AOT #175: Jason Sheehan Podcasts Cooking Dirty

Jason Sheehan, the food writer for Denver’s Westword, won a James Beard Award in 2003. His essay “There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Barbecue” was reprinted in the book This I Believe, and his work has appeared in Best American Food Writing for the past five years. Sheehan reads from and discusses his new memoir Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen, his rollicking account of life “on the line” in the restaurants, far from culinary school, cable TV, and the Michelin Guide-where most of us eat out most of the time. It takes the kitchen memoir to a rough and reckless place.

($26.00) Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN #978-0-374-28921-8.

AOT Partner Offer:
Download audiobooks to your iPod, iPhone, Blackberry & over 500+ devices. Save 50% for 3 months, only $7.49/mo.

Best of AOT: Joan Didion Reads from The Year of Magical Thinking

Losing those closest to us can be a powerfully tragic and reflective event. In those times, even talking about our deepest feelings can be difficult, a fact that makes Joan Didion‘s The Year of Magical Thinking an especially remarkable book.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma (she later dies).

This powerful book is Didion’s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”

This podcast features Didion reading an excerpt from The Year of Magical Thinking, a section of the book that details her thoughts and experiences in the day following her husband’s passing.

This podcast was originally recorded on November 7, 2005. The audio for this podcast was furnished courtesy of KGNU radio in Boulder which also broadcast the event. For more, please listen to the entire Joan Didion podcast, which includes an interview with author, friend and radio host, Sara Davidson.

AOT #174: Carleen Brice Podcasts Children of the Waters

Colorado author and former Tattered Cover staff member Carleen Brice was recently named 2008 “Breakout Author of the Year” by The African American Literary Awards Show for her debut novel Orange Mint and Honey, which was also a selection of the Essence Book Club. Brice reads from and discusses her second novel Children of the Waters. “I was exhausted and singing the blues the hour I began Carleen Brice’s new novel, Children of the Waters. Five hours later, I’d finished this fresh, free-rein novel about mothers’ secrets and children’s sorrows and was shouting ‘Hurray!'” – Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

($14.00) Random House ISBN #0-345-49907-7. You can visit Carleen Brice’s official web site as well.

You can also listen to Carleen Brice podcast Orange Mint and Honey.

AOT Partner Offer:
Download audiobooks to your iPod, iPhone, Blackberry & over 500+ devices. Save 50% for 3 months, only $7.49/mo.

AOT #173: James Rollins Podcasts The Doomsday Key

James Rollins, the New York Times bestselling master of nail-biting suspense and historical mystery, discusses his new thriller The Doomsday Key. Combining cutting-edge biotechnology with a centuries-old secret, Rollins has created an apocalyptic story that reveals where humankind is truly headed.

($27.95) HarperCollins ISBN #0-06-123140-1. You can visit James Rollins’s official web site as well.

AOT Partner Offer:
Download The Doomsday Key audiobook from Audible.com

AOT #172: Ali Sethi Podcasts The Wish Maker

Ali Sethi reads from and discusses his debut novel The Wish Maker, a sweeping story of love, friendship, and family ties that brings to life the turbulent world of modern Pakistan.

“The Wish Maker, in Ali Sethi’s mature and sure-handed prose, is an engaging family saga, an absorbing coming-of-age story, and an illuminating look at one of the world’s most turbulent regions. Ali Sethi steadfastly resists the usual clichés about both Islam and his native country. Instead, he offers a nuanced, often humorous, and always novel look at life in modern day Pakistan.”–Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

($25.95) Putnam ISBN #978-1-59448-875-7. You can visit Ali Sethi’s official web site as well.

In Memoriam: Frank McCourt

In honor of Frank McCourt, who passed away this past weekend, we are replaying this classic podcast, recorded when he was on tour for Teacher Man.

McCourt became an unlikey star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela’s Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Teacher Man, his third book, recounted McCourt’s thirty-year teaching career in the New York public schools.

On behalf of everyone at Authors On Tour – Live, Frank McCourt will truly be missed, but his words and passion will live on forever.

This podcast was originally recorded on January 30, 2006. If you’d also like to hear Q&A from the Tattered Cover audience, you can listen to the entire Frank McCourt Podcast.

AOT #171: Monica Ali Podcasts In the Kitchen

British author Monica Ali, whose novel Brick Lane was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, reads from and discusses her follow-up novel In the Kitchen. Readers and reviewers have been stunned by the breadth of humanity in Monica Ali’s fiction. She is compared to Dickens and called one of three British novelists who are “the voice of a generation” by Time magazine. In the Kitchen is utterly contemporary, yet has all the drama and heartbreak of a great nineteenth-century novel

($27.00) Scribner ISBN #978-1-4165-7168-1.

AOT Partner Offer:
Download an Audiobook for $7.49 and Save 50% for Your First 3 Months. Choose from over 60,000 titles.

Best of AOT: Al Franken Talks About God, from The Truth (with Jokes)

It always gives us great pleasure to see Authors On Tour alumni reach higher peaks.

Al Franken has gone from entertaining us on Saturday Night Live to informing us as a liberal radio talk-show host. Now, after a eight-month legal battle, Franken is the junior Senator from the state of Minnesota.

Back in November of 2005, Franken spoke at the Tattered Cover book store in Denver. In his book The Truth (with Jokes), he hinted at a possible run for the Senate and spoke of what he would do if elected. This excerpt, however, shows Franken’s more sensitive side (although not quite in Stuart Smalley territory!).

Reading form the chapter “Al Franken Talks About God,” he looks back at the last days of his father. He prefaces the reading by admitting he cries at “sappy McDonald’s commercials,” and he certainly showed his emotions during this powerful reading.

This podcast was originally recorded on November 16, 2005. Listen to the entire Al Franken Podcast.

AOT #170: Michael Connelly Podcasts The Scarecrow

Multiple award-winning journalist and author Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of the Harry Bosch series of novels as well as The Poet, Blood Work, Void Moon, Chasing the Dime, and the New York Times bestseller The Lincoln Lawyer. Connelly reads from and discusses his new mystery featuring newspaperman Jack McEvoy, The Scarecrow, which includes the story of the closing of the Rocky Mountain News, where the fictional McEvoy once worked. As Jack follows the biggest story since The Poet made his career years ago, he tracks a killer who operates completely below police radar-and with perfect knowledge of any move against him.

($27.99) Little, Brown ISBN #978-0-316-16630-0. You can visit Michael Connelly’s official web site as well.

You can also listen to Michael Connelly podcast The Lincoln Lawyer and The Overlook.

AOT Partner Offer:
Download The Scarecrow audiobook from Audible.com

AOT #169: Reif Larsen Podcasts The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

Writer and filmmaker Reif Larsen reads from and discusses his first book The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, a brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius mapmaker T.S. Spivet’s attempts to understand the ways of the world. When T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins. T.S.’s trip begins at his family’s ranch and ends in Washington, D.C., but his journey’s movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut.

($27.95) Penguin Press ISBN #978-1-59420-217-9. You can visit Reif Larsen’s official web site as well.

AOT Partner Offer:
Download an Audiobook for $7.49 and Save 50% for Your First 3 Months. Choose from over 60,000 titles.

« Previous Page — Next Page »