Three Percent Podcast

After an extended hiatus, Chad and Tom are back to discuss a slew of things that happened over the past couple months. These include Book Marks , what's going to happen to B&N , and Tim Parks's article on The Vegetarian . They also talk about some books they've read recently--including Zero K , which neither of them liked--before ending with a major announcement from Tom.   It's worth mentioning t...

This week's podcast opens with Chad and Tom discussing the 2016 Best Translated Book Award winners and their thoughts on how to evaluate books for the prize. Then, in a separately recorded podcast, Chad and visiting guest George Carroll talk with Juan Villoro about his new book on soccer, God Is Round .   Also, due to summer travel and other obligations, it looks like the podcast will go on a shor...

In this week's podcast Tom and Chad talk about the recently released Best Translated Book Award shortlists , before moving on to discussion of the two Reading the World Conversation Series books for April: The Vegetarian  by Han Kang and Diorama by Rocío Cerón.   Additional articles and books discussed include, Porochista Khakpour's review of The Vegetarian in the NY Times , Don DeLillo's Zero K ,...

In this week's podcast, Chad and Tom read through all thirty-five titles on the two Best Translated Book Award longlists making comments about the books they've read and the ones that interest them. Then Chad tries his hand at guessing which ten fiction titles will make the shortlist. (Spoiler: He ends up picking fifteen either because he can't count, or because this is a really difficult group to...

This week's podcast feels like one straight out of 2011, with Chad getting angry about all sorts of things and just letting loose. The starting point for their discussion is the three-part series Tim Parks wrote for the New York Review of Books ( part one , part two , part three ), but they go on to talk about JellyBooks and what "moneyball" is, and then discuss a series of book covers.   This wee...

This week, Tom and Chad discuss the two Reading the World Book Club books for February: On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (New Directions), and Monospace by Anne Parian, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan (La Presse). Admittedly, neither of them know much about contemporary poetry, but they do try their best when talking about Parian and how...

Adrian Nathan West joined this week's podcast to talk about Marianne Fritz and his translation of The Weight of Things , the first novel in the recently launched Reading the World Book Clubs. Additionally, we talked about Twelve Stations by Tomasz Różycki (the RTWBC poetry selection this month), the ABA Winter Institute, this great article about Chris Jackson and how he's building a black literary...

In a sort of role-reversal, Tom does most of the ranting in this podcast, partially inspired by this article entitled "Damn, You're Not Reading Any Books by White Men This Year? That's So Freakin Brave and Cool." They also discuss some women in translation stats , Philip Pullman's decision to pull out as a patron of the Oxford Literary Festival, and the NBCC Book Award Finalists .   There is some...

This week Chad and Tom talk about a  Guardian article about how indie presses are doing the work discovering new authors for the big commercial houses. Then, they talk about all the year-end lists Chad's been creating for Three Percent and end by raving about champagne bottle sizes and ranting about book cover coverage.   This week's season appropriate music is "White Christmas," performed by Bad...

A couple weeks ago, Chad and Tom recorded a podcast about a slew of recent events, including ALTA 38, the Albertine Festival, the "New Literature from Europe Festival, Wordstock, and the Texas Book Festival. Unfortunately, that podcast--one of the best ever recorded--had to be tossed because of technical difficulties. So, this week they talked about some of the same stuff and some new stuff (like...

Chad's done a bit more number crunching since this was recorded (see the posts on his Twitter account, which is @chadwpost), but this is a good introduction to the ongoing conversation about women in translation. A lot of this discussion is based on this post from Three Percent .    This week's music is "Detachable Penis" by King Missile, which is sort of fitting.   Also, just a reminder that beca...

This week's podcast features a discussion of Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich (who Chad helped publish at Dalkey Archive), Amazon's recent announcement about investing $10 million into translations, and how rights work. There's a minor rant about Chase Utley ("worst human being on earth") and a little bit of baseball talk.   In honor of the Mets in the World Series (and Cubs making the post-...

