logo
``

Three Percent #53: Are the NBCCs the Greatest American Book Awards?

On this week’s podcast, we welcome National Book Critics Circle board member Carolyn Kellogg to talk about the NBCC awards, the changes to the National Book Award (which set me off on a bit of a paranoid rant), Bookish and its suckishness, and a variety of other literary topics. I also want to add a bit of an update. ...

``

The 2013 Preview Podcast Book List

Following Friday’s posting of our latest podcast, I received a number of requests for the full list of books that we talked about. And thanks to Tom’s diligent pre-podcast preparation (seriously, I’m not even joking), I have that complete list—in the order in which they were discussed: Javier ...

``

Three Percent #52: 2013 Doesn't Officially Start Until We Podcast

So, it’s been a while. Due to some technical difficulties, we haven’t been able to post a podcast for the past few weeks. But thanks to the whizbang IT department at the University of Rochester, our 10,000 year old iMac is up and functioning again. Which means that 2013 can finally officially start—thanks to ...

``

Three Percent #51: Long Intros and Boy Bands [Favorite Music of 2012]

This week’s podcast features Chad, Nathan Furl, Kaija Straumanis, and Will Cleveland talking about their favorite albums of 2012. (And sometimes 2011.) It’s a pretty tight podcast, featuring thirteen different artists and some interesting insights into why we each like different styles of music. Oh, and of course ...

``

Three Percent #50: Favorite Translations of 2012 (And Trilogies Tom Likes)

In this week’s podcast (Tom’s last one of of the year), we discuss the translations we did (and didn’t)1 read from 2012, including Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin, Satantango by Laszlo Krashnahorkai, Woes of the True Policeman by Roberto Bolano, and Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa. This kicks off the beginning ...

``

Three Percent #49: Two Books, One Rant

This week’s podcast is focused on crime and detective books—both fiction and nonfiction. First off, we talk I monologue about Errol Morris’s A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald and my recent Twitter fight with Joe McGinniss about this case, then we move on to talking about Wolf ...

``

Three Percent #48: The Difficulties of Difficult Books

After a bit of a hiatus, Tom Roberge and Chad W. Post are back to discuss what we mean when we say that a book is “difficult.” They use a range of examples, from Finnegans Wake to Mrs. Dalloway to define a few different categories of reading “difficulty,” such as, not being compelled, and having to ...