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Shelf Life
Shelf Life is a show about books and the people who love them. In each episode, we invite a celebrated bibliophile (think Alan Cumming, John Waters, and Joyce Maynard) to select two of their favorite books, and then we chat about them, drawing connections between their lit choices and their lives and careers.
Podcasting since 2021 • 55 episodes
Shelf Life
Latest Episodes
Laurie Gwen Shapiro on Amelia Earhart, Harriet the Spy, and the art of rewriting legend
Before you can shape a story, you have to pay attention to the world as it really is—even when it’s messy, even when it stings. That lesson from Louise Fitzhugh’s classic Harriet the Spy has guided the career of reporter and biographer...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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54:17
Ada Calhoun on Ghostwriting, Thornton Wilder, and the audacity of desire
“Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading,” declared Kirkus in its review of her new novel, Crush, a sharp and seductive exploration of midlife desire and the unruly force of infatuation. Calhoun is the author...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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51:37
Geoff Dyer on Bad Food, Jazz Renegades, and the "Soviet Resignation" of Post-War Britain
Few writers dance across genres with as much wit, irreverence, and intellectual curiosity as Geoff Dyer. From Out of Sheer Rage, about his struggles to write a book on DH Lawrence, to the award-winning jazz meditations of ...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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52:03
Biographer Katherine Bucknell on Christopher Isherwood's Odyssey from Weimar Berlin to California
What can we learn from Weimar Germany and its rapid unraveling in the 1930s? Lately that question has gained more urgency as the US turns away from the trans-Atlantic alliance that has underpinned European security for the past 80 years. For Ka...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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52:07
Legendary Publisher Edwin Frank in Praise of Rudyard Kipling — and Why the 20th Century Novel Matters
Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling is among the most derided of 20th century novelists, but in this episode of Shelf Life, the publishing legend Edwin Frank urges us to take a second look. As it happens, taking a second look was the impetus behind ...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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50:40
