fax:(919)896-1416Podcast Program Notes Index
Windows browsers click on hyperlink to go to program note page to download podcast on to your computer.
MP3 files are best fully downloaded into your computer before listening to them. Files are big as each show is nearly 60 minutes so it takes a while to copy. Click on program link which will take you to where you can download MP3 files for shows you missed or want to listen to again.
For a list of upcoming programs see calendar.
We list our shows in chronological order, newest first. Each program has its own page with links to books discussed and links to MP3 files.
Monday, March 29, 2010: Homunculus by Jerry Stubblefield (Black Heron Press) Retreating from a lackluster career to a town in North Carolina, Hector Owen finds himself in the company of his own creation. Robin is a nasty, yet frequently engaging, eighteen inch tall homunculus freed from Hector’s over-stressed mind/body with his own dangerous agenda.
Monday, March 22, 2010:Todd Levins
Monday, March 15, 2010: Sorrowheart by K.A.Thomas (Comfort Publishing). In this second in a series of young adult fantasy Brenia Sorrowheart’s orders are clear. Find the key and unlock the box. The quest for the key takes her on a journey that leads from the ocean into the deepest bowels of the earth. As her visions turn to nightmares, Bree must not only unlock the secret of the box, but the mystery that lives inside her dreams.
Monday, March 8, 2010: Let My People Go by Tilda Balsley(Kar-Ben Publishing). The Passover story comes alive with this picture book for children. Perform it at the family seder or read it as a bedtime tale. Great for the classroom or church as well. With clever rhymes and zany pictures, the saga of the ten plagues is presented in a Readers’ Theater format aimed at readers young and old.
Monday, March 1, 2010:
Fear of Moving Water
by Alex Gates (Wind
Publications). “Alex Grant is a fabulist who spins language acrobatically into tales,
tales into music, music into myth. Reading him (preferably aloud) is
pure pleasure for the imagination, the mouth and the mind."
--- Susan Ludvigson
Monday, Feb 22, 2010: Rich Krawiec
Monday, Feb 15, 2010: The Cauldron by Ned Condini (Publish America). Fiodor Bulovski arrives in Texas during the Carter era from where he begins his peregrinations from Texas to New York, with flashbacks to Russia. Involvement with colleagues exposes him to rattlers-shakers and political bigots, incestuous cowboys and Southern secessionists, a tornado’s horrors and the bewitching beauty of Big Bend.
Monday, Feb 8, 2010: By the Side of the Buffalo Pasture by Kathleen Buerer (White Magic Publishing). In this memoir Kathleen talks about leaving a materially comfortable existence in pursuit of that which is intangible yet as necessary as water. Clearly and compassionately, she describes her experience of leaving her position with the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington DC and the promise of a “fat retirement check” in search of something more.
Monday, Feb. 1, 2010: Anticipate the Coming Reservoir by John Hoppenthaler (Carnegie Mellon University Press). “These clear, good-natured poems are populated with buskers and Tiki bar patrons, rocked-out lovers and squirrel-meat-cooking yahoos, every last one of them scouring the earth for peace or at least a little comfort. They are explorers sailing ‘hopeful against the current’ of our funky suburbs, our big cities and wasted bottomands…” David Baker
Monday, Jan 25, 2010: Persian Dreams by Maryam Tabibzadeh (DreamBooks). Through war and peace, loss and triumph this novel invites the reader to experience one hundred years of Iranian history through the eyes of its passionate characters. Interweaving fact and fiction, it brings to life a culture and history that is largely unknown to Westerners, revealing a family, and a story, you will never forget.
Monday, Jan 18, 2010: Picara by Pat MacEnulty (Livingston Press). Eli Burnes grows up under the care of Mattie, an opera singer, and Miz Johnnie, the family maid. After Mattie dies of cancer and Miz Johnnie decides to retire, Eli winds up living with her father. Secrets of the past and present unravel her life as she finds her way through the protests, drug use and musical fervor around her.
