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The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread from MPR News

The Thread® is your source for book recommendations and other literary news.

Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. Listen to Ask a Bookseller to find your next favorite book.

Big Books and Bold Ideas

Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

Sign Up for The Thread® Newsletter

Sign up for The Thread newsletter to get reading recommendations from Kerri Miller and other bookworms around the MPR newsroom. Find reviews for new releases, as well as hidden gems you may have missed.

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.

Jack Miles

Jack Miles is a literary scholar who is considered by some to be a maverick among biblical interpreters. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book, God: A Biography. His newest book, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, reframes Jesus's life and mission on earth.

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Talking Volumes author Kien Nguyen

Talking Volumes author Kien Nguyen talks about his new novel The Tapestries, a tale based on the life of his grandfather, an embroider in the court of the last king of Vietnam.

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Sarah Vowell

Author and "This American Life" contributor Sarah Vowell tells us how to be a good American without coming off like an overbearing zealot. Her new book The Partly Cloudy Patriot is a collection of essays ranging from why she loves Abraham Lincoln to her thoughts about rampant flag-waving after September 11th.

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Columnist Thomas Friedman

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman talks to Gary Eichten about the situation in the middle east, terrorism, and other global issues. He is the author of a new book, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11.

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Talking Volumes: Pat Conroy and Salman Rushdie (part 2)

Conversation continues with Pat Conroy on his book, My Losing Season. Later in the hour, we hear excerpts from an October Talking Volumes program with Salman Rushdie, author of Step Across This Line. In Rushdie's latest collection of non-fiction, he crosses over the frontier and sees and tells things as they are, inviting readers to "step across this line" with him.

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Talking Volumes: Pat Conroy (part 1)

A Talking Volumes rebroadcast of Pat Conroy and Katherine Lanpher at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul discussing Conroy's new book, My Losing Season. Conroy writes of his senior year at military school and his tortured relationship with his father.

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Minnesota-born author Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien is a Minnesota-born author known for his writing about the Vietnam war and its legacy. Now he has a new novel out, based on a class reunion at a school remarkably similar to his alma mater Macalester College.

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Talking Volumes with Pat Conroy

Talking Volumes author Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, discusses his latest book, a memoir of his life as a young basketball player. It's called, My Losing Season.

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Living with chronic illness

We look through a literary lens at how chronic illness can test faith and alter a life's trajectory.

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A "Beowulf" for the next hundred years

Monsters, dragons, blood and gore. And a superhero who dies trying to save the world. No, it's not the latest offering at your neighborhood cinema. It's a new translation of the epic poem "Beowulf". It's the result of years of work by two Fargo poets.

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