Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Dr. Kara Cooper. Dr. Cooper is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA. She’s worked with National Geographic and the Discovery channel. And produced and appeared in a series you may have seen entitled Out Of Egypt which I believe is still available on Amazon and Netflix.

Although she has published prolifically, we may know her best from her first general public book The Woman Who Would Be King: Hat Shep Sut’s Rise To Power. That was released in 2014.

Her latest work is When Women Ruled The World, which is an strikingly accessible journey along the timeline of ancient Egypt, where we find, surprisingly, periods of time in which women ruled the old world. For a number of different reasons.

Along the journey, Dr. Cooney highlights the comparison between the way women were treated in Egyptian history versus the manner in which they find the same treatment in modern society.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Dr. Kara Cooper. Dr. Cooper is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA. She’s worked with National Geographic and the Discovery channel. And produced and appeared in a series you may have seen entitled Out Of Egypt which I believe is still available on Amazon and Netflix.

Although she has published prolifically, we may know her best from her first general public book The Woman Who Would Be King: Hat Shep Sut’s Rise To Power. That was released in 2014.

Her latest work is When Women Ruled The World, which is an strikingly accessible journey along the timeline of ancient Egypt, where we find, surprisingly, periods of time in which women ruled the old world. For a number of different reasons.

Along the journey, Dr. Cooney highlights the comparison between the way women were treated in Egyptian history versus the manner in which they find the same treatment in modern society.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. This week our guest is Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black, published in October by Mariner. Nana has an MFA from Syracuse. Has appeared, or will appear, in Esquire, Guernica, Printer’s row and the Breakwater review. He was chosen as one of the five under 35 by the National Book Foundation.

Black Friday displays, in unflinching detail, the cruelty that we inflict upon another and the absurdity of that cruelty, a cruelty serration and repetitious that at some point we begin to see, for good or bad, the humor of it.

The characters that we are introduced to, are uncomfortable in their own skin, whatever color. They know that something wrong, something that that can see or feel, sometimes, but sometimes lurks in shadows that we all create and retain in our own consciousness or psyche.

The weird thing is that this bizarro world type stuff is placed inside our malls, or in a science fiction universe that mulls the boredom and cruelty (again) of our universe and its inhabitants.

This book will survive and when it is read by future generations they will wonder if it tells the story of our world or the story of what our world almost is.

Being a sixty-six year old white Jewish man, at first I thought I could relate to a book like this, but as I read it I realized that it isn’t about black or white. It is about people. What they do and how they can justify doing it. Whoever they might be.

When I interview George Saunders after he wrote The Tenth of December, I really began to understand how the most serious things in life can always be turned into a joke, as I said how fortunate or unfortunate this may be.

With that welcome Nana and thanks for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. This week our guest is Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black, published in October by Mariner. Nana has an MFA from Syracuse. Has appeared, or will appear, in Esquire, Guernica, Printer’s row and the Breakwater review. He was chosen as one of the five under 35 by the National Book Foundation.

Black Friday displays, in unflinching detail, the cruelty that we inflict upon another and the absurdity of that cruelty, a cruelty serration and repetitious that at some point we begin to see, for good or bad, the humor of it.

The characters that we are introduced to, are uncomfortable in their own skin, whatever color. They know that something wrong, something that that can see or feel, sometimes, but sometimes lurks in shadows that we all create and retain in our own consciousness or psyche.

The weird thing is that this bizarro world type stuff is placed inside our malls, or in a science fiction universe that mulls the boredom and cruelty (again) of our universe and its inhabitants.

This book will survive and when it is read by future generations they will wonder if it tells the story of our world or the story of what our world almost is.

Being a sixty-six year old white Jewish man, at first I thought I could relate to a book like this, but as I read it I realized that it isn’t about black or white. It is about people. What they do and how they can justify doing it. Whoever they might be.

When I interview George Saunders after he wrote The Tenth of December, I really began to understand how the most serious things in life can always be turned into a joke, as I said how fortunate or unfortunate this may be.

With that welcome Nana and thanks for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Simon Van Booy.

Simon is the award winning and best selling author of nine books of fiction and three anthologies of philosophy. He has written for the NYT, The Financial Times, NPR and the BBC. In 2013 he founded Writers for Children, a project which helps young people build confidence in their storytelling abilities through annual awards.

His latest work is The Sadness of Beautiful Things published this month by Penguin.

And as most of you know, I own an independent bookshop, Wellington Square Books, and I have just ordered all of Simon’s books, including his children’s books about Gertie Milk.

