The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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Talking Volumes

Talking Volumes is back for its 25th season. Join us at the Fitzgerald Theater for four special events with renowned authors, celebrating our anniversary with a special $25 ticket price for MPR members and Star Tribune subscribers. Buy tickets here.

March 9, 2005 1:00 AM

The unhappy life of "Beautiful Inez"

The main character in Minnesota author Bart Schneider's new novel, "Beautiful Inez," seems to have it all. She's a violinist with the San Francisco Symphony in the 1960s. Inez has a flourishing career, two children and a powerful husband. Yet she's unhappy. Schneider told MPR's Greta Cunningham Inez uses music and relationships to try to grasp happiness. He reads from the book March 10 at the Bound to Be Read Bookstore in St. Paul.

by Greta Cunningham

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March 8, 2005 3:00 PM

Race relations in "intimate places"

Twin Cities author Jonathan Odell explores race relations in what he calls "the intimate spaces" of everyday life in his first novel, "The View from Delphi." Odell's book is the March selection of the Talking Volumes book club.

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March 2, 2005 12:20 PM

Fictional fraud in the Final Four

John Feinstein covered sports and politics in his eleven years at the Washington Post. He has written several bestselling books, including "A Season on the Brink" and "A Good Walk Spoiled," but Feinstein's latest novel is his first foray into the genre of young adult fiction. "Last Shot" is the story of two teenagers who win press passes to cover college basketball's Final Four and unearth a plot to fix the big game.

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February 25, 2005 1:20 PM

When are split-second decisions the right ones?

New Yorker Staff Writer Malcolm Gladwell answers questions about his latest book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," at the Commonwealth Club of California. "Blink," which explores snap judgements, is number one on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

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February 25, 2005 12:20 PM

The power and pitfalls of snap judgements

By the time you finish this sentence, you may very well have decided whether or not to listen to Malcolm Gladwell's speech at the Commonwealth Club of California. Gladwell's book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" is about these kinds of split-second decisions: how they are made, why they are often surprisingly good and why they are sometimes tragically bad.

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February 16, 2005 1:20 PM

A writer's view of true crime

Minnesota author Judith Guest is drawn to the dark side of life. She loves reading the most lurid tales from the daily newspapers: the kidnappings and the murders. Her latest novel, "The Tarnished Eye," is based on the real-life unsolved killings of a father, mother and their four children.

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February 14, 2005 11:00 AM

Love poems for Valentine's Day

It's Valentine's Day, and what better time for a few sweet words. Here are some love poems from three members of the Laurel Poetry Collective, a Twin Cities local poetry group -- Ilse Mueller, Lisa Berg, and Tom Ruud.

by Annie Baxter

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February 8, 2005 12:00 AM

A writer's view of true crime

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February 7, 2005 4:58 PM

The man behind the lobotomy

The writer of a new biography of Dr Walter Freeman, says his subject was not a monster. He was the doctor who developed the lobotomy in the USA, then spent three decades performing and promoting the controversial operation. Minneapolis writer Jack El-Hai says lobotomy seems brutal now, but at the time doctors treating people with mental illness had few other options.

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February 7, 2005 11:20 AM

Snap decisions

Many decisions, including some rather important ones, are made in the blink of an eye. But that doesn't mean quick judgments are necessarily flawed.

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