Monday, Jan. 11, 2010: Howling on Red Dirt Roads by Sara Claytor (Main Street Rag). Did not record. “Her poems are brimming with eccentric characters and compelling details. I think it’s a bit limiting to say that she’s a southern poet, but the south definitely breathes in her work, both its exquisite charm and haunting darkness.” John Amen
Monday, Jan. 4, 2010: The Jazz Loft Project (Alfred A. Knopf) by Sam Stephenson. This book showcases the work of photographer W. Eugene Smith who moved into a loft building in New York City in 1957. From then until 1965 he took roughly 40,000 pictures and recorded 4000 hours capturing more than 300 musicians, among them Thelonius Monk, Zoot Sims, Sonny Rollins, and Eddie Costa. Smith’s work has been legendary in the worlds of art, photography, and music for more than 40 years.
Monday, Dec. 28, 2009: A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd (Harper Collins).A young nurse finds that keeping a promise to deliver a message for a dying soldier in WWI thrusts her into a maelstrom of intrigue and murder. From the creator of the best selling Inspector Rutledge series comes a compelling new character, Bess Crawford.
Monday, Dec. 21, 2009: Judith Van Gieson, Albuquerque, NM author of the Neil Hamel and Claire Reynier mysteries discusses her writing methods and the changing ways of becoming published. She will also discuss her efforts of publishing new authors at ABQ Press.
Monday, Dec. 14, 2009: Flyleaf Books is the newest independent bookstore to open in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area, next to Fosters on MLK Jr. Blvd. Listen in as the owners tell us about what made them decide to take this adventure, what it took to make it happen and what special things we can expect to find when we come in the door.
Monday, Dec. 7, 2009: The Fires of Europe by Phyllis Harrison (iUniverse, Inc.). Teenage rebellion is not an option in the France of 1640. The King and Cardinal Richelieu oversee a network of priests who set snares for those not following closely enough to their rules. Gilles Montroville tries to live the life his parents have planned for him but he is launched into a world far away from his protected childhood.
Monday, Nov. 30, 2009: Master Bookbinder, Susan Soleil, introduces us to what it takes to maintain the physical aspect of what so many of us hold dear, the feel of a favorite book in our hands. With her we’ll explore how to take care of our books, what is involved in restoring a book that has suffered hard use and/or the ravages of time and how one studies to be a Master Bookbinder.
Monday, Nov. 23, 2009: Show recorded but speaker did not show. “Hello my name is Fredric A. Almond Sr., I am the author of Scarred for Life: Stabbed thirty-nine times and forgave (Tate Publishing). It's a true story about my life as a child. When I was eleven a burglar broke in our house, stabbed and killed my mother, and stabbed me approximately thirty-nine times leaving me for dead. … Through the years I've had the passion to ensure my mother's life would live within me. For this reason I wanted to inspire and encourage those that are scarred and can't get past the hurt and pain of it…”
Monday, Nov. 16, 2009: Give My Poor Heart Ease (UNC Press) by William Ferris. "This book is indispensable for anyone who cares to know the roots of Mississippi blues music. William Ferris interviewed dozens of people who spoke about their lives, their music, both secular and non-secular. They talked about field songs, prison chants, hymns and spirituals they sang in church. Some of these interviews are painful to read, but like singing the blues they make the pains bearable, and sometimes even comic.” Ernest J. Gaines
Monday, Nov. 9, 2009: Floodmarkers by Nic Brown(Counterpoint) “…When the storm rips the lid off this humble town it exposes a motley ensemble of flawed, hopeful, and quietly desperate young characters. There is more humanity overflowing on these pages than in most works of fiction twice its size.”-Jim Lynch
Monday, Nov. 2, 2009: Einstein’s Violin: A Conductor’s Notes on Music, Physics and Social Change by Joseph Eger (Tarcher/Penguin) is a testimony to the power of music. Among the most widely traveled and venerated classical conductors of his generation, Eger has discovered within music a universal language that not only unites people across cultures but also suggests something about the physical rules of life itself.
