Three Percent Podcast

LIVE PODCAST! Well, sort of. Tom was in Rochester, so he and Chad recorded a spontaneous podcast while being in the same room as one another. (And with eight-month-old Aleks, who makes an appearance.) They talk about bookstores Tom visited on this trip, the National Book Awards, and J Franz's now infamous "rules for writers." (Poor, besieged J Franz! And poor, besieged LitHub! We feel bad for both of you.) They also recommend (and don't recommend) a few books, including Revenge of the Translator by Bruce Matthieussent, and translated from the French by Emma Ramadan.

This week's music is "Run the Numbers" by Everything Everything.

As always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to: [email protected]. Also, if there are articles you’d like us to read and analyze (or just make fun of), send those along as well.

And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes!

You can also follow Open Letter and Chad on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

If you don’t already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and other places. Or you can always subscribe by adding our feed directly into your favorite podcast app: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss

This week's special guest is Portuguese author and translator João Reis who knows a lot about Pessoa and the writings of his various heteronyms. He also talks about his forthcoming novel, The Translator's Bride, and his work as a translator. There's some of the usual banter as well, including a solid rundown of everyone's favorite lines and some of Pessoa's sayings that have become Portuguese colloquialisms.

Get your BINGO card here! And if you get a "bingo" while listening, send a picture of your playing card to Chad Post. Each week, the first person who does so will receive a special one-time code to get 30% off of any and everything on the Open Letter website.

As always, you can find the video for this episode on our YouTube channel, where we livestream the episodes. Next week's podcast will cover sections 222-273 (pages 238-287 in the U.S. edition). Stay tuned for more details about the exact time.

Feel free to comment on this episode—or on the book in general—either on this post, or at the official GoodReads Group.

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Pessoa and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

This season's opening music is "E Às Vezes Dou Por Mim" by contemporary fado star Cristina Branco. And now Chad has heard some of a My Chemical Romance song.

Sticking more or less to their biweekly schedule, Chad and Tom reconvene to talk about a couple recent articles, the challenges of being a literary nonprofit, interesting books they're reading, humblebrags about the Words Without Borders and PEN galas, and more. Surprising lack of sports talk this week, although there is a good vibe of resignation and slight depression that is a hallmark of a solid Three Percent episode.

Articles and media referenced in this episode:

The National Book Awards Haul Translators Out of Obscurity

AWP on the Brink

Tentacle by Rita Indiana

The Nocilla Trilogy by Augustín Fernández Mallo

Donate to Open Letter!

This week's music is "Be This Way" by Arms and Sleepers

As always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to: [email protected]. Also, if there are articles you’d like us to read and analyze (or just make fun of), send those along as well.

And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes!

You can also follow Open Letter and Chad on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

If you don’t already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and other places. Or you can always subscribe by adding our feed directly into your favorite podcast app: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss

This week's podcast goes off the rails pretty quickly, and includes a hungover dismissal of this version of The Book of Disquiet, the phrase "reclaim some of the douchery" is spoken, there is a lot of laughter, a discussion about the tensions between trying to read this as poetry vs. the expectations that come from trying to read it as fiction, and much more. 

Get your BINGO card here! And if you get a "bingo" while listening, send a picture of your playing card to Chad Post. Each week, the first person who does so will receive a special one-time code to get 30% off of any and everything on the Open Letter website.

As always, you can find the video for this episode on our YouTube channel, where we livestream the episodes. Next week's podcast will cover sections 222-273 (pages 238-287 in the U.S. edition). Stay tuned for more details about the exact time.

Feel free to comment on this episode—or on the book in general—either on this post, or at the official GoodReads Group.

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Pessoa and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

This season's opening music is "E Às Vezes Dou Por Mim" by contemporary fado star Cristina Branco. And here's another terrible emo song: "Better This Way" by The Get Up Kids.

This week Chad and Brian come to some conclusions about the Vicente Guedes part of The Book of Disquiet and get very excited about the more "mature, sophisticated" writings of Bernardo Soares. They both love this new voice and dig into what separates the heteronyms and their philosophies on life. And without a guest, Chad and Brian go on some entertaining digressions and keep trying to crack each other up. Informational, smart, and funny—the Two Month Review combination.

Get your BINGO card here! And if you get a "bingo" while listening, send a picture of your playing card to Chad Post. Each week, the first person who does so will receive a special one-time code to get 30% off of any and everything on the Open Letter website.

As always, you can find the video for this episode on our YouTube channel, where we livestream the episodes. Due to Chad's travel schedule, the timing of the next livestream is still up in the air, but will be announced on Twitter as soon as it's all confirmed. That episode—which will be available as a podcast on November 8th—will cover sections 174-221 (pages 190-237 in the U.S. edition). Stay tuned for more details about the exact time.

Feel free to comment on this episode—or on the book in general—either on this post, or at the official GoodReads Group.

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Pessoa and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

This season's opening music is "E Às Vezes Dou Por Mim" by contemporary fado star Cristina Branco. And here's another terrible emo song Chad had never listened to before today: "Ohio Is for Lovers" by Hawthorne Heights.

This week's episode is mostly inspired by an email from a listener about evaluating translations, and although Tom and Chad don't provide the hardest and fastest rules, they do have an interesting conversation about how they read and judge translated books. They also follow up on a few different threads from earlier episodes (like the neverending disappointment of The Great American Read), complain about these grants to giant publishers, and make some book recommendations.

