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The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread from MPR News

The Thread® is your source for book recommendations and other literary news.

Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. Listen to Ask a Bookseller to find your next favorite book.

Big Books and Bold Ideas

Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

Sign Up for The Thread® Newsletter

Sign up for The Thread newsletter to get reading recommendations from Kerri Miller and other bookworms around the MPR newsroom. Find reviews for new releases, as well as hidden gems you may have missed.

Talking Volumes

Talking Volumes is back for its 25th season. Join us at the Fitzgerald Theater for four special events with renowned authors, celebrating our anniversary with a special $25 ticket price for MPR members and Star Tribune subscribers. Buy tickets here.

Columnist Thomas Friedman

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman talks to Gary Eichten about the situation in the middle east, terrorism, and other global issues. He is the author of a new book, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11.

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Talking Volumes: Pat Conroy and Salman Rushdie (part 2)

Conversation continues with Pat Conroy on his book, My Losing Season. Later in the hour, we hear excerpts from an October Talking Volumes program with Salman Rushdie, author of Step Across This Line. In Rushdie's latest collection of non-fiction, he crosses over the frontier and sees and tells things as they are, inviting readers to "step across this line" with him.

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Talking Volumes: Pat Conroy (part 1)

A Talking Volumes rebroadcast of Pat Conroy and Katherine Lanpher at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul discussing Conroy's new book, My Losing Season. Conroy writes of his senior year at military school and his tortured relationship with his father.

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Minnesota-born author Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien is a Minnesota-born author known for his writing about the Vietnam war and its legacy. Now he has a new novel out, based on a class reunion at a school remarkably similar to his alma mater Macalester College.

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Talking Volumes with Pat Conroy

Talking Volumes author Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, discusses his latest book, a memoir of his life as a young basketball player. It's called, My Losing Season.

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Living with chronic illness

We look through a literary lens at how chronic illness can test faith and alter a life's trajectory.

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A "Beowulf" for the next hundred years

Monsters, dragons, blood and gore. And a superhero who dies trying to save the world. No, it's not the latest offering at your neighborhood cinema. It's a new translation of the epic poem "Beowulf". It's the result of years of work by two Fargo poets.

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Author says book coverage was "harmful"

Last spring, the University of Minnesota Press was at the center of a storm of protest over the publication of a book on sex education, Harmful to Minors, by Judith Levine. Levine met with reporters and the public Monday night to discuss the media firestorm that erupted even before her book was published.

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Author Neil Gaiman's latest horror novel aimed at young readers

Neil Gaiman has written "Coraline," a horror novel for children, about a little girl who discovers a malevolent netherworld hidden behind a door in her house. It's ruled by a hideous being known as "the other mother" who kidnaps Coraline's real parents. She then tries to imprison the girl herself.

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On the road with Leif Enger

Author and former MPR reporter Leif Enger writes a series of journal entries while on his book tour in 2001. His debut novel, "Peace Like a River," a Talking Volumes selection, is the subject of critical acclaim.

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