[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up on tomorrow's show, we're going to talk with the director of a fascinating new HBO documentary series. It's called An Update on Our Family. It looks at the entertainment ecosystem of families who video blog, people who connect with millions of people over YouTube and through their subscriptions who chronicle their lives with their kids. As you can imagine, the ethics of family vlogging are murky.

An Update on Our Family debuts on HBO tomorrow, and we'll talk about it with the director of the series, Rachel Mason. On Friday, musician Josh Stokes will be here in studio. He's got a new album out titled Won't Stop Rockin', and he joins us for a live performance in WNYC's Studio 5. That's in the future. Now let's get started with books.

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Alison Stewart: A new year means a whole new set of books to read. Whatever your reading goals are, there's sure to be a brand new book that you'll be excited to add to your to-read pile. Joining me now to walk us through some of her most anticipated new books of the winter is All Of It and Get Lit producer Jordan Lauf. Hi, Jordan.

Jordan Lauf: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. What book are you most excited to read in 2025? What are your reading goals for the new year? What reading book are you reading right now that you want to recommend? We're taking your calls. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. All right. We're setting new goals for the year. We're setting new reading goals. Do you have any new reading goals for the new year?

Jordan Lauf: I have a couple, and some of them are honestly inspired by our summer reading challenge that we did last summer. One of the categories I included was to read a work of translated literature. I have found that every time I've read a translated book, it's opened up my eyes in a new way, either to a different culture or a different way of tackling fiction or stories I hadn't thought of before, so I'm hoping to read some more translated literature this year.

I also this winter have felt inspired to tackle one of those big fat Russian novels. I have only ever read Anna Karenina. Honestly, listeners, if you want to call in and also tell me what the other one I should read is. I'm considering Brothers Karamazov. I'm considering War and Peace. I'm considering Crime and Punishment. Is there another one I haven't thought of? Which one am I going to be least bored trying to get through? Please let me know. Then, I don't think setting a numerical goal is always the best.

Alison Stewart: All right.

Jordan Lauf: One year, and actually, the last couple years, I've been able to hit 52, so a book a week, which feels good.

Alison Stewart: That does feel good.

Jordan Lauf: I'm trying to push to 54. I haven't made it yet. I haven't made it yet, but maybe this will be my year.

Alison Stewart: All right. What are you reading this winter? We want to know. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Maybe it's a book you're looking forward to or whatever you're reading right now. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We've got a hundredth anniversary. That's our centennial. There's also a hundredth anniversary of two big literary books.

Jordan Lauf: So true. Probably high schoolers around the country know that it's the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby because probably your school is making you read it or do all kinds of different celebrations. That's obviously F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel. I also learned that it's the 100th birthday of Mrs. Dalloway, the Virginia Woolf novel, also from 1925. I have not read that one, so I might think about picking it up this year.

Or if you're someone who's looking for a more contemporary way in, you could read The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which is sort of his retelling of Mrs. Dalloway through the perspective of three different women. Then, if you really love that, you can watch the movie starring Nicole Kidman. It's on the Criterion channel right now.

Alison Stewart: I have interesting goals for 2025.

Jordan Lauf: I would love to hear them.

Alison Stewart: All right, so I missed a piece of 2024-

Jordan Lauf: I don't know if our listeners are aware of what was going on with you back then

Alison Stewart: - for about six months. I decided that for the first part of 2025, I was going to get to the books that I missed in 2024.

Jordan Lauf: Oh, that's a great goal.

Alison Stewart: Yes, so Rejection I want to read. I read Miranda July, All Fours.

Jordan Lauf: I was just going to say that.

Alison Stewart: Yes, that was an excellent book. Intermezzo.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. I still haven't read Intermezzo.

Alison Stewart: Yes, so my 2025 is a look back at 2024, what I missed. I also have the idea that I want to go to different bookstores than I normally go to. I have my favorites I love to go to, but I haven't been to a book club in East 3rd Street, I think it is. This cool lounge. Bibliotheque is a wine bar.

Jordan Lauf: Yes.

Alison Stewart: I did that last week. I grabbed a book and I went to a bar and I just sat and read, and it was great.

Jordan Lauf: Nice. I love that. I also want to give a shout out to Liz's Book Bar in Carroll Gardens, which is a new bookstore that opened on my block that's also a bookstore bar. It's so fun to have the environment that's like, you can browse or you can just hang out.

Alison Stewart: Both. For 2025, I do want to read Blob: A Love Story. Has that come across your desk yet?

Jordan Lauf: Okay, yes, I'll give you a copy. [laughs] I have two. I was almost going to recommend it today, and then I was like, "Maybe Alison will think that's too weird," but it turns out you love the idea. That's a new novel coming out, for those who aren't aware, about a woman who encounters this amorphous blob and she shapes it into the man of her dreams.

