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The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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

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Sign up for The Thread newsletter to get reading recommendations from Kerri Miller and other bookworms around the MPR newsroom. Sam Stroozas rounds up local events and Minnesota book news you may have missed.

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.

Cat videos and all, the internet may be humankind's greatest masterpiece

Cat videos and all, the internet may be humankind's greatest masterpiece

In her new book "Magic and Loss," Virginia Heffernan makes the case for the Internet as art. Just look at Twitter, she says. "It's hard to think of a time when poetry was more powerful."

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Scott Frank on relearning to write

Scott Frank on relearning to write

Scott Frank has written screenplays for years, including for blockbusters like "Minority Report." But when it came to writing his first novel, he felt like a beginner.
by MPR News Staff

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Exploring the 'quiet New York' with Emma Straub

Exploring the 'quiet New York' with Emma Straub

Straub's new book, "Modern Lovers," is a tale of old friendships, secrets and family entanglements set in a part of Brooklyn writers often ignore: leafy, largely residential Ditmas Park.
by Lynn Neary

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'Black Gods Of The Asphalt' takes basketball beyond the court

'Black Gods Of The Asphalt' takes basketball beyond the court

When you see a bunch of guys playing street basketball you might not just see a game. In his new book, "Black Gods of the Asphalt," author Onaje Woodbine shows how it's also a spiritual experience.

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Slavery scars a transatlantic family tree in 'Homegoing'

Slavery scars a transatlantic family tree in 'Homegoing'

Yaa Gyasi's debut novel follows the family lines of two separated half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana: One is married off to an Englishman, while the other is sent to America and sold into slavery.

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Kao Kalia Yang returns with 'The Song Poet'

Kao Kalia Yang returns with 'The Song Poet'

Kao Kalia Yang's new book is a memoir of her father, a song poet in the Hmong tradition.
by MPR News Staff

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Best books for grads that aren't Dr. Seuss

Best books for grads that aren't Dr. Seuss

As much as you love "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" / there are other great books that all new grads should know.
by Tracy Mumford

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Indigenous Book Club Month: Books by Native authors

Indigenous Book Club Month: Books by Native authors

The month of June is Indigenous Book Club Month in Canada, so MPR News host Tom Weber thought, why not have our own in Minnesota?
by MPR News Staff

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Practice makes possible: What we learn by studying amazing kids

Practice makes possible: What we learn by studying amazing kids

In the age-old fight between hard work and talent, researcher Anders Ericsson says it's no contest. Practice wins the day.
by Cory Turner

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Moving, inventive 'Thing with Feathers' is a guide to grief

Moving, inventive 'Thing with Feathers' is a guide to grief

Max Porter's darkly funny, fiercely emotional new novel centers on a family -- a husband and two sons -- devastated by the loss of their wife and mother. And then the crow appears.
by Heller McAlpin

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