Monday, October 26, 2009: Ghosts of the Triangle: Historic Haunts of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill (The History Press) by Richard and William Jackson. The Research Triangle is a place where the past can linger in historic sites a little too closely. Join the authors as they trace the history behind some spine-tingling stories.
Monday, October 19, 2009: Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle & a Yankee General by Suzy Barile (Eno Publishers) tells the story of Ella Swain – daughter of the UNC president – who shocked citizens across the state when she fell in love with and married the Union general whose troops occupied Chapel Hill. Barile draws on Ella’s never-before-published letters.
Monday, October 12, 2009: In Jill McCorkle’s new collection of short fiction, Going Away Shoes (Algonquin Books), shoes figure large in stories of the complications of love - honeymoon shoes, mud-covered boots, glass slippers – as the characters march to a place of new awareness, and, in one way or another, transform their lives. McCorkle at her best!
Monday, October 5, 2009: The Nine Pound Hammer: Book 1 of The Clockwork Dark by John Claude Bemis (Random House Books for Young Readers) What if John Henry had a son? Twelve-year-old Ray is haunted by the strangest memories of his father, who could speak to animals. Now an orphan, Ray falls in with a medicine show train and its stable of sideshow performers.
Monday, September 28, 2009: Chefs of the Triangle: Their Lives, Recipes, and Restaurants by Ann Prospero (John F. Blair, Publisher). No less an authority than Bon Appetit has called NC’s Triangle area the “foodiest” place in America. The Triangle even has a culinary bus tour. Ann offers us the stories and recipes of 34 leading local chefs in this delicious collection.
Monday, September 21, 2009: Resident of Dunn, North Carolina, Jay Johnson will let us know what inspired his The New & Improved Republican: Look Out, Washington! The GOP is Coming Back with a Vengeance! (AuthorHouse). “We will conquer the Left with stealth and precision. Our determination will be sharper than a laser cutting through steel.We’ll have a polished, sharpened message and we’ll “play for blood.” If you're a liberal socialist, you better hide.”
Monday, September 14, 2009: Storyteller and naturalist, Doug Elliott: Swarm Tree: Of Honeybees, Honeymoons and the Tree of Life (Natural History Press) brings a sense of wonder and humor to every story. Whether tracking skunks, philosophizing over dung beetles or reading divine script on the back of a trout, his broad scientific and cultural knowledge of the Appalachians is a treasure.
Monday, September 7, 2009: Rocky Mount, author Dawn Wilson will discuss her novels--Saint Jude and Leaving the Comfort Cafe. Other work has appeared in Writer's Digest, Lutheran Journal, Byline and Sunshine. In addition, she’ll tell us about the writer’s life. www.dawnwilson.net
Monday, Aug. 31, 2009: Fulfillment Using Real Conscience: Practical Guide for Psychological and Spiritual Wellness (Authorhouse) by N.S. Xavier, M.D. distinguishes between our two inner guides--the real conscience which uses reason and the Golden rule, and the socially programmed "superego" which tends to rule by blame and dictate. www.nsxavier.com
Monday, Aug. 24, 2009:
Dustin Orin Talley, Editor,
To The Bone Literary Magazine,
a literary journal based out of Chapel Hill,
North Carolina with a focus on raw, personal writing that whispers
in your ear and leaves the hair on the back of your neck standing
up. We are a print only journal that can be found in bookstores
throughout the state of North Carolina as well as directly from our
printer.
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009: Joanie McLean: Up From Dust (Finishing Line Press) a poetry chapbook that lives up from the land and lets the land, in her lyrics, awaken nature’s raw power: sensuous, cruel, sinuously entwining us in a beauty, serenity and violence that smothers in isolation and overwhelms in attachment. Deft lines and images evoke stark thoughts and wistful feelings.
