What does it mean to be “well read,” and what books make most lists of essential reads? Best-selling author Kenneth C. Davis returns to discuss his latest book, The World In Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction. We’ll learn about the fiction and non-fiction works that are most often mentioned as must-reads in orders to be considered a well-read person.
Panelists:
Kenneth C. Davis, author and historian, Don't Know Much About® History series.
Caroline Bicks, professor and Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, University of Maine, Orono
VIP Caller:
Betsy Pohl, former director, Lithgow Public Library in Augusta
ESSENTIAL BOOKS TRANSCRIPT:
What does it mean to be “well read,” and what books make most lists of essential reads? Best-selling author Kenneth C. Davis returns to discuss his latest book, The World In Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction. We’ll learn about the fiction and non-fiction works that are most often mentioned as must-reads in order to be considered a well-read person.
Panelists:
Kenneth C. Davis, author and historian, Don't Know Much About History series.
Caroline Bicks, professor and Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, University of Maine, Orono
VIP Caller:
Betsy Pohl, former director, Lithgow Public Library in Augusta
Jennifer Rooks 00:00
Today on Maine Calling wisdom and perspective through the ages through great books. For many of us, books are where we turn to learn, understand and expand our minds. From ancient philosophers to contemporary thinkers. We know there is a universe of extraordinary ideas to ponder and discuss, but where to start? Which books to choose, which will challenge us and also pass the simple readability test. Scholar Kenneth C Davis is here to help. He launched an audacious project to recommend and sum up 52 great short books of nonfiction reflecting human thought. I'm Jennifer rooks today on Main calling, Davis joins us to talk about this project and you. Maine Professor Caroline Bix is also with us to share her suggestions and reflections on books to consider adding to your reading list. Maine, calling is just ahead.
Jennifer Rooks 01:34
Hi, I'm Jennifer rooks, and this is Maine Calling. What does it mean to be well read with all the books out there, how to choose where to start today's main calling guests have thought about these questions. They are Kenneth C Davis. He is a best selling author and historian and known for his don't know much about history series. His new book is the World in Books, 52 works of great short nonfiction. And Caroline Bicks is a professor and the Stephen E King chair in literature at the University of Maine. She has written many books about Shakespeare's world, and is the co host of the everyday Shakespeare podcast. Her forthcoming book monsters in the archives is based on the discovery she made about Stephen King's writing process when she was granted access to early drafts of his most iconic novels. And of course, we invite you to join the conversation. Which book or books do you find yourself recommending to family and friends? Are there certain classics that really made an impact on you? Are there other books that you think ought to be entered into the canon? Send an email talk at Maine public.org post a comment on Facebook or Instagram or give us a call at 1-800-399-3566 again, 1-800-399-3566 Welcome to both of you. I have a feeling, Ken and Caroline, our audience is going to have lots of ideas and lots of questions for you, but Ken, I'm going to start with you. This is an audacious project, coming up with 52 great, short books of nonfiction that might scan them. You know, the first one you mentioned is 1000s of years old. I want to ask you first why even try to come up with a list? Why? Why do this?
Kenneth C. Davis 03:45
Why do this? Well, first of all, Jennifer, thank you. As always, it is always a delight to be on with main calling, and I appreciate it. It's it's always a pleasure. We have great conversations the World in Books started because I have lived the life in books. I have always I was one of those kids who had, you know, golden books in the bottom of my bed. I went to the local library. We didn't have a bookstore where I grew up, in Mount Vernon, New York, birthplace of EB white, by the way. So we share that nothing else I know. Cat paralines in blue hill near Brooklyn. EB White's home. So I've lived a life in books. Books have always been important to me. History has always been important to me. People know me for don't know much about history. This book combines my two passions for history and books. We are in a time when reading is under assault. Books are under assault. Reading is under assault because of our attention spans. The fact that we're all doom scrolling and looking at screens has really hurt our attention spans. So I want to focus on books that we can absorb. In a short amount of time, if the emphasis on short. So these are 52 books that are 200 pages or less. Many of them are much shorter. These are the books that I think have in many ways shaped the world we live in and continue to shape the world we live in. So I wanted to look at short books that have had consequence in their time and for hours that have timeliness, that still speak to us today and are accessible, that the reading is still pleasurable because it should be, and I just believe we need to reconstitute the reading habit. There was an Atlantic piece last week got a lot of attention students at elite colleges cannot read a novel, according to their professors. That's a pretty dispiriting and disturbing fact.
Jennifer Rooks 05:49
And just to be clear, the new book Ken is about non fiction, but this follows up another similar book that you published about reading fiction, so you're not telling people that nonfiction is the only thing that matters, not at all.