Other articles and media referenced in this episode:

Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot (with the unnerving blood photo)

Shelley Jackson's Riddance (with the cool cover graphic)

Chad's post on Geography of Rebels by Maria Gabriela Llansol (and a dissenting view from Ben Moser)

Chad's post on two Deep Vellum books from Oulipian writers

In honor of Paradise Rot, this week's music is "That Battle Is Over" from Jenny Hval's Apocalypse, girl album.

As always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to: [email protected]. Also, if there are articles you’d like us to read and analyze (or just make fun of), send those along as well.

And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes!

You can also follow Open Letter and Chad on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

If you don’t already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and other places. Or you can always subscribe by adding our feed directly into your favorite podcast app: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss

BINGO! That's the theme of today's episode, which includes a Twin Peaks reference, awkward introduction, LitHub reference, and many other squares on the recently released Two Month Review bingo cards. It's explained in full at that post and on the podcast, but every week, the first person to email Chad with "bingo" in the subject line and a picture of their card will receive a one-time code to get 30% off any and everything Open Letter sells.

In terms of The Book of Pessoa, Chad, Brian, and Anthony Blake break down the bits they liked (and didn't) from this week's reading, including the "sensationist" bits, the role of heteronyms in Pessoa's outlook, depression, the misogynist bits, and the line "to be published = the socialization of the self." It's a fun, free-wheeling episode that alternates between high analysis and low jokes in the way the best TMR episodes tend to.

As always, you can find the video for this episode on our YouTube channel, where we livestream the episodes. Due to Chad's travel schedule, the next livestream will take place this Sunday and will cover sections 131-173 (pages 142-189 in the U.S. edition). Stay tuned for more details about the exact time.

Feel free to comment on this episode—or on the book in general—either on this post, or at the official GoodReads Group.

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Pessoa and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

Jerónimo Pizzaro—editor of the "complete edition" of The Book of Disquiet published by New Directions—is the special guest on this week's Two Month Review. He discusses his history with Pessoa, how this volume came to be, the next three volumes in the New Directions project, how to approach The Book of Disquiet and its separate halves, some of the philosophical shift that take place over the course of the book, and more. For Pessoa fans and newbies, this episode is not to be missed!

As always, you can find the video for this episode on our YouTube channel, where we livestream the episodes every Wednesday morning. Next week we'll be covering sections 82-130 (pages 95-141 in the U.S. edition) with special guest Anthony Blake.

Feel free to comment on this episode—or on the book in general—either on this post, or at the official GoodReads Group.

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Pessoa and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

This season's opening music is "E Às Vezes Dou Por Mim" by contemporary fado star Cristina Branco. And, in keeping with the theme from last season, we'll be featuring a different emo rock song every episode for the outro music. Today it's Anthony Blake's favorite song from Chad's most hated band.

An all-banter episode that touches on an array of topics, from ranking ideas on how to save indie bookstores, to The Great American Read's (embarrassing) top 10 vote getting books (are we sure Outlanders doesn't include people riding on dragons?), the Frankfurt Book Fair, self-censorship, QAnon + Marlins Man, a book scam, "up-lit" (barf), ALTA, random typos, and a few book and TV recommendations.

Complete list of articles and media referenced in this episode:

Why Buying Books Will Not Save Our Beloved Bookstores

The Great American Read Top 10 Vote-Getters (As of 10/11)

A Panel on Self-Censorship and Morality in Publishing Today

Book Fair Post Mortem

Phishing Scam Seeking Manuscripts Spreads Worldwide

"Up-Lit" Gives Hope to Publishers at Frankfurt Book Fair

Schedule for ALTA 41

Elite

Öræfi--The Wasteland

The Taiga Syndrome

Bonus: These pants are ugly.

This week's music is "It's All Gonna Be OK" from Ron Gallo's new album, Stardust Birthday Problem. ("'You' Are the Problem" would've worked as well.)

As always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to: [email protected]. Also, if there are articles you’d like us to read and analyze (or just make fun of), send those along as well.

And if you like the podcast, tell a friend and rate us or leave a review on iTunes!

You can also follow Open Letter and Chad on Twitter and Instagram (OL, Chad) for book and baseball talk.

If you don’t already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and other places. Or you can always subscribe by adding our feed directly into your favorite podcast app: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss

This is one of the most Two Month Review podcasts yet. Chad, Brian, and Tom Flynn (Volumes Books in Chicago) come together to discuss the first forty-six pages (sections 1-39) of the complete version of Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. In addition to breaking down the philosophy and literary style representing Vicente Guedes--Pessoa's heteronym for this section of the book--they swap favorite lines, invent a new Instagram idea for Chad, link up Pessoa with emo bands, and try and tackle the difficulty of reading this book sequentially versus dipping in and out.

As always, you can find the video for this episode on our YouTube channel, where we livestream the episodes every Wednesday morning. Next week we'll be covering pages 47-94 (sections 40-81) with special guest Jerónimo Pizarro, the mastermind behind this particular edition of The Book of Disquiet.

Feel free to comment on this episode—or on the book in general—either on this post, or at the official GoodReads Group.

Follow Open Letter, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for more thoughts on Pessoa and literature in general, and for information about upcoming guests. You can also follow Tom Flynn, and you can buy as many books as you can carry from Volumes in Chicago.

You can find all the Two Month Review posts by clicking here. And be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps people to discover the podcast.

This season's opening music is "E Às Vezes Dou Por Mim" by contemporary fado star Cristina Branco. And, in keeping with the theme from last season, we'll be featuring a different emo rock song every episode for the outro music. Today it's Kaija Straumanis's favorite Dashboard Confessional song.