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.

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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.

"American Born Chinese" by prolific cartoonist Gene Luen Yang was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award back in 2006. Disney released a first look at an 8-episode series based on the novel, starring Michelle Yeoh, among other big-name actors.
Q&A: Author Boyah J. Farah reflects on being Black in America
In his memoir, “America Made Me a Black Man,” Farah tells of what American blackness has meant to him, from his childhood in Somalia to his adolescence in the Northeast — to his return to Somalia.
Ling Ma's first novel predicted the pandemic. Her new collection goes one step beyond
Nothing is just one thing in “Bliss Montage.” Satire swirls into savagery; a gimmicky premise into poignancy. Ma writes with such authority that readers are simply swept along.
Mattie Gomez feels directionless after being uprooted from her beloved Minnesota and forced to move in with her new stepfamily in California. So when she meets a girl at her new middle school who looks exactly like her, she’s not sure what to make of it. That’s how award-winning author Anika Fajardo’s new book begins.
From the archives: Karen Armstrong on ‘The Lost Art of Scripture’
The 2022 season of Talking Volumes launches this week with Karen Armstrong and her new book, “Sacred Nature: Restoring our Ancient Bond with the Natural World.” So we thought it only appropriate to make this week’s dip into the archives the last time Armstrong was on the Talking Volumes stage. It was in 2019, when she joined host Kerri Miller to discuss “The Lost Art of Scripture.”
'If I Survive You' is a sweeping portrait of a family's fight to make it in America
Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You is an intensively granular, yet panoramic depiction of what it's like to try to make it — or not — in this kaleidoscopic madhouse of a country.