Alison Stewart: I love that so much.

Jordan Lauf: [laughs] It sounds so fun. I think that's out this month. I don't have it right in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it's out-- If it's not out this month, it's out, I believe, in February.

Alison Stewart: All right, we're getting our texts in. This text says, "War and Peace for sure."

Jordan Lauf: Okay.

Alison Stewart: [unintelligible 00:05:47] to that.

Jordan Lauf: All right.

Alison Stewart: "Biggest reading goal, to read some of the many books on my shelves that I bought following a recommendation and net never got to, facepalm." This is Long Island by Colm Tóibín, a continuation from his book in Brooklyn. Oh, he was on the show to talk about that.

Jordan Lauf: Yes, he was. He's so delightful. Yes, Long Island is the sequel to Brooklyn, and it picks up with our protagonist as she's in her middle age and learns that her husband has had a child with someone else, and the husband of that woman is threatening to bring child to them the minute it's born, saying, like, this is your problem, you're going to take this kid. She decides to go back home to Ireland and try to figure her life out, and there's a love triangle again. If you were a fan of Brooklyn, you'll definitely like the sequel.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Tracy. Is Tracy there? Hi, Tracy.

Tracy: Hi, I'm here. Yes.

Alison Stewart: You're on the air.

Tracy: How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

Tracy: How cool. I listened to Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, which is narrated by Meryl Streep. In listening to that, Our Town, the play, is a main character in the book, and so then I went on and watched the movie Our Town, because I never watched that. Then, the play is on Broadway, so then I went to see the play on Saturday. The book prompted me to know more about Our Town.

Alison Stewart: That's so cool. That's what I love about books. They can lead you to the next thing and then the next thing and you zig and you zag. It's so great. Thank you for calling in.

Jordan Lauf: Totally. It's like the original Wikipedia rabbit hole. Instead of clicking links, you're like, "Oh, yes, what about that Our Town? I should check that out." I thought the production with Jim Parsons was just excellent, so I'm glad you got to see it.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Harimi. Hi, Harimi, you're on the air.

Harimi: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Harimi: How are you? How are you [inaudible 00:07:41]?

Alison Stewart: It's going great. What are you going to recommend?

Harimi: The Vegetarian by Han Kang.

Alison Stewart: Tell us why you loved it.

Harimi: Well, it's a very intense book, easy read, but then, there's a lot of things going on in the book with multiple layers. On the exterior, it looks very confusing, very graphic, but then it makes you sit back and think about so many layers inside it, about patriarchy, about the Korean culture, about mental health, and about freedom, about siblings, so many things. Yes. I mean, so many things. Then, freedom from cruelty, and it's about cruelty on animals and the cruelty by human beings in general, whether it's on nature or whether it's on women, just human beings, how they can be cruel, and-- [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: You know what? I appreciate your calling in. I do. Let's talk to Tony, because Tony's got a recommendation for you, Jordan.

Jordan Lauf: Oh.

Alison Stewart: Hi, Tony.

Tony: Hello. Good morning, Alison. Your show is amazing, and I remember you from MTV. You're a wonderful host.

Alison Stewart: Thanks.

Tony: I wanted to recommend another Russian book, and that's Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. It is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so many times. Has a very deep dive into psychoses and particularly what happens with isolation, which I think is highly important in our society these days.

Jordan Lauf: All right, that's one vote for War and Peace and one vote for Crime and Punishment.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in. Jordan Lauf, she produces our Get Lit, and she's just a general fantastic All Of It producer. She's giving us her picks for 2025. Let's get into it. There's a new one for museum lovers set in New York City. Oh, it's New York City in the future. Yes?

Jordan Lauf: Yes, and that's something I've noticed with the spring books this year. A lot of them seem to be set in the near future. A lot of them seem to be speculative fiction, and there's often a lot of anxiety in them about climate change, understandably, especially with what's going on right now in Los Angeles. This book is titled All the Water in the World. It's by Eiren Caffall, and it's set in a sort of future version of New York City in which there's been a sort of apocalyptic event of some kind.

There are very few people left, but it centers on this community that has started living on the roof of the Museum of Natural History. They have some rules for their society. They are harvesting food that they're growing in Central Park. They're only allowed to take things from the exhibit of the Museum of Natural History when they really, really need it. Part of what they're doing is trying to catalog what's in there to save it, to make sure that if there are still humans alive, we'll know about the stuff that was in this museum.

Then, Manhattan floods and they have to flee and somehow save some of the things that are in the museum or keep a catalog. What I thought was really interesting about this book is the author was inspired by research she did talking to museum curators from Leningrad and from parts of the Middle East that had to deal with what to do with all these treasures they have in the museum during a time of war or unrest. I thought it was interesting that it's based on some sort of real life history, and that is out now.