Kenneth C. Davis 06:05
I did great short books about two years ago. I think we talked about it. That was 50 to 58 works of great short novels, books that the idea was, this was a year of reading briefly. You read a book in a week or less, and then move on to something else. And all of these books, whether it's fiction in the previous book or nonfiction in the World in Books, are meant to be stepping stones to read longer work. I compare it to high inter high intensity training. You know, when we exercise, we're told that very short bursts of intense activity are the way to stay fit. And on the other hand, you don't start training for a marathon by running 26 miles. You start with a shorter runs. So these books help us get into the reading habit. They give us stepping stones into longer books, and they are books that absolutely have consequence and speak to our times. A quick example, Hiroshima by John Hersey, a book I read when I was, I think, 14, describing the aftermath of a first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, not in terms of politics and science and military, but in terms of the impact on the lives of six survivors. That book was written in 1946 it is as timely now as when it was first published. As the threat of nuclear holocaust still hangs over our heads. And of course, the writing is superb.
Jennifer Rooks 07:34
All right. Well, Caroline, I wanted to ask you about this whole idea of great books. There used to be some agreement about what the great books were. In fact, some colleges even built their curriculum around them. Is that still the case? Is there agreement in academia about what the great books are?
Caroline Bicks 07:55
I don't think you'll find agreement in academia by its very nature, and I think that's actually really healthy. Look, I'm not against the idea that there are great books and that it would be wonderful if everybody read great books, but I think what we define as a great book, we need to be open to rethinking that, because, as we know, historically, certain voices have been left out of that. And, you know, I'm a Shakespeare professor, so it's an easy sell. I don't have to be like, No, everyone needs to write Shakespeare. I mean, I think Shakespeare. I'm not worried about the business of Shakespeare. What I am worried about is that, you know, we've overlooked other voices that were influencing Shakespeare, for example, that were just as influential in the 17th century, perhaps, as Shakespeare, but that we don't know about. So, you know, I think Ken's brought up a number of already really hot, interesting topics, thinking about what is happening in classrooms and what we're you know, what I try to do is I've been teaching for 30 years now, and I have definitely seen a decline in students ability to stay focused. That said, you know, having taught through the pandemic, and now we're back, and I see a real eagerness and excitement in students. They want to be sitting around a table with a book in their hands. I'm actually not a huge ebook person in my classrooms, I prefer we're all sitting around reading something together and saying, Go to page 22 let's look at that closely. And to be a deep reader, I think students are hungry for that. They're hungry for community. They're hungry to talk to each other. And I just wanted to put that out there so that's not necessarily getting at your question about great books, but to say, I think now more than ever, we need to be listening to each other's stories. We need to be reading stories that take us places that we don't understand. And we need to be reading them start to finish. You know, we the excerpting of books. I. That was part of the Atlantic story is that high schools and middle schools are excerpting books. I think that does a huge disservice to the project of hearing and understanding a point of view and a story start to finish that's not our point of view.
Jennifer Rooks 10:17
Hearing and understanding a point of view, that's not our point of view. Those are radical words today. Caroline?
Caroline Bicks 10:22
Yeah, that's what literature does. Literature is radical.
Kenneth C. Davis 10:28
I couldn't agree more with everything that Caroline just said. I know we white radio and media to be arguments, but we're completely in concert here and certainly in the world and books, certainly there are some dead white men, dead white European men for that fact, but there are, I tried to strike a balance between, first of all, about balance and gender, acknowledging the fact that most women did not learn to read or write until fairly recently in human history. But for instance, in in the world, in books, I include something I had never read before, and some people might bicker about it being nonfiction, Sappho. We've heard this word Sappho of Lesbos. That's where the word lesbian comes from. So actually, because verse in the classical world, world was the way people wrote. I included some verse, and the verse of Sappho of Lesbos is in there, as well as a biography, so to speak, because so little is known about this woman who wrote during the classical Greek period, one of the few examples that we have of a woman writing in that time and place.
Caroline Bicks 11:44
Yes, I was so glad you included her. And I like that you included Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, for example, who you know is, you know, Latin American poet, 17th century nun, had a huge impact, and you included her. So you I thought it was a terrific list. I'm glad I didn't have to write a list like.
Jennifer Rooks 12:04
Well, let's start by talking about what we can learn from philosophers, from writers, from thinkers who lived a long, long time ago. And I'm just going to ask you each I know Kenneth, we don't have time in our hour to talk about all 52 recommendations, but why don't you talk to me about somebody who lived a long time ago? When you reread that person, you thought, Oh, yes, this is so relevant today, because fill in the blank.