Monday, Aug. 10, 2009: Remembering Chapel Hill (NC): The Twentieth Century as We Lived It by Valarie Schwartz (American Chronicles: The History Press) Local newspaper columnist Valarie Schwartz celebrates many of Chapel Hill's most notable residents, from the World War II veteran who came to law school after the war and ended up as president of the UNC system for thirty years to the couple from the Midwest who arrived in 1935 and spent their careers building the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra.
Monday Aug 3, 2009: Local author Nancy Peacock will discuss the writer’s life and her most recent book A Broom of One’s Own:Words on Writing, Housecleaning, and Life (Harper Perennial) that explores what it means to be a writer, and provides advice on subjects such as inspiration, craft, and criticism. Through hilarious anecdotes about the houses she cleans, Peacock also offers insight into issues of class and stereotypes, and describes how her job affects her acceptance of herself as a writer. www.nancypeacockbooks.com
Monday, July 27, 2009: Franklin Hooper: Deadline for a Dark Horse by Franklin Hooper and Roger Malbuisson (Author House) explores the possibility of an attractive renegade Dark Horse congresswoman deadlocking the ’08 political conventions. Hooper’s story involves hilarious plot and character intrigue at the national political level as well as in the local newsroom.
Monday, July 20, 2009:
Bryan
Gilmer debut thriller, Felonious Jazz (Laurel Bluff Books), has garnered international attention:
Jeff Davis Swain digs up evidence for a Raleigh, North Carolina,
trial law firm. Like Raleigh, Swain is Southern with blue-collar
roots but now finds himself more at home in an Audi convertible than
a rusty Ford pickup. When one of the firm's clients comes home to
find his McMansion burglarized -- and his new wife's dog dead in the
kitchen -- he suspects his ex-wife. But Swain senses this is someone
far more dangerous. From a stolen minivan, washed-up jazz bassist
Leonard Noblac watches as Swain begins to investigate. He's ready to
perform his next crime to punish and expose the zeros who live in
the soulless suburb of Rocky Falls, and he's happy to have Swain in
the front row of his audience. Used to working from the shadow at
the back of the stage, Leonard intends to put down a throbbing beat
of crime and destruction in Rocky Falls, the performance he knows
will finally make him famous. Jeff Swain must find Leonard and stop
him -- but that will put the people closest to Jeff in mortal
danger.
Monday, July 13, 2009: Rev. Michael Dowd: Thank GOD for EVOLUTION: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World: “The universe took 13.7 billion years to produce this amazing book. I heartily recommend it. I am often asked how science and religion can co-exist. This is a wonderful answer.” John Mather NASA Senior Astrophysicist, 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics
Monday, July 6, 2009: H. Ronken Lynton: Veiled Destinies: Learning To Live In India (Xlibris Corporation) is an informative book that contains entertaining anecdotes and exciting recollections of the Lyntons’ adaptation experience during their twenty-year stay in India. Author Lynton and her family first landed in India as curious outsiders. Aiming to become one with the Indian community, they studied their unique ways, getting a sense of where Indian patterns of life came from.
Monday, June 29, 2009:
John Shelton Reed & Dale
Volberg Reed
with William McKinney:
Holy Smoke: The Big Book of
Monday, June 22, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009:
Kate Betterton:
Where the Lake Becomes the River: "Homespun and profound,
deadpan and poetic, hilarious and heartbreaking, Kate Betterton's
WHERE THE LAKE BECOMES THE RIVER puts me in mind of Walker Percy,
John Kennedy Toole and Harper Lee. Her voice, like her imagination,
is inspired and authentic to its deep-South core.” Joseph Bathanti
Monday, June 8, 2009: The Mysterious Life of the Heart: Writings from The Sun magazine about Passion, Longing, and Love. In fifty personal essays, short stories, and poems, The Sun's writers explore the enigma of love with unremitting candor, taking us on a journey through heartbreak and ecstasy, anger and forgiveness, fleeting crushes and lasting relationships. The result is vibrant, messy, mysterious, and enduring.