Alison Stewart: A book that was just released today is a new science fiction one, and he's a fantasy writer. This was recommended by our senior producer, Kate Hinds.

Jordan Lauf: It is. It is. Kate is a big fan of this author, Nnedi Okorafor, excuse me. The title is Death of the Author. It's about a paraplegic author who decides to write this book that's sort of like a robot drama opera about the end of humanity and it becomes a bestseller, but it's also about how she is dealing with her newfound fame and what that means and also how this book might change the world and might change the way that people are thinking about society in that time.

My understanding is it's like her first attempt at realistic fiction. Obviously, there's sci-fi elements in it, but it's a person who's living today in this world. That should be an accessible book for people who want to maybe dip their toe into sci-fi but not go all the way in. That one, I believe, was just published today.

Alison Stewart: This one says, "So far this year, I have read The Safekeep, compelling historical, strange in a good way, unexpected, Shred Sisters, and just started Orbital. Recommendation, War and Peace." Orbital was really good.

Jordan Lauf: Oh, two for War and Peace.

Alison Stewart: Oh, but wait, this one says, "No, do not read War and Peace. The biggest regret of my reading life is spending nine months slogging through 900 of its 1,300 pages. I should have quit by page 200."

Jordan Lauf: Okay. Do I subtract a vote?

Alison Stewart: I don't know. I don't know.

Jordan Lauf: I don't know how that works.

Alison Stewart: This is a cute one. "Hi, Alison. Hope you're doing well. I highly recommend taking the PATH train over to Little City Books in Hoboken. Best, cutest bookshop ever. Anyone would love it." Thank you for helping me reach my goal. Let's talk about another goal. This is Allegra Goodman. It's called Isola, Isola.

Jordan Lauf: Yes, yes. This is a work of historical fiction. For people who like historical fiction, this might be a good one to pick up. It's based on the real story of a 16th century French noblewoman who was orphaned at a young age and taken in by this wealthy guardian and taken by that guardian to New France, AKA Canada and parts of America, and there she falls in love with a servant. When her guardian finds this out, he decides to take her and her love interest and drop them on an abandoned island off the coast of Canada-

Alison Stewart: I read the review of this. I was like, what?

Jordan Lauf: -and just say, like, here, figure it out, see what happens. It's about how they try to survive. It's a love story, obviously, and again, it's based on true events. If you want to go look up what happened, you could go do that. If you don't want to look it up, you could read Isola by Allegra Goodman.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with All Of It and Get Lit producer Jordan Lauf about some of the new books she's excited to read this winter, and we're taking your calls. What books are you excited to read this year? What reading goals do you have? What book are you reading right now? 212-433-9692, 212-433- WNYC. After the break, we will dive into a thriller and something that's a really big deal in literature. Stay tuned.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In studio with me is All Of It and Get Lit producer Jordan Lauf. We're talking about the books that we are excited to read. All right. I gave a tease, a thriller. What kind of thriller can I look out for?

Jordan Lauf: Yes, I'm really excited about this book. It's called Dissolution by Michael [unintelligible 00:15:02]. The protagonist, which is maybe unusual for a thriller, is an elderly woman. She's been caring for her husband with Alzheimer's for many years and it's obviously a very sad process, except that one day she learns from a mysterious visitor that he doesn't actually have Alzheimer's. Someone has been trying to erase his memories on purpose.

Through some sort of thriller, sci-fi process, she's able to get in his head, get inside his memories as they're being removed, and try to figure out what is it that these people are trying to get rid of and are the memories actually reliable. It seems like a book that would be a really good fit for people who love Blake Crouch, who tends to write these sci-fi thrillers, multiple dimensions, stuff with memory. That one is out March 25th.

Alison Stewart: All right. "Brothers Karamazov has everything a great novel should, plus snow, and is anti-patriarchal to boot. Do it."

Jordan Lauf: All right. That's one for the Brothers Karamazov.

Alison Stewart: I love that. Let's talk to Barbara. Hi, Barbara. Thanks for calling in.

Barbara: Hey, Alison. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a person, I'm sure many of your listeners to this show have a similar experience, that I love to learn through a fictional lens. I think that it's powerful to understand through the arc of a narrative and through the experience of characters some of the most painful events in human history. I think the book Beloved, I think, exemplifies this in one of the most profound ways possible, the history of human enslavement in the Americas.

I wanted to recommend several books to your listeners about the current conflagration in Israel, Palestine. I really dove in this year to reading a lot of fictional works by Palestinian authors. I just want to list three of them here. One is Mornings in Jenin by the author Susan Abulhawa. A book by Hala Alyan, who is also a poet and a psychotherapist. Her book is called Salt Houses. Then, there's a third book which I just read which was super interesting by an author named Ibtisam Azem, A-Z-E-M, called The Book of Disappearances.

