Talking Of Books

01/06/2019: In honour of all the adventure on the show we play Adventure of a Lifetime by Coldplay which itself has a tenuous connection to a non-fiction book titled Half the Sky. The album it features on also finds inspiration in 13th Century poet and mystic Rumi.

01/06/2019: We spoke to Miriam Lancewood while we were in New Zealand for the Auckland Writers Festival about her extraordinary nomadic existence, detailed in her memoir Woman in the Wilderness: My Story of Survival, Love & Self-Discovery in New Zealand. She talks to us about what it’s like hunting wild animals, foraging for food, sleeping in a tent through all seasons, and when it is that she feels loneliest.

01/06/2019: A chance to hear one of the events we recorded at the 2019 Emirates Airline Festival of Literature -  And they lived happily ever after… The End. What makes a happy ever after in fiction feel real and not contrived? What does science say about the reality of finding fairy-tale endings in our own lives? Sandhya Menon is the author of YA Rom Coms When Dimple Met Rishi and From Twinkle, With Love, and blames a steady diet of Bollywood movies for her obsession with happily-ever-afters. In Keith Stuart’s Days of Wonder, happily-ever-afters acted out at the local theatre are a lifeline for Tom and his chronically-ill daughter. And Ty Tashiro’s The Science of Happily Ever After explains what truly matters in our real-life quest for enduring love.

11/05/2019: Student and book reviewer Nick Reynolds tells us about his favourite books including After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne and Railhead and Black Light Express by Philip Reeve.

11/05/2019: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Celine Dion is our soundtrack choice today with a fun and tenuous connection to How Social Media is Ruining Your Life by Katherine Ormerod.

11/05/2019: Jamil Abuwardeh has a background in media, storytelling and technology. He’s also an avid reader and joins us for a decade by decade play by play of the books that changed the way he saw the world. From The Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe, to Which Lie Did I Tell by Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman to The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie.

11/05/2019: Why do smart people do stupid things? This is the question at the heart of The Intelligence Trap by David Robson, a book about how even the brightest of minds can backfire. From Thomas Edison’s worst ideas to failures at NASA, Nokia, the FBI and the English football team and even the way education systems are structured, Robson describes how Intelligence can often fail us, and how we can make wiser decisions. Reviewed by: freelance journalist and Middlesex University lecturer Mark Lomas and children’s author Rachel Hamilton.

11/05/2019: The Very Hungry Caterpillar was nearly called something else, the UK has a new poet laureate, American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis has a strong opinion about millennials, another author dislikes the term ‘feelgood books’, and a random act of kindness in the spirit of Ramadan - all feature on Book News today, with freelance journalist and Middlesex university lecturer Mark Lomas and children’s author Rachel Hamilton weighing in.

04/05/2019: From a recently published rom com described as a ‘Sleepless in Seattle for the 21st Century’, to Michelle Obama’s Becoming, a biography of a real-life Scarlett O’Hara who went from rural 19th Century farm girl to European royalty and the best-selling memoir Educated by Tara Westover, this week’s stack of recommendations is a real mix thanks to Think With Google Editor and Holiday in Heels blogger Sara Hamdan.

04/05/2019: Today’s soundtrack is by the 1974 poet laureate of Colorado and inspired by Leon McCarron and Malachy Tallack’s conversation at the 2019 Emirates Airline Festival of Literature about unconventional journeys.

04/05/2019: Why do we get stressed to the point of burnout? How do we fix it? And is it different for men and women? Reviewing Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia and Emily Nagoski is president of Ellevate Dubai, creator and presenter of podcast When Women Win and non-fiction aficionado, Rana Nawas.

20/04/2019: What do you get when you combine cats and vampires? ‘Whiskula’ of course! Haneya Multani is the author of The Cursed Fangs and the Magic Claw’, and she’s just nine years old. Haneya tells us about her book from idea to publication and we hear from Annemeike Woodbridge of the Young Author Academy about the workshops she runs to make young writers’ publication dreams a reality.

20/04/2019: Literary Moment gets weird with sheep and Shakespeare, in Book News this week we look at a story about bedtime stories and prison. And how does a book go viral? Our big question addresses a spectacular 70s success and looks at a more recent creative book launch idea that didn’t go quite as planned...

27/04/2019: Lyrically inspired by the film at the Gates starring Jude Law about The Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 and 1943. The film was inspired by a book by William Craig which was published in 1973. Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand is this week’s Literary Soundtrack.

27/04/2019: A roundup of literary updates internationally and from here in the UAE with Eithne Treanor. Feat. The book that won the IPAF Award, a hidden gem from Ian Rankin’s session about his Marie Kondo moment moving house, a fun fact that connects the World Economic Forum and the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Isobel’s live update from the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

27/04/2019: Have you ever made a mix-tape for a loved one? 40 years ago a team of scientists including the legendary Carl Sagan, did just that, for the cosmos. Georgia Tolley reviews The Vinyl Frontier - The Story of the Voyager Golden Record Jonathan Scott.

27/04/2019: What would you do if you turned on your kitchen tap and nothing came out? This is the question that kickstarts the novel Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman. Neal joined us live in the studio fresh from the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival, to talk all things Dry and his brilliant Scythe series.

27/04/2019: Mira doesn’t like her curly hair. She wants it to be straight but then something unpredictable happens. We spoke to author Maryam Al Serkal about this delightful celebration of natural hair and the courage it takes to be yourself.

27/04/2019: Mohammed N. Al Khan joined us in the studio today for his fiction round-up. Man Booker Winner Marlon James is famous for A Brief History of Seven Killings - how does his latest book Black Leopard, Red Wolf, compare? The author mentioned that it’s an African Game of Thrones but is this actually true? If you’re looking for something different Mo also thinks you might like The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughhart and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.

20/04/2019: Every day, President Obama received ten thousand letters and every night, he read ten of them before going to bed. Tom Billinghurst reviews To Obama: With Love, Joy, Hate and Despair by Jeanne Marie Laskas which describes the day-to-day of the Office of Presidential Correspondence and how it captured the voice of a nation.