Episode · The Book Review · 2022-05-20
Brian Morton on The Book Review: books mentioned
Brian Morton on ‘Tasha: A Son’s Memoir’
Gilbert Cruz recommended Tasha by Brian Morton and Independent people by Halldór Laxness, and discussed Chéri and The End of Chéri. Lauren Christensen recommended Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang. Jim Rutenberg recommended The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Chéri and The End of Chéri
Discussed“Rachel Koo joins us to discuss her new translation of two novels by Colette Shere and the end of Sheree”
Where to get it
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Tasha
Tasha: A Son's Memoir by Brian Morton is a deeply personal and reflective book in which the author explores his relationship with his mother, examining family history, memory, and the emotional complexities of parental bonds.
Recommended“the book again is Tasha a son's Memoir by Brian Morton”
Where to get it
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Four Treasures of the Sky
Four Treasures of the Sky is a novel by Jenny Tinghui Zhang that follows a young Chinese woman's harrowing journey of survival in the American West during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Recommended“so I'm reading four treasures of the Sky by an author named Jenny tingu Zang”
Where to get it
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The Last Samurai
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt is a critically acclaimed and inventive novel that follows a single mother raising a precocious young boy in Tokyo as he becomes obsessed with Akira Kurosawa's film.
Recommended“well okay so I might be the last person in my radius who has not read The Last Samurai”
Where to get it
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Independent people
Independent People is a sweeping, realistic novel by the Icelandic Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness that chronicles the arduous life of a stubborn crofter named Bjartur striving for economic independence.
Recommended“I am rereading a novel by the Icelandic writer hdor Laxus who won the Nobel Prize in I think 1955”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (7) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“Brian Morton is here to talk about his first work of non-fiction Tasha a son's memoir”
“he is the author of five novels including Florence Gordon and starting out in the evening”
“he is the author of five novels including Florence Gordon and starting out in the evening”
“I'm not so sure about that part of what was going on was that after my novel Florence Gordon came out in 2014 I'd spent four or five years working on a novel that just didn't come off for various reasons”
“before I describe the book I want to clarify that this is not the same Jenny Zang as the woman who wrote sour heart”
“but in terms of reader investment in this young woman's coming of age it made me think so much of Kora in Coulson whiteheads the Underground Railroad from a few years ago”
“it came to her sort of sideways because the first thing I read by her was actually a short story collection called some trick”