Alison Stewart: Oh, thank you so much for calling, Barbara. Thank you so much for your recommendations, by the way. This says, "Karamazov, accent on the third syllable." Karamazov.

Jordan Lauf: Karamazov. My Russian is non-existent, let's say.

Alison Stewart: Let's go to Nina in Brooklyn. Hi, Nina. Thanks for calling All of It.

Nina: Hi, nice to be here.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I want to hear what you're reading.

Nina: Yes, so I am the founder of a queer book club called [unintelligible 00:18:08], and we've been around for about four years. The book we're reading right now is We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin. Emily Austin is a Canadian author, and she has a wonderful backlist, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts about Space, and her books feature mentally ill, autistic lesbians just moving through life and are super literary and fun and relatable. I would highly recommend them to anyone really looking to expand into more queer and LGBTQ literature.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for the recommendations. Up next, a really big deal in literature.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. So Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a new novel out. That's the author of Americanah, which I believe was published all the way back in maybe 2012.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it was.

Jordan Lauf: It was a real Obama era. Huge, huge novel. She hasn't written another work of fiction or full length novel since then. Her new one is coming out. It's called Dream Count. It's about a group of interconnected Nigerians who are living in Africa and America, and each of them are taking the time of the pandemic to reflect on their lives and their choices and how their lives are interconnected. It is sort of pandemic fiction in a way, but this is probably going to be the big literary event of the spring. I know people are really, really excited for her to have a new one, and that one should be out March 4th.

Alison Stewart: I'm glad. You know what? I'm a little tired of memoirs. Am I-

Jordan Lauf: I am too.

Alison Stewart: - allowed to say that? Everybody wrote one during the pandemic.

Jordan Lauf: I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday.

Alison Stewart: We have to talk really quietly so nobody can hear us.

Jordan Lauf: I know. It feels like a taboo topic. I just think a lot of people are given a book deal and it'll be like, "You wrote a great novel. Do you have a memoir in you? And they say, okay, and sometimes you just don't. Really great memoirs. I almost love nothing more than a really great memoir. How to Say Babylon from a couple years ago by Safiya Sinclair I thought was excellent. If someone's looking for a memoir recommendation, that's the most recent one that I really liked. Consent by Jill Ciment I thought was really interesting and really good. I agree with you that sometimes there are too many memoirs.

Alison Stewart: There's just so many good fiction books. We'll just say that, there's so many good fiction books.

Jordan Lauf: So much. So many good novels to read.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Mary Jane from the Upper West Side. Hi, Mary Jane. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Mary Jane: Hi. Thank you for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear it. What are you reading?

Mary Jane: Well, I have read and I'm now reading again Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. He was a journalist during the Second World War, and he worked for the Communist newspaper called Red Star, and he reported on the defense of Stalingrad. Life and Fate is his fictionalized account of the fall of Stalingrad and also on the defense of Stalingrad, and also on the fall of Berlin, but-- [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: Thank you. I'm sorry.

Mary Jane: [inaudible 00:21:13]. Sorry.

Alison Stewart: Go ahead, finish.

Mary Jane: Okay. It also is an example of what it's like to live under a dictatorship. In fact, although his book was published in 1960, which was after the death of Stalin. The book itself was arrested and destroyed, and so it was smuggled out.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much. Listen to that. That's our engineer. Little [unintelligible 00:21:42] on the trigger finger. [laughs] Let's talk to-- Let's see. Is Maria there? Yes, is Maria there? Hi, Maria.

Maria: Yes. Hi. I wanted to recommend Moby-Dick. It's not Russian, but it's a classic in America. I remember Garrison Keillor saying that nobody could possibly read that book, but I did. [chuckles] You have to take out all the whale gut stuff, go through that, but the book starts, "Call me Ishmael," and you get this creepy feeling immediately, which is appropriate. He and his mates, including Queequeg, who is a, I think Samoan, Polynesian, something, but very quiet, very tattooed, take this whaling vessel, which is sometime in the 1800s.

Everybody knows that those vessels will either make a great deal of money if they come home or the men will die. There's no other option.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for your recommendation, by the way. We are talking with All Of It and Get Lit producer Jordan Lauf about some of the new books she's excited to read this winter. We want to know what you're reading. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. I love this, that there's a book coming out in March from one of your favorite horror writers from Argentina and your mom told you to stop recommending horror books.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. My mom, when I was home for Christmas, said, "It's so nice when you go on the air, I love listening to you, but why are you always recommending these horrible sounding books where these scary things happen, things are disgusting?" I'm sorry, Mom. I'm going again because Agustina Bazterrica has a new novel out. I'm actually reading it right now. She wrote Tender Is the Flesh. For those who are familiar, it was a really big deal in the horror community. I've recommended it on here before, which I think was what grossed my mom out so badly.