Kenneth C. Davis 12:32
Well, I mean, I could point to almost every one of the books I included for exactly that reason I wrote about the fact that they were written they had consequence a long time ago, but they still speak to us today. I'll actually pull one out because I've been thinking about it a lot, a book I hadn't read before, which is the meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Now, I happen to have been sitting in on my daughter's high school classroom when they were discussing it once, but I'd never read it for myself, a problem in my own education, which was a pretty good education, but missed Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was, of course, the Emperor of Rome, the most powerful man on earth when he was alive. And these are his daily writings, his true meditations. They probably weren't meant for publications, but he emphasizes what we call stoicism, an approach to the world that I have found very, very useful in this time, because he was a man who prized rationality above emotion. I sort of say he's Dr stock from Star Trek and atoga, and his approach to how we live each day when we are confronted with difficulties and difficult people, I think, is an extraordinarily timely and significant piece for our time.
Jennifer Rooks 13:59
All right, Caroline, your turn.
Caroline Bicks 14:02
Oh, my goodness. I was so enthralled with that I lost track of the question and just what is the girl...
Jennifer Rooks 14:09
You can talk about Shakespeare, if you want, but tell us about an author who lived a long time ago, who you feel is though, thoughts, philosophy, points are still relevant today, even more relevant today, right?
Caroline Bicks 14:23
Okay, well, I'm gonna put in a plug for two writers who were very well known in their times. One is Christine de Pizan, who wrote in French The Book of the City of Ladies, and it's really one, and it's 1405, and it was very well known in its time, very influential. And what she did was she was writing stories about women, historical women, mythical women, and really pushing back against the misogynist stereotypes about those women. So putting in a plug for Christine de Pizan Book of the City of Ladies, I'm also going to put in a plug for because, Ken, although you're right that that female literacy is, you know, was traditionally something that came along later than male literacy, one of the first. In fact, some have argued the first science fiction novel was written by a woman in English, 1666, Margaret Cavendish's description of a new world called the blazing world. And it's really, it's an extraordinary book, and certainly people knew it at the time it was published. She was extremely well read. She was a philosopher, she was a poet, she was a dramatist, and she wrote this crazy book, The blazing world that really before we had other science fiction novels. So I'm going to put in a plug for those two great...
Jennifer Rooks 15:44
Well, I'm going to go to one of our callers. This is Ellery calling from Waterville. Hi, Ellery, go ahead.
Ellery 15:49
Oh yes. Thank you for taking my call, and thank you for the amazing program. As usual, I'm a prolific reader of most everything, and I can call myself partly an engineer, but several other things as well. But no need to go there. But I'm wondering if someone is encouraged to read, should they read well outside their purview? I mean, should I study read books about newborns and biochemistry and the Supreme Court and missions to Mars and just everything? How important is it is? It to for people to go beyond their area of interest, to expand their horizons with new and thoughtful works?
Jennifer Rooks 16:29
Ken, how do you think about this?
Kenneth C. Davis 16:30
I think it's a great question and an important question. I think first of all, we we should always love read the things that we love to read, but I think it's very important, especially if we're talking about reading as not just a diversion or an escape, which it certainly is not, but as part of our lifelong learning, which I believe all of my books have really been aimed at teaching people things that they didn't learn in school or learned and forgot or learned all wrong. And that's a lifelong process. I often say I feel it's a bad day if I haven't learned something new. So I think the idea of stretching beyond your comfort zone is a very, very important one, and that's why I made it a serious point to include in the World in Books, a great many books I had never read myself, including books that are, you know, outside my realm of usual experience. And for example, I had never read like most American, probably American Christians or Jews. For instance, a section of the Quran I include a section called the cow in the World in Books, it will be surprised, I think, to many readers to learn that the Quran includes a great many references to Moses, Abraham, Jesus and Mary and so I wanted to include this book because I think we need to understand, as educated people, the basic foundational ideas of world religions and other faiths. So that's one of the reasons I included those books in that early section of the World in Books. But I'm all for reading outside your usual comfort zone, and I hope that people will find in my collection of 52 suggestions, a great many books that they either haven't heard before or would like to sample.
Jennifer Rooks 18:27
Well, Ellery, thank you so much for your call. We do need to take a quick break. We are talking about great books and reading as many things from different eras, from different perspectives as possible. The phone number 1-800-399-3566, our email address talk at Maine public.org You can also post a comment on Facebook or Instagram. We'll be right back. Welcome back. This is Maine calling. I'm Jennifer rooks. We are talking about books that can change us. With me, Caroline books, a professor and Stephen E King chair in literature at the University of Maine. She's also the coast of the everyday Shakespeare podcast. And Ken Davis is the author of The Best Selling hit series. Don't know much about history. And his brand new book is the World in Books, 52 works of great non fiction, great short non fiction.
