Book Fight

It's the most wonderful time of the year! A time for gathering with family, drinking lots of egg nog, and reading some absurdly terrible Christmas-themed books. First up this year is Christmas Letters, a delightful little romp from Debbie Macomber about a woman who finds love in the last place she thought to look (her own apartment building). Then there's The Christmas Thief, co-written by the mot...

In celebration of the holidays, this week we're talking about an Isaac Fitzgerald essay, originally published by Buzzfeed in 2013 , about a Christmas trip in which he scaled Mount Kilimnjaro with his estranged family. In the second half of the show, we discuss a listener-submitted story of authorial spite, plus a new installment of Fan Fiction Corner in which we explore the Grinch's sexuality. For...

Penelope Lively has written more than thirty books, and Tom picked this one, for some reason. The novel purports to explore the line between fiction and nonfiction, but it does so in a way neither of us found particularly interesting. We talk about what separates a "novel" from a purposeless series of writing exercises.  In the second half of the show, we delve into the world of Christmas-themed f...

This week we're discussing the title story of Scottish writer Elspeth Davie's 1980 story collection. Though her story collections were well-reviewed, Davie is far from a household name. We talk about what separates literary writers who are remembered from those who aren't, and whether the writers themselves have any control over their own legacies.  Also, as it's the end of National Novel Writing...

A long episode about a short book: it's the Book Fight way! In the first half of the episode we try to figure out Adler's 1976 novel, which has been cited as a touchstone by many writers, including David Shields and David Foster Wallace. In the second half of the show we talk about Adler's famous takedown of movie critic Pauline Kael, and consider a recent case of an author stalking someone who ga...

For today's episode we read this essay from The Toast, about the author's trip to Jerusalem, her religious parents, and the rift in her family following her sister's sexual assault.  We've also got more from the NaNoWriMo forums, plus hot takes on Baby Hitler! For more, as always, you can visit us online at bookfightpod.com .  

This week's book is both a detective story and an academic satire. We talk about the genre conventions of noir novels, and some of the more frustrating and ridiculous aspects of academia. In the second half the show we've got a new installment of Raccoon News that includes some historical raccoon news, plus more questions from the NaNoWriMo forums. For more, you can visit us online at bookfightpod...

This week we talk about a story by the crime writer Dennis Lehane (author of Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, and lots of other stuff). We also dip back into the NaNoWriMo forums to offer our advice on character names, bayou witch doctors, and whatever in the world a "Nano jar" is.  For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com . 

Everyone's been talking about Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume series of autobiographical novels, My Struggle. But we're reading the doorstop of a novel that won him acclaim in his home country before he turned his lens on his own life. A Time for Everything is part historical novel, part Biblical reinterpretation, part faux-theological study of the long evolution of angels. It's a book that's pre...

This week we're hitting the road, recording while driving to the Barrelhouse-sponsored Conversations and Connections writers' conference in Pittsburgh. To make our conversation thematically appropriate we chose an essay by Paul Theroux called " Taking the Great American Roadtrip ." We talk about what separates interesting travel writing from boring travel writing, our varying tastes for long drive...

We discuss Jeff Sharlet's Instagram essay, created with the hashtag #Nightshift and later featured on Longreads ( you can check it out here ). We also talk more generally about the possibilities of using social media for storytelling. In the second half of the show we answer a listener question about cover letters and, in preparation for National Novel Writing Month, we visit the NaNoWriMo forums...

This week we've got a pair of guests, Kelly Phillips and Claire Folkman, editors of Dirty Diamonds: An All-Girl Comics Anthology , and recent winners of a Philly Geek Award. They've chosen Emily Carroll's Through the Woods for us to read, and they try to teach us how to approach comic stories. We talk about the relationship between text and image, ambiguous endings and spooky stories. In the secon...

This week's reading is an essay about college binge drinking from a recent issue of Okey-Panky. We contemplate what an un-themed season of Book Fight might look like, plus Tom talks about his recent arguments with his publisher over the title of his book. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com . 

This week's book was a donor pick, and man it sure was weird. Jelinek won the Nobel Prize just before this novel came out, though the award was not without controversy (one committee member actually resigned his post in protest). We try to make sense of the book's structure and prose, as well as its views on male sexuality. Then we talk about fan fiction for a while, since that's kind of our thing...

Summer is coming to an end, and so is our Summer of Love feature. Join us for one final lap in the pool as we discuss this second-person story about how you're a real creep who should maybe stop treating women like objects. Also this week: hot takes on Kim Davis and the Duke freshman who won't read Fun Home because of boobies.  For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com .

We welcome special guest Helen McClory this week, who traveled all the way from Scottland to make us discuss the new novel by Rachel B. Glaser, Paulina & Fran , about an art-school social circle revolving around a woman perhaps most charitably described as "difficult." McClory tells us why she loves problem characters, and books that explore relationships between women. She also talks about her sc...

This week's story is one of Tom's favorites, which he teaches often as an antidote to his usual depressing fare. Though it's debatable whether D'Ambrosio's story of a man caring for his psychologically troubled son is really a happy one? We talk about whether "reading as a writer" ruins your understanding of what non-writers might want to read. We also talk about some of history's (and pop culture...

Duras wrote this short, 110-page novel late in her career, in 1984, claiming it was "purely autobiographical," which created a bit of a scandal in certain corners, since the plot revolves around an affair a 15-year-old girl carries on with a 27-year-old man in what was then French Indochina.  We talk about the perhaps unconventional power dynamics of that romantic relationship, Duras's mother and...

This week we revisit a story about adultery from Lorrie Moore's debut story collection, Self-Help . We talk about Moore's strengths as a story writer, the relative ethics of adultery, and why we both use Moore's work in our classes.  Also this week: we answer a question from a listener about their upcoming nuptials, and we learn about whether pets can, in fact, love their owners. For more, as alwa...

Tom tries to get Mike to enjoy some science fiction, and Mike says: no, thank you. We discuss predictions of the future, annoying robots, 90s slang, and information overload. Also this week, a new edition of Fan Fiction Corner, featuring a very sexy story set in the Nintendo universe.  For more, including links to things we talked about in the show, visit us online at bookfightpod.com . 

Ths week we're discussing the David Sedaris story, "I Like Guys," from his book Naked . You can listen to an audio recording of Sedaris reading the story here, via This American Life . We also talk about America's favorite TV couples, and how much bickering in a relationship is too much. Plus a new theme song, and advice for children! For more, visit us online at bookfight.com . 

On this week's episode things get real: after reading Sarah Hepola's recent memoir we're prompted to discuss our own drinking habits, and whether we should be concerned about them. We also talk about the book itself, which recounts Hepola's own arc of addiction and eventual recovery, focusing on her frequent blackouts, which often had her attempting to reconstruct an evening's potentially embarras...

This week we're discussing George Saunders, generous humor vs mean-spirited humor, computer and online dating, and top wedding songs. Also, Tom talks about a lady he dated who isn't his wife! And Mike talks about whether love is or is not for the birds.

This 1990 book is something of a cult classic, one many people first read in their teenage years, though neither of us ever did. So we're reading it now, for the first time, and trying to figure out why it's so beloved by its many, many fans. We talk about the book's humor, and whether it's suitable for adults. We try to figure out whether it's a satire and, if so, what exactly it's satirizing. We...

This week we're kicking off our new seasonal feature, the Summer of Love, with what is supposedly the first story with gay characters to appear in the New Yorker (in 1974). The story was also the first story publication for Allan Gurganus, who is perhaps best known as the author of the novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. We talk about the story's interesting point-of-view shifts, and...