This new novel is about a nun who joins this kind of religious cult while the world outside is descending into climate chaos. Again, that similar theme. A new arrival in this community shakes things up and our protagonist begins to question the structure of this cult and why is she here and is the stuff that they're telling her about what the outside world is like, is that really real? I think if you like Ottessa Moshfegh, if you can handle a little bit of grossness, you will really like her.

For example, this book starts with someone's eyes being sewed shut. Take that as a warning. If that sounds really horrible to you, don't pick this up, but if you're like, "Ooh, I kind of want to know more about what's going on in this cult," then that is The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica. She's from Argentina, and that book is out March 4th.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Daniel from Harlem. Hi, Daniel, you're on the air.

Daniel: Hi. Really enjoying the show. I wanted to recommend a novel set on an island off the coast of Maine. It's called The Islanders. It's by Lewis Robinson. It just came out at the end of last year, so I think a good book for people in 2025. As a city dweller just kind of recovering from the political season, it really transported me to a beautiful place. It's also a thriller about class and criminal justice. Robinson is from Maine and really nailed the coast of Maine. I've spent some time up there. It's a book I really enjoyed.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for the tip. Let's talk to Josh, who's calling us from Brooklyn. Hi, Josh. Thanks so much for calling All Of It. What do you want to recommend?

Josh: Hi. I would like to recommend the latest novel by Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer. I believe it's called The City and Its Uncertain Walls. For anybody who hasn't read Murakami, it will be an absolute delight. I haven't started it yet. I've read everything else he's written. I don't know what you'd call his literature. A combination of magic realism and fantasy, but in any case, it's wonderful.

Alison Stewart: Good luck to you.

Jordan Lauf: I once took a whole class on Murakami in college taught by a professor who was friends with him, and something that was really interesting was that this guy was from Japan and he didn't like our English translations. He would often bring in full sections of the book that he had translated himself, and we would compare them side by side with the English translation that's available to us. He would say, "This isn't quite right. This is how I would phrase it, and you're losing the meaning here. This is more what I would say."

That part of the class alone was just a really interesting look into the art of translation and that it really is an art and that what one person thinks the sentence says in English, another Japanese speaker would say, no, no, no, it's much more like this. That was a really interesting way for me to encounter his work.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Katya. Hi, Katya. Are you there?

Katya: Hi. Hi, I'm here. Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: I do. You're on the air.

Katya: Okay, great. I wanted to recommend a Norwegian novel called Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid, I think it's Undset. It was written and published about a hundred years ago, and it's about the life-- It's set in medieval Norway about the life of a woman from start to finish. The author won the Nobel Prize. I had never heard of her or the book until friends started insisting I read it, and it was one of the most wonderful novels I've ever read. I wanted to let everybody else know about it.

You should read the new translation by Tiina, I think her name is Nunn, Tina Nunn. It brings a real contemporary feel to the storytelling so that it feels super relatable. It was 1,100 pages long, and I was sad when it ended. I wanted more.

Jordan Lauf: Wow.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Jordan Lauf: That's the best feeling. I just finished Playworld by Adam Ross, who we had on the show maybe last week, and that was a long book. Not 1,100 pages, but it's like 500. It was one of those books where I was so immersed in the world, it's about a child actor growing up in the '80s in New York City, that I was also sad. I finished it last night, and I was kind of sad to leave those characters behind. That's the absolute best feeling.

Alison Stewart: There are good laugh out loud lines in that book.

Jordan Lauf: Yes, it's very funny and heartbreaking and really captures what it feels like to be a teenage boy, I think. I don't know, I've never been one, but maybe.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Rich from Garden City. Hi, Rich. Thank you so much for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Rich: Wow. Thanks, Alison. First-time caller. I just wanted to say I read a book by a Dr. Kenneth Kamler, Surviving the Extreme. He's a guy that NASA says we need a doctor, and they take him along. They were doing an exposition expo going to the top of Mount Everest, and he was the doctor, so he dealt there-- I'm sorry. The book starts where he's a doctor that's going down to the Amazon with scientists. What you find out is that Ken is dealing with a guy, used a machete and he cut part of his hand off.

He talks about the pain and he talks about the body and he explains it, but it's living in the extreme, but he's going in, in a sense, in a world where this is not the extreme for these people in the Amazon. When he goes up to Mount Everest, the Sherpas, one of them is practically frozen to death and he comes back to life.

Alison Stewart: Whoa.

Rich: He talks about life in the extreme. He talks about going down with NASA down under the water, because this is how they have to train, and the types of extremes that's going on there. Then, one of the other things was where he's on an expedition going in the deserts of North Africa, and people he finds are going to die, but they don't die. I don't want to say how they survive, but they need liquids and they're looking at the bottoms of [inaudible 00:30:45] and stuff like this.

Alison Stewart: Oh, Surviving with the Extreme. That's the name of that book. Okay, Jordan, I think we have time for two more fiction books. Then we're going to take a break and finish out with non-fiction. Does that work?

