Kelly Oxford's irreverent web commentary -- about everything from young motherhood to Madonna -- has earned her 500,000 Twitter followers, and a growing stack of Hollywood deals. This week, her new collection of offbeat personal essays, entitled Everything is Perfect When You're a Liar hits shelves. Here's one that's pure magic.
The late performer, playwright and songwriter Noel Coward gets a much-deserved close-up in the exhibit "Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward". Curator Brad Rosenstein walked Brendan through some of the highlights of the self-made artiste's career.
Paul Theroux knows his way around the world. In masterful travel books, he transports readers to far-flung places with vivid prose. His new novel, The Lower River, recounts a man's ill-fated return to Malawi long after he first experienced the place as a Peace Corps volunteer. (Paul himself served there in the 60s.) He tells us about a one-time escape from Africa, then addresses listener questions about travel secrets...and epizeuxsis
David Misch has written for everything from "Saturday Night Live" to "Mork & Mindy." He now teaches classes on the history of comedy... and he's distilled his wisdom -- and that of other comic luminaries -- into the primer "Funny The Book: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Comedy." He gives Brendan a crash course in Sumerian humor and the wild(e) birth of standup.
This week, Chris Cleave talked about everything from sport addictions, to getting cut down to (book jacket) size, to Tanya Harding's latest exploits. Here's a bonus section that didn't make it into the radio piece, in which Chris reads from the opening chapter of his winning new novel "GOLD."
One day when I was ten or so, my Father brought home two library books for me. “The Martian Chronicles” and “R Is for Rocket.” I don’t know what possessed him to pick them; Dad’s not much a of a Sci-Fi fan. Maybe he had a feeling.