Share your ideas. Send us an email. Talk at Maine public.org comment on Facebook or Instagram or give us a call at 1-800-399-3566 on the line with us now is Betsy Pohl, who is the former director of the Lithgow Public Library in Augusta. Betsy, thanks so much for calling in.
Betsy Pohl 19:46
Oh, thanks for having me. I This is a great conversation, and one that's very close to my heart. Just love talking about reading in books, and it certainly is a nice distraction from everything else going on in the world right now. Now so interesting to hear how Ken chose his books. He answered a question for me, which was, did he have specific criteria? So he does, he does. And because I haven't gotten a copy of the book yet, I don't know how, whether it progresses in a linear fashion through time, or whether it goes by theme, but I'm looking forward to checking it out. Well, Betsy, I know that. I guess if I had to pick a book.
Jennifer Rooks 20:29
Yeah, go ahead.
Betsy Pohl 20:33
If I had to pick a book, and I don't know if he's included this in his in the world of books, but if I had to pick a piece of short nonfiction to recommend to people that's timely of consequence and certainly accessible, I think I would pick The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. I that's a book I go back to, and I just feel it's still so very relevant today, even though it would been his 100th birthday this year, Ken?
Kenneth C. Davis 21:04
She is absolutely right, and yes, The Fire Next Time is in the World in Books. And because it does ring all four bells that I signal out. First of all, it's short, and everything in the collection is short, but it's the consequence. You know, was it important in its time? What was the book's impact? Its timeliness? Do the ideas still speak to us today? The literary value is the writing rewarding? And finally, accessibility? Does the language resonate with modern readers? And certainly The Fire Next Time, written in 1963 by Baldwin as an two actually essays or letters, one to his nephew, one to America, published, I think, first in in the New Yorker. And they are a perfect example of a book that had enormous consequence when it was published and Baldwin was describing the life of growing up in Harlem in the 1960s 1950s into the 1960s Yes, it is his 100th anniversary of of his birth, and the what that meant to him as a writer of great intellect and ability, and those things certainly speak to us today. The Fire Next Time could have been published next week, I should say last week, forgive me, because it is so perfectly an example of a timely book.
Jennifer Rooks 22:36
No, go ahead. Caroline,
Caroline Bicks 22:38
Like I say, this is in your book. I believe can also, of course, Between the World and Me. Ta Nehisi Coates, that's correct. I One of the things I do is not only list the books that I'm talking about, but books to read next. And the Ta-Nishisi Coates book is in there because, in many ways, it's modeled on The Fire Next Time as a letter to relative.
Jennifer Rooks 23:03
Betsy, I can only imagine that, as a librarian, all day long, people are coming up to you and asking for recommendations, and I'm wondering how you thought about that over your career. How you gave recommendations? Were you asking people if they wanted to be challenged. Were you asking people if they wanted to consider themselves well read? And what did you hear from people? Tell me about the trends. I would say you noticed.
Betsy Pohl 23:33
Yeah, that's it's all over the map. Jennifer, some people specifically say they want to be challenged. Other people say, Ilike cozy mysteries, you know, and so you do your best to find exactly within you know, their parameters, what they want. But I always tried to steer people to something that was a little off to the side, you know, everybody wanted to read James Patterson, and I would say, Well, how about trying this author or that author, which I think you'll find just as readable, but maybe a little more needy. And there's people are so different and what they want to read is so different that I was thinking about Ken and thinking, you know, Better you than me, I would not want to have to make a list of the most important books, because as soon as I started, I'd be off on a tangent, thinking, Oh, maybe I need to change the criteria. Or maybe...
Jennifer Rooks 24:32
Oh, shoot, Betsy, I think we just lost you. Oh, there you are. Ken, go ahead.
Kenneth C. Davis 24:39
Oh, thank you. I just to respond to that, I would say that this is obviously like any list of very subjective these reflect my passions and prejudices. And I'm sure somebody else would come up with a another list of 52 but keeping those, those benchmarks that I set in mind is is what really guided. Me, and certainly, as the early, earlier caller mentioned, trying to look to read outside my own comfort zone, certainly exposing myself to ideas and writers that I'd never heard of. And ideas are important here, because books are ideas. Actually, the introduction to my my book is called books are weapons in the war of ideas. It's a quote that was used by the armed services editions of a program during World War Two to give books, free books, to servicemen and women around the world. It was an extraordinary effort. It produced over 100 million books that were given away, and Franklin D Roosevelt used this expression in the war of ideas. Books are weapons, and we are in a war of ideas now, and that's why it's so much more important than, you know, simply reading as a distraction, diversion, escape. Those are things that are all important, but books represent ideas, and that's one of the reasons we are in a war of ideas right now, and librarians know that for sure.
