Books

Books
Arts

You'll Be Caught Fast By This Delightful 'Fly Trap'

2:57pm June 02, 2015

by Heller McAlpin

Fredrik Sjöberg's wry memoir celebrates the beauty of limitations, tiny wonders and intense focus; in Sjöberg's case, a focus on the hoverflies he studies on his home island of Runmarö in Sweden.

A Tome For Peruvian Food, By Its Most Acclaimed Ambassador

2:42pm June 02, 2015

by NPR Staff

Gaston Acurio is the world's premiere cheerleader for Peruvian cuisine, and he has just written a cookbook. It features 500 recipes from around the country — including more than 20 kinds of ceviche.

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Novelist Saul Bellow, shown shortly after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, also won the National Book Award — three times — and the Pulitzer Prize.

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Arts

A Century After His Birth, Saul Bellow's Prose Still Sparkles

2:23pm June 02, 2015

by Tom Vitale

Bellow's centennial is being marked with reprints and a new biography. Today, critics still savor his metaphor-rich prose; his son remembers the personal pain the great writer caused.

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Michelle Goldberg is a senior contributing writer for The Nation.

Those Yoga Poses May Not Be Ancient After All, And Maybe That's OK

2:02pm June 02, 2015

In her new book, Michelle Goldberg traces the Western practice of yoga to a Russian woman named Indra Devi. Goldberg says that many of the poses in modern yoga can't be traced beyond 150 years ago.

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Books

Four Books That Deliver Unexpected And Delightful Surprises This Summer

1:16pm June 02, 2015

by Maureen Corrigan

Travel (near and far), literary souvenirs and the crucial companionship of humankind's best friend are the subjects of the books on Maureen Corrigan's early summer reading list.

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A Full Head Of Ghosts photo from multimedia.

Books
Arts

'Ghosts' Is An Eerie, Edgy Tale Of Perception And Possession

11:22am June 02, 2015

by Jason Heller

Paul Tremblay's new novel is, on the surface, a story about a book about a reality show about a real-life event, but reviewer Jason Heller says it becomes an "unsettling conversation about the truth."

Author Mark Ribowsky describes Otis Redding as "bigger than the music he sang, because of how he sang and interpreted it during the most traumatic, metamorphic decade in history."

'Like An Avalanche': Otis Redding's Unstoppable Crossover

6:07pm May 30, 2015

by NPR Staff

"He had an underground kind of appeal that built on itself," says author Mark Ribowsky, whose book Dreams to Remember traces Redding's unlikely pivot into national stardom.

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Brahma Kumaris fill Will Hodgkinson's suburban living room on a Saturday in 1982.

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Arts

How Bad Risotto Led To A House 'Full Of Yogis': A Critic's Childhood Story

11:14am May 30, 2015

by NPR Staff

When Will Hodgkinson was a kid, his father, a journalist, was hit with a bad case of food poisoning. Over the long recovery period, he rethought his life — and decided to join the Brahma Kumaris.

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Books
Arts

Bringing Tales Of WWII To American Radios And Bookshelves

11:14am May 30, 2015

Bill Shirer brought stories of war in Europe into American homes. NPR's Scott Simon talks with Ken Cuthbertson about his new book, A Complex Fate: William L. Shirer and the American Century.

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Books

NPR Bestsellers: Week Of May 28, 2015

4:03pm May 29, 2015

The lists are compiled from weekly surveys of close to 500 independent bookstores nationwide.