Book Fight

This week we're joined by Dave Housley to talk office novels! Dave's most recent book, The Other Ones , is about an office that wins the lottery--or, more specifically, it's about the people in that office who chose not to play. We also discuss Christian Tebordo's most recent novel, The Apology , which is also set in an office and involves some Clorox-related warfare. If you like the show, and wou...

This week we're joined by Isaac Butler (author, most recently, of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act ) to discuss a play by Annie Baker, The Aliens. Butler has worked as a theater director, as well as an author and podcaster and cultural critic, so we thought he'd be a perfect guest to help us wrap our heads around the world of contemporary theater. We talk about adapting plays f...

This week we're joined by returning guest Asali Solomon (author of The Days of Afrekete ) to discuss Kiese Laymon's award-winning memoir, Heavy . We talk about what people expect from memoir, and why readers are sometimes put off by complicated stories without easy resolutions.

We welcome Tyrese Coleman ( How to Sit ) to discuss the 1999 Sister Souljah novel The Coldest Winter Ever. We talk about the genre of street lit, and why some Black authors celebrate it while others bristle at being included in it. We also revisit Percival Everett's satirical novel Erasure, and wonder whether this Sister Souljah book inspired it.  If you enjoy the show, and would like more Book Fi...

If you're a regular listener to the podcast, you know that we like to bring you something a little special around the holidays. This year, our Christmas book is about a very horny vampire, and we're joined to discuss it with two superstar Barrelhouse editors: Becky Barnard and Erin Fitzgerald.

Happy holidays! This week, while we take our annual break, we've got a special bonus episode for you. We recorded this one last December for the Patreon, as part of our Hunt for the Worst Book of all Time. A novel based on a terrible song that was, for some reason, eventually turned into a straight-to-cable movie starring Rob Lowe. Enjoy! If you enjoyed this episode, and would like to get more in...

We're joined by Christian Tebordo, author of several books and director of the MFA program at Roosevelt University in Chicago. We talk about how current students respond to ambiguity in stories, how small presses have evolved over the last several years, and why The Apology might be the most earnest book Tebordo will ever write.

We're joined by Kory Stamper, professional lexicographer and author of the book Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries , who chose a modern retelling of Beowulf for us to read. We consider how the epic poem translates to the contemporary American suburbs, and also why Beowulf has been so enduring in the first place. We also talk to Kory about her former job at Merriam-Webster's dictionary,...

We're joined by Elisa Gabbert ( The Unreality of Memory ) to discuss Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, a book that is mostly nonfiction--about scientists whose discoveries pushed them in the direction of madness--with some fictional flourishes. We talk about genre distinctions, reading works in translation, and why fall is the best season. We also rope Elisa into helping us...

It's been a minute since we had Katherine Hill on the show, but long-time listeners may remember her multiple past appearances, including one in which we discussed Judy Blume's Forever and another in which Mike failed to finish the very long book that Katherine picked. But now she's back, and we're delving into one of her recent favorites, The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevson, a three-part mem...

This week, we're joined by the writer Andrew Moxon (author of the novel The Revisionaries), who read Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion as an undergrad and wanted to see if it would hold up some twenty years later. We talk about our respective relationships with historical fiction, as well as what it's like--for Andrew, at least--to gain more than 30,000 Twitter followers in a single day. Yo...

This week, we're joined by Dan McQuade ( Defector Media ) to discuss humor columnist Dave Barry's debut novel, Big Trouble . Both Dan and Mike were big fans of Dave Barry's humor writing as teens, while Tom apparently skipped right over his newspaper column each week on his way to The Family Circus and Heathcliff. We talk about how difficult it can be to maintain a consistent tone in a "wacky" nov...

This week, we're joined by Ben Winters (Golden State, The Quiet Boy) to discuss a Stanley Fish book about how to write great sentences. We talk about our love-hate relationships with craft books, why our first drafts are such a mess, and the false dichotomy of "language" vs "plot" when attempting to categorize writers. We also chat with Ben about his unusual writing career, which began with being...