Monday, June 1, 2009: Jacqueline Kelm: The Joy of Appreciative Living: Kelm suggests 3 steps that channel the principles of positive thinking. She offers a 28 day plan to greater happiness and explains why the exercises connected with the plan, utilizing the principles, can change the way you appreciate life.
May 25, 2009: Laine Cunningham, a fifteen-year publishing industry consultant, and Garrison Somers, Senior Editor of The Blotter literary magazine will talk about changes in the publishing industry, pitching and marketing at every stage in an author's career and the joys, challenges and pitfalls of the ‘writing life’.
May 18, 2009: Perry Deane Young: Press 53 is proud to announce the publication of a new updated edition of Two of the Missing, Remembering Sean Flynn and Dana Stone. When first published in 1975 Newsday described the book as “a tender book about war, about friendship and love, with more plain virility to it than all the gory epics put together.” The new edition contains 18 pages of photographs… Most of these photos have never been published before.
May 11, 2009: Stephanie Goddard Davidson: 101 Ways to Love Your Job (Sourcebooks) More Job to Your Joy!
People expect more out of their work now - not just a steady paycheck, but satisfaction and an opportunity to make a difference with others. Stephanie Goddard Davidson, author of 101 Ways to Have a Great Day at Work now shows you how to take your job and love it!May 4, 2009: Not recorded. Helen Kraus, Anne Spafford: Rain Gardening in the South: Ecologically Designed Gardens for Drought, Deluge and Everything in Between: “…a colorful, readable how-to guide on creating beautiful gardens that capture and use water that runs off roofs, driveways, and other hard surfaces in our landscape.” John F. Blair
April 27, 2009: Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford, Editors: Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism: Local editors Bell and Wakeford present a new generation of creative design carried out in the service of the greater good. Questioning how design can improve daily lives, this book maps an emerging geography of architectural activism with more than thirty essays by practicing architects and designers, urban and community planners, environmental designers, and members of other fields from around the world.
April 20, 2009: Talking Sidewalks: Voices of Poverty and Homelessness in Chapel Hill is a literary magazine composed entirely of prose and art from authors and artists who are experiencing homelessness in the Chapel Hill area. This is the second issue. www.talkingsidewalks.com
April 6, 2009: Tom Campbell of the Regulator Bookshop, (720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705), one of our sponsors, will speak about the history of the notable Durham book shop and the changing nature of bookselling.
March 30, 2009: Lindsey McGuirk: Algonquin Books: Lindsey is Marketing & Promotions Coordinator for our local book publisher and will be giving us the heads up about what to look forward to in the coming months.
March 23, 2009: Alan Davidson: Body Brilliance: Mastering Your Five Vital Intelligences: The book discusses physical, mental, emotional, moral and spiritual intelligence and how to develop them fully.
March 16, 2009: "An Historical Atlas of the
March 9, 2009: Legacy of the Archbishop by Debra Killeen (Helm Publishing) The peace of winter is broken in the Kingdom of Myrridia by the murder of Archbishop Francis McHenry. Even before the search for Francis's slayer begins, Bishop Edward Fitzroy achieves his life's ambition: the position of Primate of Myrridia.
March 2, 2009: Special program: Sheri Reynolds the Sweet In Between (Novel).Simple prose rich with subtext, convincing dialogue and a fascinating protagonist combine to produce a heartstring-plucker that's explicit, tender, sad and hopeful.
February 23, 2009: Charles Todd and Caroline Todd: A Matter of Justice (mystery): The 11th Insp. Ian Rutledge mystery skillfully examines the human psyche and explores the difference between vengeance and justice
February 16, 2009: Susan Elizabeth Hale: Sacred Space, Sacred Sound: The Acoustic Mysteries of Holy Places (Quest Books) “… styles of worship through the perspective of music and architecture, … a range of religious traditions including Gregorian chant, overtone chanting, Hindu mantra, and English evensong.”
