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Shelf Life
Episodes
59 episodes
Ari Shapiro on singing for Bono, cooking for Nina Totenberg, and what novels teach him.
Tender hearted children growing up in oppressive and claustrophobic societies dominate the two novels chosen by the journalist and musician, Ari Shapiro. The first is Douglas Stuart’s acclaimed sophomore novel, Young Mungo; the second ...
Reading Stephen King with Sera Gamble, co-creator of the hit show, You.
Sera Gamble is perhaps best known as the screenwriter and showrunner for the hit Netflix show You, based on the novels of Caroline Kepnes, in which the romantic hero is not just a pretty face; he’s a serial killer as well. You...
Brooke Gladstone on her terrible waitressing, the future of media, and why Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita resonates today
For 22 years Brooke Gladstone has been demystifying the media for listeners of her indispensable public radio show, On the Media. But her long career, which began in summer stock theater, has also included stints as editor NPR's ...
Jerry Stahl on a bus trip to Auschwitz, his friendship with Anthony Bourdain, and Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust.
A bus trip to Auschwitz in the company of the writer Jerry Stahl, who in 2016 set off for Poland to confront one of the darkest chapters in human history. The resulting book, Nein Nein Nein, is fast-paced, darkly absurd, and mordantly ...
A Year in Reading with Joyce Maynard, Darcey Steinke, Edmund White, and John Waters
In this special holiday episode of Shelf Life, we took time out from our regular format to see what guests old and new read in 2022. The episode starts with Joyce Maynard, who shot to fame with her 1998 memoir
Marion Nestle on late starts, unhappy families and her war on food myths
If you sometimes fret that your opportunity to make your mark on the world has passed, take a leaf from Marion Nestle’s career. At 50, she found herself divorced, out of a job, and not able to get a credit card. Despite that she persevere...
Leila Taylor on Shirley Jackson's Haunted Houses, Black Goth, and Being a "Creepy Kid."
In this episode, Leila Taylor, the author of Darkly, an expansive rumination on the relationship between Gothic narratives and the Black experience in America, talks haunted houses courtesy of Shirley Jackson, meditations on a cockroac...
Lydia Millet on writing about goodness; and Mary Ruefle makes a cameo.
Do good people make for good novels? In this episode, the author Lydia Millet, best known for The Children’s Bible, a National Book Award Finalist, talks about her latest novel, Dinosaurs, the story of Gil, an unambiguou...
Orlando Figes on writing history, radioactive fungi, and why Madame Bovary is the greatest novel ever written
How do we synthesize a 1000-plus years of history into a 300–page book. The historian Orlando Figes, who has made the study of Russia his lifelong work, shows us how in his new book, The Story of Russia. Coming at a moment when R...
A.M. Homes on absurdity, satire, and the troubles of men
In that esteemed group of soothsayers, we might consider adding the novelist A.M. Homes. Homes has just published her eighth novel, The Unfolding, a wild trippy ride of a novel that opens on election night, 2008 and closes two mo...
Jonathan Escoffery on tough guys, the joys of ackee, and writing the books we need to see in the world
Jonathan Escoffery navigates identity, belonging and the hollow promise of the American Dream in his mesmerizing debut If I Survive You, a book that has been long-listed for the National Book Award. Escoffery has said, “I l...
Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide, on love, loss, and poetry
In his new memoir All Down Darkness Wide, the award-wining poet, Sean Hewitt, describes that experience of living with the chronically depressed in prose that glints and shimmers with a poetic sensibility influenced in part by his lite...
Michael Cunningham on originality in fiction, and realizing his destiny while bartending at a tiki bar
Michael Cunningham is the author of seven novels, as well as a short story collection and several non-fiction books, including his travelogue, Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. He had intended to become an artist, but when a girlfrie...
Director Anthony Fabian on Mrs Harris, talking cats, and Colum McCann's sexy resurrection of Nuryev
Anthony Fabian, the director of this summer's sleeper hit, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, is a long-time Paul Gallico fan, and for this episode of Shelf Life he has chosen the author’s beloved children’s book, Jennie (known as The Aba...
Douglas Stuart on love and war in 1980s Glasgow and Cromwell's England
The Scottish novelist Douglas Stuart is a master of writing about tender souls in tough spaces. He is a tender soul himself, having grown up gay in working class Glasgow with an alcoholic mother (she died when he was 16), an experience th...
Sondre Lerche on Marguerite Duras, and the alchemy of love
Norwegian pop star Sondre Lerche has been making music and releasing albums since he was a teenager, songs that ache with yearning and that are underpinned by swooning strings, bossa nova rhythms, and jazz stylings. It was always clear th...
William Boyd on Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, and the art of the comic novel
It took William Boyd three failed attempts at writing a novel before he hit gold with A Good Man in Africa, which won him both the Whitbread Book Award for a first novel and the Somerset Maugham Award. That was in 1981, and Boyd hasn’t...
Courtney Maum on riding out depression (literally), and the children's party that changed her life.
Courtney Maum, the author of three novels, including I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, Touch, and Costalegre, inspired by the real life figure of Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter. Maum has also just pub...
Melissa Gilbert on family secrets, escaping Hollywood, and L.A. noir
Hardboiled detective noir, and a multi-generational historical saga take center stage in the reading life of the actor Melissa Gilbert, best known for playing Laura Ingalls Wilder in the wildly successful TV series, Little House on the Prai...
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David Hare on not being a nice boy, the irrelevance of critics, and bourgeois marmalade
The legendary British playwright Sir David Hare is widely regarded as British theater’s most fervent chronicler of his country’s moral failings, to use the words of New York Times critic Bill Brantley. Of himself, Hare has said, ...
Season Two is coming: bookworms, are you ready?
It's summer, and we're ready for a nice, shady nook, or a perfect beach, and some great new book recommendations. Since Shelf Life went on hiatus in February, I've been busy reading more books selected by luminaries I admire, from P...
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Kevin Barry on reading Annie Dillard, and finding his voice through Saul Bellow
Love takes center stage in the short stories of the celebrated Irish writer Kevin Barry, best known for his 2019 novel, Night Boat to Tangier, long listed for The Booker Prize. Barry’s third collection of short stories, That Old Co...
Meredith Talusan on Complex Women in Literature
When the award-winning journalist Meredith Talusan published her memoir, Fairest, in 2020, it was widely praised for the unflinching honesty with which Talusan told a complex story of gender and identity in her own terms. It’s no surpr...
Peeling an orange with rare food hunter Dan Saladino
We step into the world of a sinister gourmand, in John Lanchester’s novel of 90s hedonism, The Debt to Pleasure, take a trip to Florida’s orange groves in the genial company of John McPhee, and globe trot with our gues...
Brendan Slocumb on time traveling with Anthony Doerr and Hanif Abdurraqib
In this episode of Shelf Life we are time traveling, courtesy of two 2021 National Book Award finalists: Anthony Doerr’s critically acclaimed Cloud Cuckoo Land which takes readers to 15th century Constantinople, 20th century Idaho, and...