Jordan Lauf: That works for me.

Alison Stewart: All right. What do you want to pick?

Jordan Lauf: Okay, I will pick-- Okay. One I'm really, really excited about is called Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, I think is how you say that last name. It is a thriller set at a seed bank. It's about a family who are on this remote island off the coast of Antarctica, and they've been there to guard the seed bank that contains almost all of the world seeds. It's the largest one still surviving. Again, we're in a sort of close reality, but climate change has maybe made some things a little bit apocalyptic, and they're the last people remaining on this island, but one day, a woman washes ashore.

Sort of like the Agustina Bazterrica story of someone arriving at the convent, this person arrives at the seed bank and they're unsure what her purpose is. Then, we come to find out that maybe the father of this family hasn't been altogether truthful about what they're doing here and what their mission is. Her books Migrations and Once There Were Wolves have been really popular with readers, and this one sounds really, really exciting to me.

Alison Stewart: Your final book, your final pick this time anyway?

Jordan Lauf: You know what? I am going to give a shout out to O Sinners! by Nicole Cuffy. I love to read about cults. This is a novel about a young journalist who embeds with a cult who is led by an elderly Black Vietnam veteran who formed it in the wake of his experiences with Vietnam and that trauma. The longer this journalist spends with this group, the more he begins to question his own beliefs, as I think sometimes often happens, the more time you spend in a cult. That one is out March 18th. I'll just give one shout out to our friend Stephen Graham Jones.

Alison Stewart: He's so busy.

Jordan Lauf: He is the most prolific man, maybe other than Stephen King in horror. He is just writing a book a year, and so he's got another one out in March. This one is called The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. That's not a typo, Hunter Hunter. It's about a Blackfeet vampire. What more could you want?

Alison Stewart: We'll have more books. We're talking non-fiction after the break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is All Of It and Get Lit producer Jordan Lauf. We're talking about new books she's excited to read this winter. Okay, we've cleared the phone lines because now we're talking about non-fiction books. Are you interested in non-fiction? Have you read any recently? You want to recommend some, give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. For the rest of the hour, we're going to talk about non-fiction books. Up first, you have some history, the history of Africa.

Jordan Lauf: Yes.bI am not exaggerating when I say I'm quite literally going to go buy this book after work today. This is An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi. This is just an area of history I'm woefully uneducated in. I was a history major, but my concentration was Europe, Eurocentric, I know, but I just finished Mary Beard's SPQR about the history of ancient Rome. They talked a lot about ancient Carthage in that book, which I believe is in present day Tunisia.

It got me more interested about ancient African history and learning what was going on there at this time, so this seems like a really good survey, again, from the dawn of humanity to independence. You're going to get a wide range of what was going on in the continent from the beginning of humans to now. It just seems like a good survey for people like me who want to learn more. That is out today, so I'm going to go grab it.

Alison Stewart: Imani Perry has a new book out sitting on my shelf right now.

Jordan Lauf: She does. It's titled Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. It's a history of the relationship between Black Americans and the color blue in a variety of different ways and interpretations, from music, rhythm and blues, obviously, to the role that indigo dyes plays in the slave trade, to the term black blue to refer to someone's skin. That book is out January 28th, and I don't want to jump the gun, but Get Lit fans, you might want to pick that one up.

Alison Stewart: Could be. Could happen.

Jordan Lauf: Could happen.

Alison Stewart: Could be Imani Perry. Maybe.

Jordan Lauf: Maybe.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Let's talk to Susan from Astoria. Hi, Susan.

Susan: Hello. Yes, I want to recommend a book by John Lloyd Stephens, who was a New Yorker, written about 1847. He's a young man who went down to the Yucatan in Mexico because he'd heard all these cities and sculptures and stuff were found down there. He's really the refinder of Mayan places like Pyramids, Chichén Itzá, all of those places. He's a very good storyteller. He went down when there were civil wars going on and he experienced everything.

Civil wars going between those-- just exploring and really seeming to enjoy traveling through really jungle and meeting different people and living the life down there, and then finding these amazing places, these ruins that were just covered by undergrowth. For example, when he first came-- [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: Excuse me, I'm going to interrupt you there because we have so many recommendations. Thank you so much for calling. I do want to thank you. This one is An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood, by Jimmy Carter. It's about his life growing up on his family farm and how it built his discipline. I'd like to recommend Ketanji Brown Jackson's Lovely One. All right, so for people who love Saturday Night Live, 50th anniversary is this year. There's a book to go along with that.

Jordan Lauf: That's exactly right. The book is titled Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. It's by Susan Morrison. It is obviously a biography of Lorne Michaels. I recently watched the movie Saturday Night about the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live, a fictionalized account, but from that and also from listening to The Lonely Island Seth Meyers Podcast, I realized I know very little about Lorne Michaels. He's sort of this mysterious man behind the scenes who's pulling the levers, but I don't actually know anything about his life or his comedic sensibilities or how he got to helm this show.

