Hello, Radio Readers! Can you believe it’s November already? And we’re almost at the end of our Fall 2019 Book Club series! Was this not some set of reads?
I’m Jane Holwerda, from Dodge City KS, and, at Radio Readers Book Club Headquarters, we’re gearing up for our live and on-air book discussion.
We’ll collect a group of readers -- book discussion leaders, BookByte contributors, HPPR and Radio Readers’ folks—and we’ll dig in again on the books and the ideas they provoked.
That all happens on the evening of Sunday, November 10. Be sure to mark your calendars: Sunday, November 10!
The books in this series intrigued me from the beginning. The series, “Navigating Uncharted Waters – Past, Present & Future,” includes Paulette Jiles’ News of the World, a marvelous historical novel set in Texas, Brandon Hobson’s Where the Dead Sit Talking, a novel about Cherokee teens in foster care, Tara Westover’s memoir Educated about growing up survivalist, and then Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.
Each of these books offered fodder for thought, right? about the ways the historical past influences who we are and how and what we may become, whether that’s in a very personal, individualized way or in a broader, more socio-political-cultural way. How do people adapt to dramatic, even traumatic, changes to family structure, how do people endure, even transcend, challenges of abandonment, indifference, poverty, isolation? For the novels and memoir, anyway. Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus offers some ways to understand the questions themselves…. I mean, in our cybernetic world and way of living, what will be the ways out of poverty and negligence? Will our choices be more and more varied or more constrained?
Of course, this is my spin – and, as with ever book club I’ve been part of—I learn so much from my readers-in-arms. In this series, book bytes from Brandon Hobson himself, and from Valerie Mendoza, Kath Holt, Leslie Von Holten, and Freddie Gipp (just to name a few) have given so many insights and perspectives – on topics of inclusion, education, hard-scrabble living, language, good writing…well, you get the idea. And the best part? If you’d like to revisit any of the book bytes or catch up on any you may have missed, you can! Simply check out HPPR Radio Readers on Facebook and at HPPR.org, at the programs tab. Or pick up the books – now is always a good time to read, right?
And tune into HPPR on Sunday, November 10, for HPPR Radio Readers’ live and on-air book discussion on the Fall 2019 Book Series, “Navigating Uncharted Waters – Past, Present & Future,” featuring Paulette Jiles’ historical novel News of the World; Brandon Hobson’s contemporary novel Where the Dead Sit Talking, Tara Westover’s memoir Educated, then Yuval Harari’s visionary Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.
Talk soon, ok? From Dodge City KS, I’m Jane Holwerda for HPPR Radio Readers.
