Guest: Mark Herschberg
First broadcast August 20 2021.
Playlist at https://www.wrek.org/?p=35992
“We’re going to take what is in the book, blow it out from the pages…”
Lost in the Stacks, Episode 498: Books in a Blender
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Tag Archives: publishing
Lost in the Stacks, Episode 491: Atlanta Eats
Guest: Amanda Plumb
First broadcast June 11 2021.
Playlist at https://www.wrek.org/?p=35798
“What restaurant says ‘Atlanta’ to you?”
Supercontext: Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
This book attempts to redefine the novel by combining narrative with an imagined anthropological record. We discuss Le Guin’s background and mission, as well as larger questions about cultural misappropriation and utopianism.
Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:
Additional Resources:
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- Ursula K. Le Guin’s Folk/Electronica Album Can Teach Us a Lot About Storytelling
- The Journeys of Ursula K. Le Guin. By: CARPENTER, ZOË, Nation, 00278378, 10/24/2016, Vol. 303, Issue 17
- Taking Politics to Another World. By: Pilon, Dennis, Canadian Dimension, 00083402, Sep/Oct2007, Vol. 41, Issue 5
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- Le Guin, Urusula K. “On the Frontier,” in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, edited by Le Guin. Boston: Shambhala Press, 2004.
Supercontext: Shadowland by Peter Straub
This fantasy/horror novel about prep school boys and magical authority came in the middle of the genre paperback boom. We talk about Straub’s concerns when writing it and how he walked the line between horror and “literature,” while responding to the market pressures on his publisher.
Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:
Additional Resources:
- Tattered Tomes: Peter Straub’s Shadowland, Revisited
- David S. Goyer Adapting ‘Shadowland’ Horror Novel As NBC Event Series
- Zaleski, J. (2003). The Uses of Horror. Publishers Weekly, 250(40), 45–49.
- AN INTRODUCTION: SHADOWLAND
- The Dick Cavett Show Horror Masters Stephen King, Romero, Straub, Levin 1980
- Shadowland, by Putney Tyson Ridge
- AN INTRODUCTION SHADOWLAND
- Dancing Architecture an interview with Peter Straub
- Interview: Peter Straub
Supercontext: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
The first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy focuses on humanity’s weird relationship with nature and how we react to the unknown. We look at how VanderMeer wrote the book, the unique publishing strategy behind it and his choice to strip the characters of their identities, while still representing an all female cast.
Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:
- Annihilation
- Area X (the collected Southern Reach Trilogy)
- Injection
- Prince of Darkness
- The Peripheral
- The Other Side of the Mountain
- Tainaron: Mail from Another City
- Pattiann Rogers works
Additional Resources:
- Annihilation: “Weird” Nature
- Jeff VanderMeer: ‘Power of Nature’ Inspired New Sci-Fi Novel ‘Annihilation’
- Finally, a novel about weird science that’s genuinely weird
- The boundary-pushing fiction of Sean McDonald and his new FSG imprint, MCD
- From Annihilation to Acceptance: A Writer’s Surreal Journey
- An Interview With Jeff VanderMeer: “Full Disclosure, I’m Really A Komodo Dragon”
- I’m Jeff VanderMeer, the author of the Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance). AMA!
Lost in the Stacks, ENCORE Episode 179: A Personal Guide To Open Access
Part 1 of OPEN ACCESS
Guest: Michael Chang of the Brook Byers Institute
First broadcast on October 11th, 2013
Supercontext: What Happened to Paste Magazine?
Paste Magazine was a victim of its time, facing a bad economy and competing pressures between physical and digital media. But what changes were its founders willing to make to keep it alive as a website? And in the process, did they betray their loyal audience?