I'm very interested to learn more about the man behind the cipher. That one is out February 18th.

Alison Stewart: Your next recommendation is for people who want to learn more about our city.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. There is a new book coming out from Russell Shorto. I have not read The Island at the Center of the World, but I hear it's one of the very best books about early New York history, about our Dutch roots here in the city. He's got a new one out. It's titled Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America. It's the history of the Dutch arriving in Manhattan and also the conflicts between the Dutch and the English over who is going to have control over these territories.

I understand he had newly translated documents to work with and that he also tried really hard to include sources from Indigenous Americans and enslaved people to tell what their perspective was like during this time of early Manhattan. That one is out March 4th.

Alison Stewart: Send us your recommendations. If you have non-fiction books that you'd like to read or one that you're reading right now, our phone number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. I'm speaking with All Of It and Get Lit producer Jordan Lauf. It says, "Hello. My mom sent me a book I'm currently reading called Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm by Isabella Tree." Thanks for that text. John Green has a new non-fiction book coming out. This looks really interesting.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. This book is titled Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. He dives into the history of tuberculosis and how it still affects people currently. I understand he was inspired to tackle this subject because he befriended a young tuberculosis patient during some work he was doing in Sierra Leone, and part of the book is telling this man's story and also just chronicling the history of a really terrible illness.

John Green and his brother Hank do such a good job of making science and anthropology and all different kinds of subjects accessible to people. I think even if you're not super interested in science or you think that you're not, his work is always really good to pick up and get, not a beginner's understanding, but a layman's understanding of what's going on. That one is out March 18th.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Beth in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Hi, Beth. You're on the air.

Beth: Hi, Alison. So glad you're back and healthy. I just wanted to recommend a book by a judge named David Tatel, and it's called Vision, and it talks about his career as a civil rights rights lawyer in the '70s, and he's someone who's blind. He lost most of his vision over his teenage years and early twenties, but he ended up taking the vacancy by Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. circuit, so he was involved in a lot of really important cases. It also talks about just navigating his life as a man who lost his eyesight and eventually, at a much older age, got a seeing eye dog. It's really wonderful.

Alison Stewart: How did you learn about that book, Beth?

Beth: Terry Gross.

Jordan Lauf: Ah, Terry, our friend at two o'clock.

Alison Stewart: Sticking with slightly sad topics, there's a new history of a very famous-- This is sad. It's a history of a very famous event in Irish history.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. This is titled Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine by-- Oh, boy. I think in English we pronounce this Patrick X. Scanlan, but it's Padraic X. Scanlan. Sorry to this author. I should have looked that up beforehand. It's a history of the Irish famine, and I honestly actually feel like I know nothing about this event other than that it brought a lot of Irish immigrants here to our great city.

This looks like an accessible look at what happened, the root causes of it, and I think what's interesting is also it's an imperial history, so it's also looking at the impacts of the British Empire and what was going on during that time. That one is out March 11th.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Tony who's calling us from Sydney, Australia. Hi, Tony.

Tony: Good morning. Well, good evening. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing well, sir.

Tony: Morning for me. The book that I enjoyed is Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper, and it's about a little girl who had cerebral palsy and her story of growing up and the people around her, the adults, the teachers, the doctors, just not understanding what her cognitive ability was. It was greater than they thought. She ended up proving-- I don't want to spoil it. How much should I tell about the story?

Alison Stewart: Tony, thank you for calling in. Let's talk to Robert from Manhattan. Hi, Robert. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Robert: Hey, how are you? Longtime listener, not exactly a first-time caller, but anyway, the book I'd like to recommend is Bone of the Bone by Sarah Marsh. It's a book about a farm girl from humble beginnings who made good in the world of writing, and it's just fantastic. She starts out in Kansas. She ends up going to Ivy League school teaching, loses her money when her mother dies, and has to start over and becomes an author, and the rest is history.

Alison Stewart: I think we had her on the show.

Jordan Lauf: Yes, we did have Sarah Smarsh on the show. She's great. I think if you are someone who is trying to understand the way that the media covers "Trump voters" "white working class Americans", she's someone who comes from that background and really understands it both as someone who has that lived experience and as a journalist covering it. It's a collection of essays, I think that spans about 10 years from around 2013 to last year, and it's really worth picking up.

Alison Stewart: For those who are huge fans of public radio and NPR, which I hope is everybody who's listening right now, there's a new book for people who want to learn more.

Jordan Lauf: Yes, it's kind of a biography of NPR. It's called On the Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR by journalist Steve Oney. It's exactly as it sounds. It's a history from the 1970s until today. If you are listening to this now and you love WNYC, you love listening to NPR, and maybe you want to learn a little more, that one comes out on March 11th. You can pick it up. I wanted to also mention to one of the callers who called in about the explorer who had discovered the Mayan ruins, it sounded like she was really interested in that topic. Another non-fiction book that's older that I really recommend is 1491.

It's by Charles C. Mann, and it's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. If you find that topic interesting, this really takes a deep dive into Mayan and Aztec history and what was going on on that continent back then before he discovered those ruins. You might find that interesting.

Alison Stewart: Yes, might be interested, the On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR. The former NPR people, they call them nippers.

Jordan Lauf: Oh.

Alison Stewart: They get together and they have a little coffee [unintelligible 00:45:11]. We should maybe get some of them in here and have them review the book.

Jordan Lauf: That would be fun. I think that would be great. We would get so many calls. I'm sure they'll have opinions about what's in there. I don't know. I don't know if we want to throw Steve Oney into the firing squad, but yes.

Alison Stewart: Maybe. Let's talk to Jeff from Morris County, New Jersey. Hi, Jeff.

Jeff: Hi. How you doing?

Alison Stewart: Doing well.

Jeff: Okay. The book I want to recommend is by Dr. Christine Silverstein, and it's called Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, and Young Adults to Win in Life. She's a registered nurse, a peak performance coach, and a clinical hypnotherapist. In her book, she describes the history of mental health and psychiatry in the US that includes mental health institutions with the horrific things that they did to people with lobotomies and using insulin therapy, none of which were really helpful for people.

Where we've evolved now, as she describes in the book, is that about the only thing that psychiatrists can offer now are drugs. There's no more therapeutic talk. You go in and you get drugs. Dr. Silverstein, she describes, in her practice, she's developed a set of techniques that she calls mindful toughness, which does not involve drugs, and-- [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: Jeff, I'm going to cut you off there only because we're running out of time. You gave us a great recommendation. Thank you so much for people who are interested in that. I did want to get to your final recommendation. Historical true crime.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. For people who really like that, we did a whole series last year on women behaving badly, which is basically criminal women throughout New York City history.

Alison Stewart: It was so good, though.

Jordan Lauf: It was so good. This one, sadly, the woman is the victim. It is called A Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen. It's by Hallie Rubenhold, and it is the story of a popular New York City singer who, in the early 1920s or early 1900s, was found dead and her husband immediately goes on the lam, maybe with his mistress in tow. How was she involved? We don't exactly know, or maybe we do, you have to read to find out.

Apparently he's a doctor, but maybe he's a medical fraudster. It's a whole investigation into what's going on with this guy and the sad murder in early 20th century New York City.

Alison Stewart: Let's try to get in another call. This is Katie from Staten Island. Hi, Katie. You're on the air.

Katie: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Katie: I love this. I want to know the whole list. Can I go to your website?

Alison Stewart: We're thinking about it, but it's always in a transcript on the website. You can always find that that way.

Katie: Oh, okay. Cool. Okay. The book I'd like to recommend is Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's such a beautiful book. Tell us why you like it.

Katie: Well, it's about aging and death and our medical system and the priorities that we've made as a society. It just makes you think about things that are going to affect you. It's going to affect all of us.

Alison Stewart: Katie, thanks so much for calling. All right, people on the team, they come to you, they say to you, Jordan, I have a reading goal. Tell us about some of the staff's reading goals real quick.

Jordan Lauf: Yes. I'll shout out two of our producers. Luke Green has an extensive reading list. He wants to read James by Percival Everett, which is a big book from last year. He wants to read Demon Copperhead because I guilted him into it, because my daily--

Alison Stewart: So good.

Jordan Lauf: Every time I come on the show, I shout out Demon Copperhead, read it if you haven't. Kate Hines-- [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: Wait a second, though. I have to say, he finished The Power Broker, though.

Jordan Lauf: Luke Green finished The Power Broker in what must be record time. Maybe two months maybe. That is shocking.

Alison Stewart: Had to shout it out.

Jordan Lauf: Yes, no, good shout out. Our senior producer, Kate Hinds, is really excited for the new S.A. Cosby novel, King of Ashes. He's a great crime writer. This one apparently is inspired by The Godfather. It's out in June, so that should be really exciting. I just want to conclude by saying the vote tally on what Russian novel I should read was inconclusive. I'm left no better than where I started. The conclusion seems to be I should just pick.

Alison Stewart: Just pick one. We'll let you know what she picks next time she's on. All Of It and Get Lit producer Jordan Lauf. Thanks for being with us, Jordan.

Jordan Lauf: Such a pleasure as always.

Alison Stewart: Tomorrow, comedian and writer Gary Gulman will be here to talk about his new off Broadway show Grandiloquent, and we'll talk with Pre-Loved Podcast host Emily Stochl about how to score great vintage finds. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.