Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy, published earlier this month by Putnam.


Shanthi teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts. And her work has appeared in best New American Voices and Canteen as well as online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine and recently The New York Times. Her first novel was The Prayer Room.

Before we begin...


Lucky Boy is a novel about a sweet little boy, Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez, Iggy, Nacho, whose little life is made extremely complicated by the fact that two “forces” love him dearly.

The book details the relationship of Kavka and Rishi Reddy, Ignacio’s foster parents and Soli, Solimar Castro Valdez, Iggy’s natural mother who spends her brief time in America trying desperately to hold on to him and then to rejoin him.

The book, in a non-judgmental fashion deals with the issues associated with immigration, documentation, motherhood, fosterparenthood and the overarching needs and rights of a child.

The reader is asked, early on, to go to work, to try to determine for him or herself who is right, what is best and to make a decision as to what comes down as the proper conclusion to the story.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today our guest is Josh Barkan author of Mexico:Stories, published by Hogarth just last week.

Josh teaches at NYU and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Hollings University.

He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. His first published work was Before Hiroshima and his next work was the novel Blind Speed.

Much of Josh’s work is informed by the place he lives and he has traveled a lot.

Mexico is a collection of twelve short stories that deal exclusively with Mexico, and for reasons will delve into, also exclusively deal with violence in Mexico.

Each of the stories contains an element of unnecessary human cruelly, but usually couple with and counterpointed by, and equal element of humor or human compassion or redemption.

It’s hart to decide whether a thorough reading of this book would encourage you to take your next vacation in Mexico or to avoid the country like the plague for the rest of your life.

Because of this election cycle, the stories are somewhat polarizing because of what our new and moronic President has chosen to do with Mexico in his thoughts (such as they are) his words, and his actions.

So it will be interesting to get Josh’s take on all of these issues.

There's a reason that some readers view contemporary coming-of-age novels with suspicion. Too many play out the same way: An odd but winsome young person goes on some kind of journey of discovery, either literal or figurative, and learns something about himself or herself in the process. Often, there's an awkward romance. And the ending, whether happy or otherwise, can usually be described as bittersweet.

There are exceptions, of course, and Emily Fridlund's electrifying debut novel History of Wolves is one of them. The book doesn't follow the now-familiar narrative arc that other novels in the genre do. There's no moment of revelation at the end; if anything, the protagonist ends up more confused than she was at the beginning. Fridlund refuses to obey the conventions that her sometimes hidebound colleagues do, and her novel is so much the better for it.

There's a reason that some readers view contemporary coming-of-age novels with suspicion. Too many play out the same way: An odd but winsome young person goes on some kind of journey of discovery, either literal or figurative, and learns something about himself or herself in the process. Often, there's an awkward romance. And the ending, whether happy or otherwise, can usually be described as bittersweet.

There are exceptions, of course, and Emily Fridlund's electrifying debut novel History of Wolves is one of them. The book doesn't follow the now-familiar narrative arc that other novels in the genre do. There's no moment of revelation at the end; if anything, the protagonist ends up more confused than she was at the beginning. Fridlund refuses to obey the conventions that her sometimes hidebound colleagues do, and her novel is so much the better for it.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lisa Servon, author of the book The Unbanking of America: How The New Middle Class Survives, just published last week by Houghton Mifflin.

Lisa has been Professor of Management and Urban Policy at The New School. She holds degrees from Bryn Mawr, Penn, right down the road and a PhD from UC Berkley in Urban Planning. And is currently involved in City and Regional Planning at Penn. She wrote Bridging the Digital Divide.


Before I begin a summary of this great book, let me start off as I now am perforce required to do since the election when I interview an erudite and well reasoning author of a non-fiction book dealing with our economy, public policy or other important social issue.


I have to tell you that I wake up every morning feeling fine. Then I sit up and say, “Donald J. Trump is President of The United States of America. My day is then ruined and I feel as if I am living in an episode of South Park.

SO it is always somewhat disarming to talk to someone logical and articulate because those are qualities that no longer seem to exist in our government just as the word inappropriate has no more meaning. Ok enough of that.

The Unbanking of America is a book that tells us a story. A story of how banking has changed in America. What it used to be and what it has now become.

Who has been disenfranchised and why and how new systems have come into place, some underground and shadowy, some mainstream that have taken the place of a checking account at Bank of America or that bastion of dishonesty, Wells Fargo.

Lisa double-checks her own perceptions by going out into the workforce and verifying some assumptions and surprising herself by undermining her previous assumptions in some situations.

She goes to work at RiteCheck, a check cashing establishment in the Bronx and Check Center a payday lender in Oakland. These institutions considered predatory by people like me over the past years, turn out to be “not so bad” in many ways. When compared to alternatives.

In conclusion Lisa opens our eyes to the coping mechanisms that a good portion of our society must engage in in order to survive today’s economy.

Welcome Lisa and thanks for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lisa Servon, author of the book The Unbanking of America: How The New Middle Class Survives, just published last week by Houghton Mifflin.

Lisa has been Professor of Management and Urban Policy at The New School. She holds degrees from Bryn Mawr, Penn, right down the road and a PhD from UC Berkley in Urban Planning. And is currently involved in City and Regional Planning at Penn. She wrote Bridging the Digital Divide.


Before I begin a summary of this great book, let me start off as I now am perforce required to do since the election when I interview an erudite and well reasoning author of a non-fiction book dealing with our economy, public policy or other important social issue.


I have to tell you that I wake up every morning feeling fine. Then I sit up and say, “Donald J. Trump is President of The United States of America. My day is then ruined and I feel as if I am living in an episode of South Park.

SO it is always somewhat disarming to talk to someone logical and articulate because those are qualities that no longer seem to exist in our government just as the word inappropriate has no more meaning. Ok enough of that.

The Unbanning of America is a book that tells us a story. A story of how banking has changed in America. What it used to be and what it has now become.

Who has been disenfranchised and why and how new systems have come into place, some underground and shadowy, some mainstream that have taken the place of a checking account at Bank of America or that bastion of dishonest, Wells Fargo.

Lisa double-checks her own perceptions by going out into the workforce and verifying some assumptions and surprising herself by undermining her previous assumptions in some situations.

She goes to work at RiteCheck, a check cashing establishment in the Bronx and Check Center a payday lender in Oakland. These institutions considered predatory by people like me over the past years, turn out to be “not so bas” in many ways. When compared to alternatives.

In conclusion Lisa opens our eyes to the cooping mechanism that a good portion of our society must engage in in order to survive today’s economy.

Welcome Lisa and thanks for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today we are happy to have as our guest Dava Sobel, author of The Glass Universe: How The Ladies Of The Harvard Observatory Took The Measure Of The Stars, published just last week by Viking.

Ms. Sobel is a prolific author whose books I have enjoyed immensely over the years including Galileo’s Daughter, Longitude, The Planets, A More Perfect Heaven and others and I am automatically in love with anyone who writes about leap seconds and the transit of Venus.

Many of her works have been translated into film as documentaries for Nova and Granada.

The Glass Universe tells a story, lovingly, of a romance that began with a husband and wife and their devoted life of science and moves forward with a romance that deals with the search for meaning and essence in the night sky.

The women of the Harvard Observatory, a veritable Harem if you will (and that is what they were called) culled through countless photographic plates coated with emulsion that accurately transcribed the night sky through painstaking and hour long exposures taken by their male counterparts night after night through various observatories. From the first photograph of a star (Vega), to the discovery of novae and variable stars, to coupled or double stars, these women immortalized by Ms. Sobel achieved a place in astronomical science that gave us the shoulders of giants upon which we now stand.

The spectroscopic views that the plates give us provide a veritable window into the makeup of our universe. Chemist’s arms became a million or a billion miles long and hydrogen, helium, calcium, oxygen were winnowed out from these glass plates of which they were 100s of thousands.

Now Ms. Sobel shows us the lives of those women through their work and through their personal and sometimes very emotional lives. And the result is a book that reminds us that it is sometimes the man behind the mirror, after all and the woman behind the glass that make all the difference in our understanding of the universe and how we are here. And isn’t that really the actual reason WHY we are here in the first place?

Welcome Dava. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader. Today we are happy to have as our guest Dava Sobel, author of The Glass Universe: How The Ladies Of The Harvard Observatory Took The Measure Of The Stars, published just last week by Viking.

Ms. Sobel is a prolific author whose books I have enjoyed immensely over the years including Galileo’s Daughter, Longitude, The Planets, A More Perfect Heaven and others and I am automatically in love with anyone who writes about leap seconds and the transit of Venus.

Many of her works have been translated into film as documentaries for Nova and Granada.

The Glass Universe tells a story, lovingly, of a romance that began with a husband and wife and their devoted life of science and moves forward with a romance that deals with the search for meaning and essence in the night sky.

The women of the Harvard Observatory, a veritable Harem if you will (and that is what they were called) culled through countless photographic plates coated with emulsion that accurately transcribed the night sky through painstaking and hour long exposures taken by their male counterparts night after night through various observatories. From the first photograph of a star (Vega), to the discovery of novae and variable stars, to coupled or double stars, these women immortalized by Ms. Sobel achieved a place in astronomical science that gave us the shoulders of giants upon which we now stand.

The spectroscopic views that the plates give us provide a veritable window into the makeup of our universe. Chemist’s arms became a million or a billion miles long and hydrogen, helium, calcium, oxygen were winnowed out from these glass plates of which they were 100s of thousands.

Now Ms. Sobel shows us the lives of those women through their work and through their personal and sometimes very emotional lives. And the result is a book that reminds us that it is sometimes the man behind the mirror, after all and the woman behind the glass that make all the difference in our understanding of the universe and how we are here. And isn’t that really the actual reason WHY we are here in the first place?

Welcome Dava. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Arlie R. Hochschild, author most recently of Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger And Mourning On The American Right, published in September by the new press and a finalist for the National Book Award.

Her previous works include The Outsourced Self, The Unexpected Community, So How’s The Family and Other Essays, The Managed Heart and many others.


Each of these and her other work focuses in good part on emotions and how the control of those emotions or the direction of each, helps to create the everyday world we live in and drives the stressors and motivation and motivates each of us as we live our workaday lives.


Strangers In Their Own Land is about as timely a book as you could imagine. It rides the swell of alt-right anger and mourning and comes close to an expression of the phenomenon that we find ourselves immersed in today as we speak. And dependent on whether you are one of those strangers, or an alt-left like me, you are either ebullient and feel that you are ready for the zombie apocalypse.

With that Arlie, welcome and thanks so much for joining us today.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Arlie R. Hochschild, author most recently of Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger And Mourning On The American Right, published in September by the new press and a finalist for the National Book Award.

Her previous works include The Outsourced Self, The Unexpected Community, So How’s The Family and Other Essays, The Managed Heart and many others.


Each of these and her other work focuses in good part on emotions and how the control of those emotions or the direction of each, helps to create the everyday world we live in and drives the stressors and motivation and motivates each of us as we live our workaday lives.


Strangers In Their Own Land is about as timely a book as you could imagine. It rides the swell of alt-right anger and mourning and comes close to an expression of the phenomenon that we find ourselves immersed in today as we speak. And dependent on whether you are one of those strangers, or an alt-left like me, you are either ebullient and feel that you are ready for the zombie apocalypse.

With that Arlie, welcome and thanks so much for joining us today.