This week Chad and Tom discuss Oyster shutting down , whether or not Serial Box makes any sense as a way to consume books, and this list of the top 10 most frequently challenged books . Additionally, they talk about My Struggle: Volume 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila.   This week's music is "I'm Sorry" by John Denver (a choice that will make sense by the end of the pod...

So after a month away, Chad and Tom are back, discussing the books they read over the summer and breaking down jacket copy for a number of recent books. They're both astounded by how many meaningless phrases they come across (and references to how a book is "necessary"), and also talk about when and how to frame a particular author. Tom rants about how we're reaching the bottom of the barrel in li...

This week's episode starts with a question from a listener about how translation trends come about, then morphs into a discussion of which books Chad and Tom are bringing on their respective vacations and what makes a "beach book." Rants are raves are random as always.   If you have any comments or questions, feel free to email us at threepercentpodcast@gmail.com   As always you can subscribe to t...

This week Tom and Chad discuss the merging of the Man Booker International Prize with the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the waning interest in Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Book Club, and the Women's World Cup of Literature. There are also rants about "Sevenevens," praise for the Minions movie, and more soccer talk, including the best video.   Since a number of listeners have asked for this, her...

So, we actually made it to our 100th episode! To celebrate, this week Tom and Chad took questions from all our listeners, leading to discussions about how many books we each read (and how many are in translation), what one thing all translators should know, how censorship plays into our publishing decision, and much more. Of course, it ends with raves and rants--including a rant about rants--and i...

This week's podcast is the latest in the ongoing Three Percent Book Club. Julia Berner-Tobin of Feminist Press joins Tom and Chad to talk about Virginie Despentes's fantastic Apocalypse Baby . (And to rant about Franzen, because, of course.)   *And a reminder:* Don't forget to send us your own questions, rants, and raves (about anything from the podcast to publishing to literature to translations...

For this week's podcast, we invited Best Translated Book Award Fiction Chair Monica Carter on to talk about the finalists  for this year's awards. Monica graciously gave us some insight into the voting process, revealed which of the final ten was a "personal pick" of one of the judges, and managed to make us second guess who we thought would win the award.    Additionally, we talked about the diff...

This week, Tom and Chad talk about some of the new translations that they've read (or are looking forward to reading) and are most excited about. Along the way are the expected digressions (including an explanation of how editing and rights work when a U.S. publisher and a U.K. publisher separately publish the same translation), and, of course, the episode wouldn't be complete without their famous...

On the heels of this week's big announcement of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist  and poetry longlist , Chad and Tom run through the books that made the cut and talk about their favorites, which books are on their reading lists, who they predict will make the shortlist next month, and try their darnedest to pronounce a lot of names. Then, they respond to some viewer mail about...

Inspired by all the stupid Buick ads (and disturbing Volkswagon ones ) playing throughout the NCAA Tournament, we decided to dedicate this week's episode to talking about advertising for books: whether it's worthwhile, how much it costs, why are book trailers a thing, who buys books because of ads on a subway, and if trailers/commercials for books are ever a good idea.   As one part of Tom's rave,...

This week's podcast is a special "book club" one in which Tom and Chad talk about Jean-Patrick Manchette's The Mad and the Bad , a violent little book by the author of Fatale . They also talk about the Spanish branch of Penguin Random House cutting translator rates  and an incredible old video. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonu...

In this episode, Chad and Tom discuss the recent Festival Neue Literatur , a NYC-based festival promoting German-language literature, and spend a lot of time talking about the ins and outs of editing literature in translation. Additionally, they breakdown this Buzzfeed article  about ebook data mining and what this means for the futures of publishing and reading.  This is a public episode. If you...

This week's podcast features a true roundtable discussion, with Tom and Chad being joined by Caroline Casey from Coffee House Press, Mark Haber and Jeremy Ellis from Brazos Bookstore, Stephen Sparks from Green Apple Books, and Danish author Naja Marie Aidt ( Baboon , Rock, Paper, Scissors ) to discuss the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute . One of the funniest podcasts to date, the...