wbur.org
support wbur today!
Listen to this story
Best Reads of 2005
photo

by Tom Ashbrook

Crack a book, and the life you save may be your own. When the world is wild and seems a shade too dark, a book may tell you why or might just light the world a different way.

2005 has now delivered its gift of books. This hour, we open these presents again and see who likes which best and why. We hear from editors, book sellers, and you on Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore,” Herman Melville brought to life again, Joan Didion’s transcendent woe and Geraldine Brooks’ great “March.”

And we hear again from authors who have talked this year with us: from Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and more.

Carol Horne selects:
“The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Dideon
“Saturday” by Ian McEwan
“The Lost Painting” by Jonathan Harr
“Rereadings” edited by Ann Fadiman
“A Little History of the World” by E.H. Gombrich
“The Complete New Yorker”
“The Planets” by Dava Sobel
“The Encyclopedia of New England” edited by Burt Finetuch and David Waters

Guests:

Charlotte Abbott, Senior Editor at Publisher’s Weekly

Marie Arana, Editor of The Washington Post’s Book World

Carol Horne, Senior Buyer at the Harvard Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Jack Beatty, On Point News Analyst, senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly

 
 

Comments are closed.

Recent Shows
Poker: America’s Game
Thursday, November 19, 2009 image

Poker and American history. How the game of presidents, cowboys, gangsters, and online gamblers helped shape America.

Comments [10]
 
Google vs. Murdoch
Thursday, November 19, 2009 image

Rupert Murdoch wants to block the search giant from scooping free content from his newspapers. We’ll look at the staredown.

Comments [132]
On Point Blog
Michael Wolff and Jeff Jarvis on Murdoch v. Google

We had a rousing discussion about Google vs. Murdoch, and what it says about the whole future of news, with Michael Wolff, Jeff Jarvis, and Steven Brill. Here’s what Wolff and Jarvis had to say about the delusions of both Murdoch and Google.

More » | Comments [18]
 
Video: Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Last week, host Tom Ashbrook was on stage with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, asking him about some of the biggest technology and business issues of our time.
It was part of an MIT event held on Thursday, Nov. 5, to commemorate computer science professor Michael Hammer, who died last year. Here’s video of the full interview, courtesy of WBUR.org:

Among other things, Schmidt said the possibilities [...]

More » | Comments [4]
 
California, here we come! And we need your questions!

On Point is headed west!
No, no. Not for good. Only for one show. But it’s a very special show!  The NPR station in Thousand Oaks, California – KCLU – is celebrating their 15th anniversary. We’re lucky to have been on their airwaves for nearly seven years, and they invited us out west to host a live [...]

More » | Comments [10]