Listen Up! Audiobooks For Every Taste

iStockphoto.com

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the holiday rush — too swamped, even, to spend an afternoon reading those books you got for Christmas, we have some recommendations for you — but these are audiobooks, so you can listen while you multitask.

Robin Whitten is the editor and founder of AudioFile magazine. Her list of the year's best audiobooks begins with a selection that might while away the hours on a long family road trip. "Toothiana is one of William Joyce's books that's in the Guardians of Childhood series," she tells NPR's David Greene. "He has the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and St. Nicholas, who all become superheroes through these various books."

"It is so inventive and imaginative, and it's great for storytelling," she adds. And that storytelling quality is part of what makes a good audiobook. "Oftentimes, episodic stories and mysteries ... in fiction, it's easier to see how audiobooks and the audio medium work."

There is a nonfiction selection on Whitten's list: Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, which chronicles the third president's life in an immersive style reminiscent of good fiction. Whitten adds that the book also benefits from the voice of a good reader. "You can be that involved [with the book] as you see the words on the page, but in audio, the narrator helps place you there."

Some audiobooks have celebrity narrators — for example, Colin Firth can be heard reading The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. "For a lot of people who've never really considered or been interested in an audiobook, they think, 'Oh, I love Colin Firth, I love his voice' ... and so they may try something," Whitten says. "And they also may not really know who Graham Greene is ... but they're attracted to it, so they're going to give it a try." Firth's voice is beautiful, she adds, "and he has a really special way of being inside the story, which is actually a personal, I think, a personal favorite of his ... it's in your head, as if he's telling just you."

Fiction

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Read by Holter Graham

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Read by Edoardo Ballerini

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Read by Simon Vance

Biography and History

Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin
Read by Alex Jennings

Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley
Read by George Guidall

Nonfiction and Culture

Abundance by Steve Kotler and Peter Diamandis
Read by Arthur Morey

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens
Read by Simon Prebble

Mystery and Suspense

An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer
Read by David Pittu

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
Read by Ralph Cosham

View the original article here

Sir Peter Westmacott Plays Not My Job

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

This segment was originally broadcast on Aug. 24, 2012.

We do what damage we can on this show, but it's not often we get the chance to cause a real international incident. So we're very excited that Sir Peter Westmacott, Great Britain's ambassador to the U.S., has agreed to play our game called "No homework, extended naps and eight hours of recess!"

A lot of big-time politicians got their start as little politicians, running for the student council. We'll ask Westmacott three questions about strange doings in the school halls of power.

View the original article here

If You Didn't Know, Now You Know

On-air challenge: This week is the annual "new names in the news" quiz. You're given some names that you probably never heard of before 2012, but who made news during the past 12 months. You say who they are. These names were compiled with the help of Kathie Baker and Tim Goodman, who were players on previous year-end quizzes.

Last week's challenge: Take the last name of a famous actor. Drop the first letter, and you'll get the last name of a famous artist. Drop the first letter again, and you'll get the name of a god in classical mythology. What names are these?

Answer: [Charles] Grodin, [Auguste] Rodin, Odin

Winner: George Bastuba of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Next week's challenge from listener Ben Bass of Chicago: First, name a U.S. state capital. Rearrange its letters to spell the name of another American city. Remove one letter and read the result backward to spell a third American city. Finally, move the first letter of that to the end to spell a fourth American city. The cities are in four different states. What are they?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week's challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern.

View the original article here

Close The Year Out With Some Best-Selling Last Words

iStockphoto.com

People often make lists of the greatest opening lines in fiction, but closing lines really appeal to me. They're your final moments with a book and can help you remember and treasure it forever.

The last weekend of the year seems an appropriate time to consider the final words of our favorite novels and short stories. Here are some that I'm especially fond of:

NPR librarian Kee Malesky has been dubbed "the source of all human knowledge" by NPR's Scott Simon. The author of the books All Facts Considered and Learn Something New Every Day: 365 Facts to Fulfill Your Life, she shares her adventures from the reference desk in this series called Kee Facts.

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Middlemarch
George Eliot
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs."

Still Life With Woodpecker
Tom Robbins
"But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know: (1) Everything is part of it. (2) It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

The Good Earth
Pearl Buck
""Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold.' But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled."

The Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac
"Then I added 'Blah,' with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world."

Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt
"I stand on the deck with the Wireless Officer looking at the lights of America twinkling. He says, 'My God, that was a lovely night, Frank. Isn't this a great country altogether?' 'Tis.'"

The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson
"Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

The Dead
James Joyce
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

The Silence of the Lambs
Thomas Harris
"But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs."

The World According to Garp
John Irving
"In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases." (Note: John Irving has told interviewers that he always writes the last lines of his novels first.)

What last lines would you share from your favorite books? Please add yours to the comments section below.

View the original article here

On Your Plate In 2013, Expect Kimchi And Good-For-You Greens

Commentator Bonny Wolf expects Asian cuisine like kimchi fried rice to become even more popular in 2013.

iStockphoto.com Commentator Bonny Wolf expects Asian cuisine like kimchi fried rice to become even more popular in 2013.

iStockphoto.com

Weekend Edition food commentator Bonny Wolf offers her predictions of what we'll eat in the new year.

Asia is the new Europe. It's been gradual: from pan-Asian, Asian fusion and Asian-inspired to just deciding among Vietnamese, Korean, Tibetan and Burmese for dinner.

Should we have the simple food of the Thai plateau or the hot, salty, sour foods of southern Thailand?

The new flavors of the year won't come from the kitchens of chefs trained at Le Cordon Bleu. More likely, they'll trickle up from Asian street foods. Chipotle has opened ShopHouse, with a menu inspired by street food from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi.

Even comfort foods are becoming Asian: Vietnamese pho, Korean kimchi fried rice and Chinese hot pots.

Speaking of kimchi, we'll see a lot more fermented food. Last year, we canned. This year, we ferment. Think sauerkraut. Or if you're under 30, kombucha, which — for you old folks — is fermented tea. Fermented foods produce probiotics — good bacteria.

Good-for-you foods remain big. Vegetables are now entrees — as well as ice creams. I'm going to go out on a limb, though, and say Brussels sprouts may have peaked. Where do they have left to go? They've been paired with every ingredient known to modern cooks. They've gone from "Eww ... Brussels sprouts" to being the most popular kid in vegetable school. They've been baked, breaded, roasted and shredded.

We'll see more dark, leafy greens, beet tops, collards and probably even more varieties of kale. And expect more seaweed. It, too, contributes to long life. As a member of the baby boom, I can say this: We really want to hang on.

Veganism is getting even bigger, but so is nose-to-tail.

Farm-to-table now includes farm-to-bar. Mixologists (a.k.a. bartenders) have their own gardens or shop at farmers markets for produce to add to cocktails. Also watch for more smoked drinks — with smoked ice cubes, of course — and barrel-aged cocktails. Like everything else, they'll be more savory than sweet.

And if you want just to be left alone to eat whatever unhip food you want, consider adding a little soy sauce.

Bonny Wolf is managing editor of American Food Roots.

View the original article here

Courage And Curiosity: The Best Heroines Of 2012

Nishant Choksi

The most dangerous trait a woman can possess is curiosity. That's what myths and religion would have us believe, anyway. Inquisitive Pandora unleashed sorrow upon the world. Eve got us kicked out of paradise. Blight on civilization it may be, but female curiosity is a gift to narrative and the quality my five favorite heroines of the year possess in spades.

These women come to us from history, from a novel, from the pages of a diary and from an ancient poem. They're women who want to know things, who want to devour the world. Refreshingly, they aren't primarily defined by their desire to love or be loved — or even to be especially lovable — these are sublimely stubborn women, frequently at odds with themselves and always at odds with their times. They're on quests. Which isn't to say that these quests are necessarily successful (the heroines of one particular book were flamboyant failures). The outcome is immaterial; the wanting is all.

In 1983, the French artist Sophie Calle found a lost address book on a street in Paris. She rang up the people listed and asked about the owner of the book, whom she calls Pierre D. ("I will try to discover who he is without ever meeting him.") She published her findings in a newspaper — to the outrage of the real Pierre, who threatened to sue. Calle agreed to hold off republishing the pieces until after his death.

Pierre died in 2005, and this book is now available in English. I'd foolishly worried that there would be something self-consciously whimsical, something Amelie about the project. But from the outset, Calle's inquiry is too serious and strange and plain difficult. A few people refuse to speak to her. Others agree to meet Calle, but can't recall Pierre. The testimonies add up; our quarry comes into focus then blurs again: He lives alone. His hair went white the week his mother died. He has conventional sexual fantasies. He wears ill-fitting clothes, like a clown. Assembling a personality from these shards is intoxicating, a bit like solving a mystery, a bit like falling in love. But whom are we falling in love with? Is it Pierre? Or is it our guide? The book includes photographs of the people, paintings and places dear to Pierre. The most arresting portrait is of a young woman — could it be Calle? — in profile, hiding her face behind long dark hair, inscrutable to the last.

The second volume of Susan Sontag's posthumously published journals picks up in New York in the '60s with the writer's reputation established and romantic life in shambles. It's a book in fragments: the "hot exhalations of the mind," images that gave her pleasure (the "pale pinkish brown color of stone houses" in Corsica), and some scabrous self-criticism. We see Sontag lie to herself ("I've constructed a life in which I can't be profoundly distressed or upset by anyone") and arrive at painful personal realizations.

Most of all, these journals are a portrait of a woman who was the custodian of her intellect. "I've got this thing — my mind. It gets bigger, its appetite is insatiable," she writes, and these pages — rife with lists of books to read, films she's seen, and words to learn — record how she fed it. The critic Daniel Mendelsohn wrote that Sontag burst on to the literary scene, "a cultural-critical Athena, armored with a vast erudition, bristling with epigrams". This book reminds us of the daily diligence this display required. "Buy a dictionary the size of an elephant," she ordered herself. "A writer, like an athlete, must 'train' every day. What did I do today to keep in 'form'?"

Lisa Cohen gives us three stylish, independent heroines for the price of one in her triptych of women, once famous, now forgotten: Esther Murphy, a spellbinding conversationalist who never managed to produce the books her public so eagerly awaited; Madge Garland, a gifted editor at British Vogue; and Mercedes de Acosta, the "first celebrity stalker" who became the lover of the most glamorous women of her time, including Marlene Dietrich, Isadora Duncan and Greta Garbo. The three women, who were intimates, moved in the lively and quarrelsome lesbian circles of early 20th-century New York, Paris and London, and Cohen vividly brings this world to life. She also makes an original and persuasive case for her subjects' métiers, the fleeting, trivialized forms of cultural production: conversation, collecting and fashion.

It's a gossipy, gorgeous, near-perfect biography that turns the form inside out. "I have wanted to make these three women visible again," Cohen writes. "But none of them thought herself in need of rescue. Each memorialized herself and colluded in her own invisibility."

Carol Anshaw's taut novel of how a horrific accident propels three siblings on very different courses has many qualities to recommend it. It's sharp and wise and manages the impossible: to write about sex in a genuinely sexy way. But most of all, it has Alice.

Alice is the rumpled, heroic soul of the book — and possibly the year's most purely sympathetic character. An artist desperately in love with her elusive model girlfriend, jittering with need and trauma, she and her sister Carmen are struggling to save their brother from tumbling further into addiction. (Anshaw, whose own brother struggled with addiction, unsparingly depicts what it means to lose a family member to drug dependency.) Hers is a journey of learning to live productively with great guilt, of the solace of work and art and sisterhood (Alice "pitied everyone who didn't have a sister.") Our siblings do much more than merely support us, they hone us, like steel sharpening steel.

In her new book, the poet and classicist Anne Carson remixes Sophocles' great tragedy, Antigone, with Hegel, Virginia Woolf and strains from her own life. The book is hand lettered, and Bianca Stone's surreal illustrations tell a story of their own: beautiful girls with cinderblock heads, tottering furniture, a shovel, a ladder, red thread pinioning a horse's hooves, red thread twining around spoons, red thread unspooling over the pages like a long trail of blood.

Antigone, our heroine, is "a person in love with the impossible." She is the daughter of Oidipus and sister to Eteokles and Polyneikes (Carson's own spellings) who have slain each other in battle. She defies her uncle Kreon's order to leave Polyneikes' body unburied, risking death by being buried alive. The book speaks to us in our own language — and cheekily references other interpretations of the play: ("Remember how Brecht had you do the whole play with a door strapped to your back" the chorus asks Antigone) — while matching the horror and heartbreak of the original. Realizing death is near, Antigone says:

"You ask would I have done it for a husband or a child my answer is no I would not. A husband or a child can be replaced but who can grow me a new brother. Is this a weird argument, Kreon thought so but I don't know. The words go wrong they call my piety impiety, I'm alone on my insides I died long ago."

Parul Sehgal is an editor at The New York Times Book Review and a frequent contributor to NPR.

View the original article here

Graphic Novels That Flew Under The Radar In 2012

As 2012 winds to a close, Glenn Weldon shares a couple of graphic novels that caught his eye this year: Drama by Raina Telgemeier and The Crackle of the Frost by Lorenzo Mattotti and Jorge Zentner. (This piece initially aired Nov. 20, 2012, on All Things Considered).

View the original article here