This week, Lilly Dancyger ( Negative Space ) joins us to discuss an essay about creepy men and harassment by Melissa Febos, " Intrusions ." We talk about what makes this essay stand out in a crowded field of personal essays, and what writers of creative nonfiction can learn from it, particularly the way it operates in multiple modes that allows the author to approach her subject from a variety of...

This week, novelist Adam O'Fallon Price ( The Hotel Neversink ) joins us to discuss a strange, short novel by Muriel Spark called The Driver's Seat , in which a woman travels to the south of Italy to find someone who will murder her. We talk about the book's detached, somewhat cold point of view, its narrative leaps into the future tense, and just what to make of its odd cast of characters. We als...

This week, Emily Adrian ( The Second Season ) joins us to discuss a book she'd never read, Frederick Exley's 1968 "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes . The book mirrors Exley's own experiences with mental health facilities, as well as his lifelong obsession with the New York Giants' star Frank Gifford. We consider how the book has held up over time, and whether we can--or should--get past its pretty...

This week, J. Robert Lennon (Subdivision, Pieces for the Left Hand) joins us to discuss a story he loves to teach: Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God." We talk about what he hopes his students take from that piece, and why there are so few omniscient narrators in contemporary literary fiction. Plus: Christian summer camps, why you should never read your Goodreads reviews, and why John doesn'...

When this week's guest, Lynn Coady, won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize for her book of short stories, Hellgoing , the comparisons to Alice Munro were probably inevitable. So it's fitting that the story Coady chose for this episode of the podcast is by Munro, and is one Coady says she's returned to again and again. "Save the Reaper," from The Love of a Good Woman, is a bit more menacing than the...

We're joined by David Roth (writer and co-owner, Defector Media ) to discuss the debut novel by Pete Beatty, which spins a tall tale of a mythological character, Big Son, and his various feats in 1830s Ohio. We talk about how the novel complicates and subverts stories of American myth, and just how much fun it is to read. We also chat with David about his own work, including blending sports and po...

We're joined by Lauren Grodstein, author of several novels, including the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family , to discuss Philip Roth's Everyman . As a Jewish author from New Jersey, Grodstein says Roth has loomed large throughout her life, and she's wrestled with how to think about his legacy, particularly in light of the recent scandal involving his biographer, Blake Bailey. But ev...

We're joined by Jeff Chon, author of the new novel Hashtag Good Guy With a Gun , to talk about political fiction, conspiracy theories, and why some editors are cowards. We also talk about the South Korean novel The Disaster Tourist , by Yun Ko-Eun (translated by Lizzie Buehler), which Jeff says he picked up as part of his ongoing project to "be a better Korean," but then fell in love with because...

We're joined by John Kell (freelance journalist, PR rep for Chobani) to talk about why the pandemic inspired him to read more books featuring gay male characters, which he recently wrote about in a piece for Fortune . We discuss one of those books, Edmund White's Our Young Man , and why John felt somewhat ambivalent about its main character, a gorgeous male model who is trying not to age out of th...

We welcome special guest Christopher Gonzalez (I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat) to discuss a novel that taught him a lot about flash fiction. Also discussed: the Netflix show Marriage or Mortgage, why flash fiction isn't just about word count, and how to title your novel to give critics an easy talking point. If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, you can join our Patreo...

In celebration of the nine-year anniversary of our podcast, we're bringing back some of our favorite segments from the show's history! We also discuss some exciting changes coming down the pike. If you like the show, and would like more of it in your life, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight  

This week we're wrapping up our Winter of Wayback season by reviewing what we've learned. Which stories and essays did we love? Which pieces did we hate? What did we learn about 1968, and how did it compare to our previous presuppositions? Also, as a special bonus, Tom reviews a famous 1968 movie he'd never seen before, and Mike eats a Big Mac. If you like the show, and would like to have more of...