Audio Book Club

Critics Christina Cauterucci, Mark Harris, and Katy Waldman discuss Lucia Berlin's dazzling short story collection. Slate's Audio Book Club is brought to you by Audible.com, with more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken-word audio products. Get a free 30-day trial and a free audiobook at AudiblePodcast.com/abc. Next month, Slate's Audio Book Club chats about Better Living Through Criticism by A.O. Scott. Read the book and join us for our conversation in March! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critic, Katy Waldman, is joined by Parul Sehgal of the New York Times Book Review and culture critic, Meghan O'Rourke, to discuss Jonathan Franzen's Dickensian novel – Purity.   Next month, Slate's Audio Book Club will discuss A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. Read the book and join us for a conversation in February!   Slate's Audio Book Club is brought to you by Audible.com, with more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken-word audio products. Get a free 30-day trial and a free audiobook at AudiblePodcast.com/ABC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  Slate critics Emily Bazelon, Laura Miller, and Katy Waldman discuss Lauren Groff's ambitious new novel, “Fates and Furies.” Next month, Slate's Audio Book Club discusses “Purity,” by Jonathan Franzen. Read the book and join us for our conversation in January! Slate's Audio Book Club is brought to you by The Great Courses Plus, a new video learning service with more than 5,000 lectures. As a member of The Great Courses Plus, you can watch as many lectures as you want, anytime, anywhere, on any device. Sign up for a free one-month trial by visiting TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/abc. And by The Message, an original science fiction podcast from Panoply and GE Podcast Theater. All of Season 1 is available now, so listen and find out why a 70-year-old alien recording seems to be killing people. Search for The Message on iTunes. Visit our Audio Book Club archive page for a complete list of the more than 75 books we’ve discussed over the years. Or you can listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes fee

Slate critics Laura Bennett, Andrew Kahn, Dan Kois, and Katy Waldman discuss Hanya Yanagihara's misery-soaked epic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Dan Kois, Laura Miller, and Katy Waldman discuss Andy Weir's tense space procedural. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Jamelle Bouie, Meghan O'Rourke, and Katy Waldman discuss Ta-Nehisi Coates' searing book about being black in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Dan Kois, Meghan O'Rourke, and Katy Waldman discuss Harper Lee's newly published sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Jamelle Bouie, Hanna Rosin, and Katy Waldman discuss Emily St. John Mandel's award-winning novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Emily Bazelon, Hanna Rosin, and Katy Waldman discuss Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Katy Waldman, Julia Turner, and Meghan O'Rourke discuss Helen MacDonald's shapeshifting memoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Emily Bazelon, Hanna Rosin, and Katy Waldman discuss Ali Smith's novel about a prickly, grief-torn teenager and her Renaissance painter counterpart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Dan Kois, Katy Waldman, and Laura Bennett discuss Paula Hawkins' bestselling thriller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Carr, former New York Times critic and media columnist, died on Thursday. He was 58. In honor of Carr, we are re-posting our Audio Book Club about his 2008 memoir, The Night of the Gun.  The story of Carr's descent into alcoholism and drug dependency is, on the one hand, a typical addiction-and-recovery memoir. But Carr tries to add a new twist to the old genre by relying on his reporting skills, rather than just his memory, to reconstruct a more accurate personal history. Carr interviews his friends, family, and ex-girlfriends, and digs through his old medical records in search of objective truth. Does Carr succeed at leaving convention behind? The 45-minute conversation explores this question and many others. Listen to more installments of Slate’s Audio Book Club. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the release of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie in theaters this week, wandering minds are drifting back towards the world of E.L. James’ blockbuster erotic novel. In this episode of the Audio Book Club, previously published around the height of Fifty Shades mania, Slate culture editor Dan Kois, Slate culture critic Meghan O’Rourke, and Slate DoubleX founder Hanna Rosin debate the merits of the book. O’Rourke describes it as maybe the worst book she’s read in her life, but still has quite a bit to say about the book’s issues of class. Rosin expanded on her ideas from her March 2012 piece about the book’s sexual politics and admitted that a second read had led her to better understand why every woman she knew was reading and loving the book. Kois attempted to perform Christian Grey’s “gray gaze” on the radio. Hear their two-year-old predictions of what the film, now in theaters, might look like.  Note: This episode contains spoilers.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Dan Kois, Meghan O'Rourke, and Hanna Rosin discuss Phil Klay's National Book Award-winning debut collection of stories about the Iraq war. Complete Slate's podcast listener survey! Tell us about yourself and your favorite podcasts so Slate can serve you better. We'd appreciate two minutes of your time. Go to http://slate.com/survey … Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Katy Waldman, David Haglund, and Parul Sehgal discuss the first in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan trilogy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Dan Kois, Hanna Rosin, and Emily Bazelon discuss Karen Joy Fowler's novel about an all-too-human family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Dan Kois, Choire Sicha, and Miriam Krule discuss Lev Grossman's fantasy trilogy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate critics Dan Kois, Parul Sehgal, and Katy Waldman discuss Cheryl Strayed's memoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate's Audio Book Club take on Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay's book of essays on gender, race and her messy life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices