"I'm heading into my mid 70s and I really want to just get into a novel and live inside it. No sense of hurry. No deadline, no sense that anyone's waiting for this. I don't want to talk to anyone about it, but I just want to inhabit it." Award-winning author Ian McEwan's new novel, Lessons, takes readers on an emotional journey through the life of one man and McEwan joins us on the show to talk about aging, writing a novel in lockdown, what kinds of books make us cry and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (episode):

Lessons by Ian McEwan

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Cocoon by Zhang Yueran

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Moonglow by Michael Chabon

This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

A complete transcript of this episode is available here.