Jennifer Rooks 26:10
Betsy Pohl, thank you so much for joining the conversation today. Betsy Pohl, the former director of the Lithgow Public Library, and if you have never been to the Lithgow Public Library in Augusta, you have to see it. It's absolutely beautiful. And was the beautiful expansion was under betsy's leadership. So thanks so much for calling in. We're going to move on to Denmark and John. Hi, John, go ahead.
John 26:34
Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I love your show. I would like to recommend the short book by Susan Sontag on other people's pain. It's a wonderful glimpse into the world of war correspondence, and it challenges us to move beyond spectacular images of other people's suffering.
Jennifer Rooks 26:56
Thank you for the recommendation. Caroline, I see you nodding. Are you familiar with this book?
Caroline Bicks 27:00
Yes, I am yeah. And I guess, as people have been speaking, I just keep thinking about one of my favorite books. It's one I like to teach, and it's one I that just stays with me, which is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. And I'm just, I'm looking at a line of it for that I've wrote down because I wanted to say it, because it's so gorgeous. And to me, is the point of why we read and why we read great literature, and it can be based in true stories. And he writes, I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story truth is truer sometimes than happening. Truth, and that, to me, is just it gets me every time, and it gives me chills, because I think right that when you read someone's piece of fiction, fiction can do this as well, especially if it's based in real experience, like The Things They Carried. You know that the way you tell a story kind of impact a reader in a way. It's how you tell the story. What's more important is that you're getting at the happening truth by a story. Truth. And that's, that's a concept that I just love. This is love what I do. I love books. I love reading. They get you thinking in a way, and get at a problem the way Betsy put it, kind of going at it from another angle, right? You don't have to be reading a piece of nonfiction, right? You can be reading a piece of lightly fictionalized nonfiction that gets at a truth in a way, through the beauty of the language, or through putting you launching you into a different space. That's the power of books. That's what's revolutionary about them. You feel things in a way that you wouldn't necessarily feel by reading.
Jennifer Rooks 28:43
So that's thank you so much for calling in with your recommendation. We have an email here from Marta, and you're going to like this one. Ken Marta writes, it's hard to stick to three of my own book recommendations, but I'm going to right now number one, Gilgamesh, a verse narrative by Herbert Mason. I started this book with the intention of giving it away after reading it, but found it so compelling, I'm now reading it to my husband for a second time. It is the oldest story ever written from what I understand dating back to the third millennium BC, 1500 years before Homer. It speaks of love and loss, universal human experiences. Number two, the berry pickers, by Amanda Peters, recently featured on all books, considered an excellent novel featuring Native American themes. And three, the invention of wings by Sue Monk Kidd, a historical novel about two relatively unknown abolitionists, Sarah and Angelina Grimke. Kenneth, you're nodding.
Kenneth C. Davis 29:41
I don't know that last two books, The Epic of Gilgamesh, of course, we've discussed is the first book in the world in books, and just going back to the previous caller on photography by Susan Sontag, is included in this collection. It's a book that actually preceded the book that the caller. Mentioned, because that was the later book. Was a kind of re reflection on some of the things that she wrote about in on photography. And so Sontag, of course, being one of the great public intellectuals of our time, I had actually read the on the pain of others taking a photography class and hadn't read on photography, so I went back to it when I was writing this book. But also to Caroline's point, fiction, nonfiction, great books make us do exactly what she said. They make us feel, and more importantly, they make us think, and they might make us question some of our easy assumptions, and that's the real function to me of reading. It's certainly therapeutic. I talk about that in this book, but it's also its ultimate point is to make us think for ourselves. And we certainly know in these times, we need, need more people who think critically, reading, reading, reading helps us do that.
Jennifer Rooks 31:07
We'll go to Megan calling from Augusta. Hi, Megan, go ahead.
Meghan 31:12
Hi. I have three books. I'm sorry. One I just added when I was listening. One is actually a fiction book, but it's more fable like so I think it it could fit into this conversation. It's called If Cats Disappeared from the World, by Genki Kawamira. And another short is James Baldwin, No Name in the Street that I couldn't believe how much that affected me when I read it. And the third is actually a long nonfiction book, but I read it this year, and I haven't stopped thinking about it for even a week since January. And it's called To Anyone Who Ever Asked: The Life Music and Mystery of Connie Converse by Howard Fishman. And it's about kind of a woman who is a polymath that was like nearly forgotten to history, if this, if this musician, Howard Fishman, hadn't gotten obsessed and decided to write a book about her and fun, you know, finding out that she also wrote for the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and he used his research in the process. So it's really also a conversation about how important sourcing is, and especially in the time of AI and I was a bookseller for a couple of decades.
