The Coode Street Podcast

Episode 488: Ten Minutes with Brooke Bolander

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Today Jonathan fires up Skype and calls sunny New York to talk to the fabulous Nebula Award-winning author of The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander, about reading, writing and living during the pandemic, the comfort of reading somewhat grim nonfiction, and her contribution to The Book of Dragons.

You can listen to an excerpt from Brooke's story, "Where the River Turns to Concrete", right now and if you live in the US and are over 18 you can enter our sweepstakes to win one of ten copies by following this link!

Books mentioned include:

• The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
• The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger
• In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner
• Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

Episode 486: Firing the canon

Flying in the face of both good judgment and common sense, Jonathan and Gary return once again to the question of canons in science fiction and fantasy—a discussion which has widely re-emerged in recent weeks as a result of controversies over the Hugo Awards presentation at ConZealand. Are canons lists of books that people actually need to read, or are they ways of defining and celebrating your own reading communities? Are they useful at all? Are publishing programs such as the Gollancz Masterworks or the Tor Essentials trying to impose a particular idea of canon, or simply to make certain works widely available for those who might be interested? Are there multiple canons for multiple interest groups, or does each reader form their own canon? Would it even be possible to start thinking about works published since 2000 in terms of this discussion? As usual, we have strong opinions without really deciding anything much.

Episode 485: Ten Minutes with A.T. Greenblatt

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Gary chats with A.T. Greenblatt -- this year’s short story Nebula winner for "Give the Family My Love" -- about the pleasures of escape reading even in normal times, listening to romances, mysteries, and memoirs, the graphic novels of Marjorie Liu and Neil Gaiman, the Murderbot stories of Martha Wells, and serious walking as an inspiration for fiction. 

Books mentioned include:

• Educated by Tara Westover
• Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• The Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz
• Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman et al.

Episode 484: Ten Minutes with Cheryl Morgan

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Legendary fan, publisher, and critic Cheryl Morgan talks with Gary about some favourite new and forthcoming books; the comfort in watching classic TV and movies; watching Doom Patrol and Black Panther; Sam Jordison and Galley Beggar Press; her own fanzine Salon Futura and Wizard’s Tower Press, and being a sensitivity reader for trans characters and issues.

Books mentioned include:

• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
• Mordew by Alex Pheby
• The Green Man's Heir and The Green Man's Foe by Juliet E. McKenna 
• The Tales of Einarinn series by Juliet E. McKenna
• The Aldabreshin Compass series by Juliet E. McKenna
• untitled forthcoming collection by Aleksandar Žiljak

Episode 483: Ten Minutes with Alec Nevala-Lee

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Hugo-nominated biographer, Analog contributor, and novelist Alec Nevala-Lee talks with Gary about his current research for a biography of R. Buckminster Fuller, who was a good friend of Arthur C. Clarke but also once gave a lecture at a Hubbard organization in the early 1950s; Alec’s own fascination with the cultural history of the 1960s, the evolution of futures studies, and the comfort to be found in returning to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, and the metafictional “grand game” that has evolved from them. Alec’s first collection, Syndromes, is available now as an audiobook original from Recorded Books.

Books mentioned include:

• Syndromes: Science Fiction Stories by Alec Nevala-Lee
• Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlen, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
• Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 by Norman Mailer
• The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer 
• The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by W.S. Baring-Gould
• The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Leslie S. Klinger

Episode 482: Ten Minutes with Arkady Martine

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Today Jonathan calls up newly minted Hugo Award winner for Best Novel, Arkady Martine, to talk about reading, writing, and working during the pandemic, how influence on writers is often quite different from what a reader might expect, the current state of space opera, her next novel, and a new novella coming late next year from Subterranean Press.

Books mentioned include:

• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
• Rose House by Arkady Martine (forthcoming)
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
• Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
• The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke
• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler
• Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

Episode 481: Ten Minutes with Molly Gloss

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

World Fantasy Award nominee Molly Gloss joins Gary to chat about listening to fiction on her commute to the horses, taking some solace in novels with pastoral settings (including SF), the eerie feeling of reading Sarah Pinsker's A Song for a New Day at the very beginning of the lockdown, recent reprints of her classic novels by Saga Press, her long friendship with Ursula K. Le Guin, and her award-nominated retrospective collection Unforeseen.

Books mentioned include:

• Unforeseen: Stories by Molly Gloss
• The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss
• Wild Life by Molly Gloss
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
• A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
• The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
• The Horseman by Tim Pears
• This is Happiness by Niall Williams

Episode 480: Ten Minutes with K.M. Szpara

Ten minutes with... is a regular series of short podcasts presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times.

Gary kicks of the second series of Ten Minutes with by spending a few minutes with Hugo and Nebula-nominated K.M. Szpara discussing the appeal of audiobooks, young-adult mysteries and horror stories (and their value in learning about plotting), what it’s like to launch a novel at the very beginning of the lockdown, and his own forthcoming work.

Books mentioned include:

• Docile by K.M. Szpara
• First, Become Ashes by K.M. Szpara (forthcoming April 2021)
• Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
• The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson
• The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
• In the Hall with a Knife: A Clue Mystery by Diana Peterfreund
• Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
• Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas