The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread® is your source for book recommendations and other literary news.

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Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where host Emily Bright checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. Listen to Ask a Bookseller to find your next favorite book.

Big Books and Bold Ideas

Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller and produced by Kelly Gordon every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

Talking Volumes

Talking Volumes is an annual event series featuring notable authors in conversation about their new books. Presented by MPR News and The Minnesota Star Tribune.

A book about the "small acts that can turn friends into family"
"I didn't want it to end. I tell you, anyone who reads this book is going to fall in love with Arthur Truluv, and with his new family as well," said bookseller Vivien Jennings.
When making books was as much of an art as writing them
The Larkspur Press in Kentucky is two years behind schedule, with no plans to catch up. Printer Gray Zeitz sets each letter of the book by hand and then prints on a press from the early 1900s.
Thread Book Hour: Stephen Greenblatt and Mark Bowden
Thread Book Hour featuring Stephen Greenblatt on "The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve" and Mark Bowden on "Hue, 1968."
A classics professor explains 'Why Bob Dylan Matters'
Harvard professor Richard F. Thomas teaches a popular class on the importance of Bob Dylan, and now he's turned it into a book, full of stories, personal history and the occasional comparison to Ovid.
Finding humanity in a computer lab
Bookseller Sarah Hutton recommends a novel that blends a family mystery with the story of a computer learning to be human.
The 2017 National Book Award winners
For Jesmyn Ward, who won the fiction prize for "Sing, Unburied, Sing," it was her second National Book Award.