Jennifer Rooks 32:28
Well, Megan, let me ask you, then the question, if you're a bookseller for a couple decades that I asked Betsy Pohl, what do you find people are looking for when they come into a bookstore? Are they looking to be challenged?
Meghan 32:40
Oh, it just depends on the person and the time, I find that over the years, because I was at the same place for a couple of decades, people would come to me for the things that they heard about first, and then, as you established a relationship with them, they would ask you for, you know, your own personal opinion. And sometimes you get them to read things that were a little outside of what they would usually do, and sometimes it profoundly affected them. I had a woman who I had a conversation with early in my book selling career, and maybe 15 years later, she came back and said that a book that I recommended had like profoundly affected her. It was the Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda.
Jennifer Rooks 33:20
Wow, what an experience. Megan, thanks so much for calling in and sharing your recommendations. We do need to take another break here on Main calling. We are talking about great books, impactful books, books from hundreds of years ago, even 1000s of years ago, that are still relevant today. Give us a call. 1-800-399-3566, so send a brief email to talk at Maine public.org or post to our Facebook page or to Instagram. We'll be right back. Welcome back. I'm Jennifer rooks. You're listening to Maine calling today. We're talking books. My guests Ken Davis and Caroline books. Ken's latest book is called The World in Books, 52 works of great short nonfiction. And Caroline is currently working on a book titled monsters in the archives, which is based on the Discovery she made about Stephen King's writing process when she was granted access to early drafts of his most iconic novels. Caroline that is going to be really interesting. Join our conversation. 1-800-399-3566, send a brief email to talk at Maine public.org or find us on Facebook or Instagram. We'll go to an email here from Judith in Media Studies, the idea of high culture and low culture was rejected several decades ago when researchers made the argument that the value in content lay in what meaning media users take from the content. This meant that soap operas could be as valuable as news shows depending on the viewer's use for it. Does this hold up for books? Are there objectively good books? Caroline, I'm going to ask you this profound question.
Caroline Bicks 35:00
I knew that was coming my way.
Jennifer Rooks 35:03
Well, I mean, you know, Stephen King is a very broad spectrum of types of books, right?
Caroline Bicks 35:12
Right, right. Well,
Jennifer Rooks 35:14
you're not good writers. Don't get me wrong.
Caroline Bicks 35:15
I will say that the previous caller something that she said really stuck with me. She said, I haven't stopped thinking about it. That she was talking about a book that she hadn't stopped thinking about and I think, to me, the measure of a great book is that you can't stop thinking about it. Now, I do believe that there's certain writers that can put words together in a way that is lyrical and impactful, in a way that, yes, of course. What I do, I believe in the power of language and the power of a, you know, a well put together sentence. Now, what that means, right? I'm not, I'm not going to be the esthetics police. I'm not going to say this is more beautiful than that is. But if it's something that people can't stop thinking about then I think we do have to ask. And actually, you know, Stephen King is, is a phenomenal writer. There's a reason that his stories stick in our heads. You know, his vampire story sticks in our head, and not another person's vampire story. But you know, that's more profound than that. But you know, I absolutely believe in the power of of a well crafted sentence, a well crafted image. Why does that stick with us over time, whether it's Gilgamesh or Shakespeare or Stephen King? Why does that stick in your head? You know that's that's the power of language, but so I'm not going to get into esthetics policing, but I say that I think is, is a powerful lesson for us to think about. And I will just say, also, I was thinking about celestine's book, our missing hearts, which I read, which I can't stop thinking about. And it's absolutely gorgeous. And it is also about, you know, relocating children of dissidents. It's a story in the future, and yet it feels very relevant right now. So I do think reading stories, pieces of fiction, that get us thinking about things that are happening right now, whether it's Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, which is one that absolutely stuck with me when I read it in the 1980s and now feels more profound than ever. So I'll stop there.
Jennifer Rooks 37:23
An email here from Earl, small wonder by Barbara Kingsolver, is the best writing I've ever experienced. An email here from Bruce, readable nonfiction is vital in the current environment. I'd recommend John mcphee's many works, including encounters with the archdruid and Elizabeth Colbert's the sixth extension extinction for related fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson's the Ministry for the future, very timely in light of recent fires and climate disasters. I taught law and literature for many years, and find all of these authors very useful in entertaining as well. Ken Elizabeth Culbert makes it into your book.
Kenneth C. Davis 38:02
That's correct. I was going to mention that under a white sky, is the second to last selection of of the 52 she's a brilliant writer, of course, and best selling writer at addressing what is the most important question of our time, obviously the existential question for us of climate change, and we've certainly had evidence of that in the past few weeks, of course, in Florida and this and the Southeast. So that's another reason that these books are so important to read and think about and make us question our assumptions. I want to just throw out two I've had so many thoughts while this is going along. First of all, the caller who talked about popular things, and Caroline can assert this or not, Shakespeare wrote for the popular audience. There they are the people who went and stood in the front who because that was the cheap place to to sit, he was writing for people in a popular vein. So great ideas can be very popular, and Stephen King is a perfect example of that. Stephen King is represented in great short books, and I also reference his wonderful book. It's half memoir, half writer's guide call on writing, I believe, fabulous book.
Caroline Bicks 39:25
Yes, 1001 but it is, it is amazing, it's humorous, it's informational, it's everything.
Jennifer Rooks 39:33
And speaking of sticking with you, I will never forget the line the road to hell is paved with adverbs. So, you know, yes, Stephen King for that
Caroline Bicks 39:40
Be paranoid about adverbs,
Jennifer Rooks 39:44
We'll go to Johnny, who's calling from Portland. Go ahead, Johnny.
Johnny 39:49
Yes, I wanted to recommend a science fiction series that I have, that I have passed around to my entire engineering team at work, that everyone has universally loved. So. And I promise it's not the Sci Fi that's very overly techie, and they can get really wordy that a lot of people are afraid of when it comes to science fiction. But this is called the wayfarer series by Becky Chambers. It's it's a series of four books, relatively short, around 300 pages or so. Each chapters are easy to digest, but the very modern sci fi. It tackles, it tackles things that we're dealing with today, such as, you know how we define relationships artificial intelligence and its role in human and in the human world and humanity itself, gosh, gender identity and even up to, you know, a position where you know humans and how we might think of ourselves, and in a world where we are not the center of the universe, it, it does all these things in a very easy to digest and storytelling manner with characters that are so wonderfully built. And each story, each successive book, is, you know, kind of built on characters that were sort of side characters from the book before. So it takes the stories and just build on them in a very beautiful way.
Jennifer Rooks 41:10
Johnny, thank you so much for your recommendation. I'm going to move on and I'm going to go to Pam. Pam is traveling through Maine. Hi, Pam, go ahead.
Pam 41:19
Hi. Thanks for taking my call. So excited to hear all these wonderful book recommendations. I'm sort of an empty sir. I'm just traveling back from Canada having visited my son up in school there, and there is a wonderful children's book, of course, I can't remember the author, and can't look it up right now, but it's called whisper in the woods, and I find some of the most profound and poignant books that I have in my possession are children's books, the ones that are giving us parables and stories to help us navigate as parents, to teach our kids morals in the story, whisper in the woods, pretty sparse with language, but it really, I think, highlights interdependence. So you see a lot of creatures that are painted into these pictures. And the illustrations and the narrative thread coming through is that there's a tree that she gets old, she dies, she falls, but she serves basically as, like, maybe a nursery or a mother tree. You know, I'm kind of thinking of Suzanne Simard stuff. So I get a real joy of revisiting being a young mother and and revisiting the books that I read to my children, and also having those books reminds me of the kinds of things I was trying to tell them about the most important things in the world to us.
Jennifer Rooks 42:34
Pam, thank you so much for calling and somebody who writes a children's book that stays with you your entire life and makes you want to read that to your own children. Talk about masterful writing. Ken Davis holding up one of the most famous of all time. Ken, go ahead,
Kenneth C. Davis 42:51
Well, I have to jump, jump in here and say I reread practically every year Charlotte's Web by EB White, of course, written in Brooklyn. And as I mentioned earlier, I grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, EB White's hometown, so I feel another connection to that. But Where's Papa going with that? Ax is one of the great first lines in literature, and it's certainly a children's book. We read it to our children and our grandchildren, but I read, reread it almost every year, because to me, it's a perfectly written book, and of course, one of the themes is great friendships and great writers. So Charlotte's Web was included in my previous great short books, and EB White is one of my heroes.
Caroline Bicks 43:41
Yeah, that's the first book that ever made me cry, and so I almost remember it, because it teaches you also about loss. Yeah.