The Sadness of Beautiful Things is a book of short stories that grab you, from the epigraph on, and hold you and release you throughout. In fact, I went back and read most of the stories two times and one specific one three times. Each time you read and re-read you discover more about yourself and the characters in the book as well as recognizing what the title represents and what that means to the characters’ lives and to our own. I love short stories and these are some of the best I have read. As I have told my customers, “Buy this book. If you don’t like it, bring it back”. So far they have each flown far away, never to return.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Simon Van Booy.

Simon is the award winning and best selling author of nine books of fiction and three anthologies of philosophy. He has written for the NYT, The Financial Times, NPR and the BBC. In 2013 he founded Writers for Children, a project which helps young people build confidence in their storytelling abilities through annual awards.

His latest work is The Sadness of Beautiful Things published this month by Penguin.

And as most of you know, I own an independent bookshop, Wellington Square Books, and I have just ordered all of Simon’s books, including his children’s books about Gertie Milk.

The Sadness of Beautiful Things is a book of short stories that grab you, from the epigraph on, and hold you and release you throughout. In fact, I went back and read most of the stories two times and one specific one three times. Each time you read and re-read you discover more about yourself and the characters in the book as well as recognizing what the title represents and what that means to the characters’ lives and to our own. I love short stories and these are some of the best I have read. As I have told my customers, “Buy this book. If you don’t like it, bring it back”. So far they have each flown far away, never to return.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Shane Bauer, author of American Prison: A reporter’s Undercover Journey Into The Business Of Punishment. Released just last month by Penguin.

Shane is a senior reporter at Mother Jones. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Salon, the LATs, SFC, and many other publications.

American Prison is a story about things we may not know, things we may not want to know and things that happen that we may find, after reading this book, that we do not wish to know. Nonetheless, this book is an important one, not solely because it exposes the soft white underbelly of for profit private prisons and their methods of amassing large sums of money. B passing profits on to its many corporate investors, and doing so by neglecting its charges and fortifying the bastions of slavery and involuntary servitude that have filled the coffers of many of our leaders, politicians and businessmen over generations.

The meticulous and even handed reporting contain in this book provide a shocking and severely eye-opening portrait of incarceration in the most heavily disproportionately weighted prison population in the world.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Shane Bauer, author of American Prison: A reporter’s Undercover Journey Into The Business Of Punishment. Released just last month by Penguin.

Shane is a senior reporter at Mother Jones. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Salon, the LATs, SFC, and many other publications.

American Prison is a story about things we may not know, things we may not want to know and things that happen that we may find, after reading this book, that we do not wish to know. Nonetheless, this book is an important one, not solely because it exposes the soft white underbelly of for profit private prisons and their methods of amassing large sums of money. B passing profits on to its many corporate investors, and doing so by neglecting its charges and fortifying the bastions of slavery and involuntary servitude that have filled the coffers of many of our leaders, politicians and businessmen over generations.

The meticulous and even handed reporting contain in this book provide a shocking and severely eye-opening portrait of incarceration in the most heavily disproportionately weighted prison population in the world.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Casey Legler, author of her new memoir Godspeed, published this July by Atria Books an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

Casey is an artist, restaurateur, model and former Olympic swimmer. She is also a fascinating human being whose first book is startling, surprising and much more than what we think of as a memoir.

The backstory of Lesley’s life, as documented in her book is the fact that she was an Olympic swimmer for France who used and sold drugs, was an alcoholic, broke the world’s record in 1996 in practice then came in 23rd in the finals of the event. She was the First Ford Agency model to wear men’s clothes exclusively.

What I want to add to this, much of which you may have already heard on TV, Meghan Kelly, other interviews is that this book is lyrical, it is poetic. It uses language in a way that one seldom if ever encounters. The metaphors, the analogies are like shards of glass or iron filings or stabbings of the soul or mirrors that reelect the best and worst of who you think you are.

And with that somewhat tortured introduction, welcome Casey and thanks for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Casey Legler, author of her new memoir Godspeed, published this July by Atria Books an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

Casey is an artist, restaurateur, model and former Olympic swimmer. She is also a fascinating human being whose first book is startling, surprising and much more than what we think of as a memoir.

The backstory of Lesley’s life, as documented in her book is the fact that she was an Olympic swimmer for France who used and sold drugs, was an alcoholic, broke the world’s record in 1996 in practice then came in 23rd in the finals of the event. She was the First Ford Agency model to wear men’s clothes exclusively.

What I want to add to this, much of which you may have already heard on TV, Meghan Kelly, other interviews is that this book is lyrical, it is poetic. It uses language in a way that one seldom if ever encounters. The metaphors, the analogies are like shards of glass or iron filings or stabbings of the soul or mirrors that reelect the best and worst of who you think you are.

And with that somewhat tortured introduction, welcome Casey and thanks for joining us today.