February 2, 2009: Betsy Greer: Knitting for Good! A Guide to Creating Personal, Social, and Political Change Stitch by Stitch (Trumpeter)
January 26 2009:Talking Sidewalks: Voices of Poverty and Homelessness in Chapel Hill is a literary magazine composed entirely of prose and art from authors and artists who are experiencing homelessness in the Chapel Hill area.
January 19, 2009: Henry Alford: How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth) (Twelve) Armed with recent medical evidence that supports the cliché that older people are, indeed, wiser, Alford sets off to interview people over 70 - some famous (Phyllis Diller, Harold Bloom, Edward Albee), some accomplished (the world's most-quoted author, a woman who walked across the country at age 89 in support of campaign finance reform), some unusual (a pastor who thinks napping is a form of prayer, a retired aerospace engineer who eats food out of the garbage.) Early on in the process, Alford interviews his 79 year-old mother and step-father, and inadvertently changes the course of their 36 year-long union. Part family memoir, part Studs Terkel, How To Live considers some unusual sources - deathbed confessions, late-in-life journals - to deliver a highly optimistic look at our dying days. By showing that life after 70 is the fulfilment of, not the end to, life's questions and trials, How to Live delivers that most unexpected punch: it makes you actually 'want to get old'.
January 12, 2009: Ann Pusey: Carrboro Branch Library: Ann is Branch Librarian of the “little library that could”, does now, and will continue to fulfill the challenges of providing full scale library services from within the confines of a local middle school.
January 5, 2009: Lindsey McGuirk: Algonquin Books for the New Year: Lindsey is Marketing & Promotions Coordinator for our local book publisher and will be giving us the heads up about what to look forward to in the coming months.
December 29, 2008: Paul Nagy on Tarot
December 22, 2008: Tobin Logan on Children's Books
December 15, 2008: Jaki Shelton Green: Breath of the Song (poetry):”North Carolina’s Billie Holiday…a relentless belief that love and ancestry always prevail over heartache…that language, above all, is a sacrament.” Joseph Bathanti
December 8, 2008: Tim McKee and Krista Bremer from The Sun
December 1, 2008: Anne Whiston Spirn: Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field. In 1939, Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration in North Carolina, taking photographs in Wake, Orange, Person, Granville and Chatham counties. "Anne Whiston Spirn has hit the nail on the head: she knows the secret of understanding good photography - and of understanding Dorothea Lange's Life as well. An astonishing book" - Rondal Partridge, photographer and former assistant to Lange
November 24, 2008: Book Review Miscellany Audrey Layden & Paul Nagy
November 10, 2008: Hometown Appetites: The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled How America Ate by Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris
November 3, 2008: On Agate Hill: A Novel by Lee Smith
October 27, 2008: All Aboard by Joe Ashby Porter
October 20, 2008: Ed Southern, Executive Director, North Carolina Writer's Network
October 13, 2008: Kiplinger's Retire & Thrive by Robert Otterbourg (Kiplinger Books)
October 6, 2008: Review Potpourri with Audrey and Paul #1
September 29, 2008: Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino (Random House Trade Paperbacks) Dr. Rachel Murphey-Brown of UNC and students discuss this years UNC-Chapel Hill Freshmen book discussion process.
September 22 , 2008: Jean Anderson: A Love Affair with Southern Cooking: Recipes and Recollections by Jean Anderson (William Morrow Cookbooks).
September15 2008: Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy by Lyle Estill (New Society Publishers)
September 8, 2008: The Doctor and the Psychic by Leon E. Curry., M.D. (BookSurge Publishing)
September 1, 2008: Brook Clarke: An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers Homes in New England (Algonquin)