Jennifer Rooks 43:50
Pam, thank you so much for calling in. We'll go to Sacco and Robert. Hi, Robert, go ahead.
Robert 43:57
Hello. Thank you for having such a wonderful show. I actually would like to recommend a new book that's actually being released and published today. It's called Finding our compass, setting a course for democracy to succeed. It kind of fits your criteria, and the fact that it's only 98 pages, it covers our toughest challenges that America is facing, such as misinformation, abortion, race, climate change, healthcare, and it attacks these issues from a different perspective, where it actually leads you to a sensible compromise and a solution to these issues, where we can come off our stools.
Jennifer Rooks 44:50
Robert, who's the author.
Robert 44:53
The author is actually me. My pen name is Robert, Raymond. I.
Jennifer Rooks 45:02
Yeah. Well, Robert, congratulations on getting your book written and published today. Robert Raymond, his book is finding our compass. An email here from Jane. Years ago, as a young employee for an investment firm in Boston, I read Jeanette Winterston's Written On the Body on my travels to and from work on the T it changed my life. No book had ever resonated with me before in this way, and it showed me how language can move and change and inspire. The language was so intimate and I felt included in literature for the first time in my life, it made me want to read and write forever. Caroline is so excited to talk about...
Caroline Bicks 45:38
So excited that was on my list, if I had to make 10 books written on the body Jeanette Winterson, it is the most profound, beautiful it makes. It's written from the point of view. You don't know the gender of the narrator, and I don't know how she does that over the of course the entire novel. And it starts with the line, why is the measure of love loss? And that is a line that just never has left me. And also, I would say her memoir, why be happy when you could be normal is absolutely gorgeous exploration of what is, what is love, what is loss. So thank you for recommending that one.
Kenneth C. Davis 46:16
Yes, and I will add to that list, oranges are not the only fruit. Or somewhat autobiographical first novel, which was included in great short books. And it's a brilliant a brilliant piece, one of my favorite books of recent times.
Jennifer Rooks 46:35
Couple more recommendations. Marge via the main calling Facebook page, the outermost house by Henry beston, and from our producer, Jonathan, a note that it's long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. So that's the outermost house by Henry beston. And here message on Instagram, anything by Brene Brown Walter on tyranny, 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder. And he says, short, 125 pages more of a pamphlet in the vein of common sense. Ken.
Kenneth C. Davis 47:13
It is, it is in the world of books, and it's a brilliant book, just because we're in Maine. And someone mentioned nature writing under the sea wind by Rachel Carson, who wasn't native of Maine, but ended up her life living in Maine. Under the sea wind is her first book. I hadn't read it until I did this work. We all know Silent Spring and its impact. Under the sea wind is one of the most beautifully poetic books I've ever read. It was the first in what became a trilogy. She had grown up not near the ocean. Saw it for the first time when she was in college and wrote this absolutely magnificent book, a quick story. She was working as a marine biologist, writing for the fisheries bureau. They asked her to write a pamphlet. She brought this material back to her boss, who said, I can't publish this. It's too good. And she ended up publishing it in the Atlantic, and eventually published it as a book under the sea wind.
Jennifer Rooks 48:19
Rachel Carson Kyle on Facebook, The Warmth of Other Suns, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and beautifully written by Isabel Wilkerson, chronicles the 20th century great migration of African Americans from the South to us, northern and western cities through three true life stories. Eye opening and unforgettable is what Kyle writes. Jean wants to recommend how to read a book, the new novel by Monica wood. And we have another listener who wants to recommend bloodlands Europe, between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder. Just a few seconds left. Caroline Bicks, I'm going to turn for you and ask for one more recommendation if you have have one.
Caroline Bicks 49:02
So much pressure. I'm actually going to say Ali brash is Hyperbole and a Half, which is a web comic, and it's the most profound and humorous exploration of depression. So I'm just going to put that out there. It's an older book, okay, but Kate Atkinson's life after life, I have to always say okay, okay.
Jennifer Rooks 49:21
Thank you so much. I understand. I'm asking you both impossible questions. And Kenneth C Davis has again attempted the impossible and pulled it off. His new book is The World in Books, 52 works of great short non fiction. Thank you, Kenneth for being on the program. Caroline Bicks is professor and Stephen E King chair in literature at the University of Maine. She is co host of the everyday Shakespeare podcast. Today's sound engineer was Jessica Miller Maine. Calling is produced by Jonathan Smith. And Cindy Hahn, you can find our past programs and sign up for our weekly newsletter at Maine calling.org tomorrow on the program. It's a critter show all about porcupines. I'm Jennifer Rooks, and you have list been listening to Maine Calling on Maine Public Radio.
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