On this episode of Literary Disco, while Rider's off camping, Tod and Julia talk about their philosophy of pool reads—and why they'll read books at the pool that they'd never be caught reading anywhere else.

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On this week's episode, Julia, Rider, and Tod read some poetry -- and discuss Lauren Shapiro's poetry collection, Arena, which was published in 2020 to rave reviews.

Lauren Shapiro is the author of Easy Math (Sarabande, 2013), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Debut-litzer Prize for Poetry, as well as a chapbook of poems, Yo-Yo Logic (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2011). She is an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Today, Julia, Rider, and Tod discuss three articles from Alta Magazine, the publication based in California that focuses on news, history, literature, and culture, with a decidedly Western bent. Its founder, William Hearst III, declares it to be "a literate magazine that serves as a counterpoint to the New Yorker."

Articles discussed:

"The Accident on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Louise Farr, about the tragic death of a hiker

"When the Mafia Came to Lodi" by Andrew Dubbins, about the mafia's attempt to infiltrate California and the undercover case that took them down

"The Search of a Lifetime" by Julian Smith, about a woman investigating a cold case of her grandfather's murder

This episode's sponsor:

Scribd. Go to try.scribd.com/literarydisco for a free 60-day trial.

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On today's episode, Julia, Rider, and Tod talk about all the things human beings never want to talk about: death, pain, sickness, and more, when we discuss Atul Gawande's seminal 2014 book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.

Today's sponsor:

This episode is supported by GreenChef. Go to GreenChef.com/90disco and use code 90disco to get $90 off including free shipping!

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On today's episode, Julia, Rider, and Tod discuss Brandon Hobson's new novel, The Removed, that follows a Cherokee family in Oklahoma in the aftermath of their son's death at the hands of a police officer.

Today's sponsor:

This episode is supported by GreenChef. Go to GreenChef.com/90disco and use code 90disco to get $90 off including free shipping!

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This week, Julia, Tod, and Rider celebrate Literary Disco’s ninth birthday by breaking out some book games. In Judging a Book by Its Cover, Rider reads the first few lines of a book while Tod and Julia try to guess the era, genre, author, and even the book itself. In Game Two, Julia and Rider try to decipher between a poem, a song, a popular song, and something Tod's made up. And in the final game, Julia leads a round of Bookshelf Roulette. Plus, the countless book digressions and recommendations they've been making for nearly a decade.

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This week, Julia, Tod, and Rider talk about their favorite crime reads—and why we're so hooked on the genre, anyway.

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This week, Julia, Tod, and Rider go behind the scenes of Tod’s new book, The Low Desert, out now from Counterpoint.

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On today's special episode, we are live from LumaCon 2021 — a comic convention brought to you by a cohort of public libraries in Sonoma County, California. Today, we discuss the graphic novel Cruel Summer by Ed Brubaker, and then a Q&A with the live audience.

This episode is brought to you by Literati Kids.

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Today, for the first time in a while, Julia, Rider, and Tod tackle a single short story. We solicited our listeners via social media for recommendations, and a couple of you directed us to "The Neighbors" by Shruti Swamy, which is available online at Electric Literature and is part of the collection A House Is a Body.

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