir, An Unquiet Mind, is the most brilliant and brutally honest book she's ever read about bipolar disorder.
About You Must Read This
Call them buttonhole books, the ones you urge passionately on friends, colleagues and passersby. All readers have them — and so do writers. In the series "You Must Read This," NPR talks with authors about their favorite buttonhole books.
Have You Read This Book?
Would you recommend it to a friend? Let us know about your reactions or ideas.
