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 is a weekly series where The Thread 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.

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

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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.

Tickets are now available for our 26th season. Join award-winning journalist and MPR News host Kerri Miller (and special guest host Catharine Richart) as they talk with authors including Stacey Abrams, Patricia Lockwood, Misty Copeland, John Grisham, and Kate Baer.

April 18, 2005 11:20 AM

War from the civilians' perspective

A journalist who has reported from war zones in the Middle East and Europe writes about the experiences of ordinary Iraqis in the months before Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

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April 11, 2005 5:09 PM

Poet Laureate Ted Kooser writes from the heartland

Poet Ted Kooser has had quite a year. Kooser, a retired insurance executive from Nebraska, was named the U.S. Poet Laureate in fall 2004. And just last week, he won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his newest collection, "Delights and Shadows." Kooser is in the Twin Cities for a reading at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis Monday night.

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April 9, 2005 8:08 AM

Bob Dylan at the crossroads

The idea of writing an entire book around a single song would be considered a daunting task by most authors. Greil Marcus just thought it was a bad idea. However, after first refusing the project, Griel began to realize the cultural impact of "Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads."

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April 5, 2005 1:20 PM

Author says Iranian youth want reform

The Iranian presidential election in June is expected to bring a conservative successor to reformist President Mohammad Khatami, but Iranian-American journalist Azadeh Moaveni says that her generation of young Iranians is hungry for democratic reform. Moaveni is the author of the bestselling "Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran."

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March 9, 2005 1:00 AM

The unhappy life of "Beautiful Inez"

The main character in Minnesota author Bart Schneider's new novel, "Beautiful Inez," seems to have it all. She's a violinist with the San Francisco Symphony in the 1960s. Inez has a flourishing career, two children and a powerful husband. Yet she's unhappy. Schneider told MPR's Greta Cunningham Inez uses music and relationships to try to grasp happiness. He reads from the book March 10 at the Bound to Be Read Bookstore in St. Paul.

by Greta Cunningham

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March 8, 2005 3:00 PM

Race relations in "intimate places"

Twin Cities author Jonathan Odell explores race relations in what he calls "the intimate spaces" of everyday life in his first novel, "The View from Delphi." Odell's book is the March selection of the Talking Volumes book club.

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March 2, 2005 12:20 PM

Fictional fraud in the Final Four

John Feinstein covered sports and politics in his eleven years at the Washington Post. He has written several bestselling books, including "A Season on the Brink" and "A Good Walk Spoiled," but Feinstein's latest novel is his first foray into the genre of young adult fiction. "Last Shot" is the story of two teenagers who win press passes to cover college basketball's Final Four and unearth a plot to fix the big game.

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February 25, 2005 1:20 PM

When are split-second decisions the right ones?

New Yorker Staff Writer Malcolm Gladwell answers questions about his latest book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," at the Commonwealth Club of California. "Blink," which explores snap judgements, is number one on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

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February 25, 2005 12:20 PM

The power and pitfalls of snap judgements

By the time you finish this sentence, you may very well have decided whether or not to listen to Malcolm Gladwell's speech at the Commonwealth Club of California. Gladwell's book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" is about these kinds of split-second decisions: how they are made, why they are often surprisingly good and why they are sometimes tragically bad.

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February 16, 2005 1:20 PM

A writer's view of true crime

Minnesota author Judith Guest is drawn to the dark side of life. She loves reading the most lurid tales from the daily newspapers: the kidnappings and the murders. Her latest novel, "The Tarnished Eye," is based on the real-life unsolved killings of a father, mother and their four children.

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