[00:00:01] Hey everyone this is Lynn Vartan and you are listening to the A.P.E.X Hour on KSUU Thunder 91.1. In this show you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over. Learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentation on stage. We will also give you some new music to listen to and hope to turn you on to some new sound and new genres. You can find us here every Thursday at 3:00 p.m. or on the web at suu.edu/apex. But for now welcome to this week's show. Here on Thunder 91.1.
[00:00:46] All right. Well welcome and everyone welcome to the A.P.E.X Hour.
[00:00:49] It's Thursday afternoon here on the campus of Southern Utah University. And as you heard you're listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1. My name is Lynn Vartan. And today on campus we had our annual what we call live court which is actually such a cool thing. The Utah appeals court holds a session on campus during our Apex events but it gives me a chance to do something a little different for the radio show for the A.P.E.X Hour. The judges are off doing very judiciary things and so I get to have sort of a dealer's choice here for topics. And today we are talking about books and reading and I'm so excited to have some friends and colleagues here in the studio to talk about their relationship with books and reading and hopefully give you some inspiration for what to put by your bed or by the pool or wherever you choose to read. So let's start with some introductions. We'll start with ladies first.
[00:01:54] Hi thanks for inviting us Lynn. So I'm Ann Diekema and I am the department chair of the library and also an instruction librarian also.
[00:02:05] How long have you been at SUU?
[00:02:06] Since 2015. So for over four years now still loving it.
[00:02:11] All right. I know. And I have a little private special affinity because we have the exact same glasses which I love. Okay. Continuing on with the introductions.
[00:02:24] Hi my name's Christopher Clark and I am the engagement and outreach librarian here at SUU. And how long have you been at SUU?
[00:02:32] So I've been at SUU for a while. So I started at the library 2012 and I've been faculty there since the beginning of 2018.
[00:02:42] Okay. Cool. And tell me just a little bit about what it means to be an outreach librarian. Sure it will.
[00:02:51] Well it's it's pretty much what it sounds like and it's less obvious since it's just reaching out. It's a lot of coordination working with other departments working with other faculty members and just the community and students to try and make sure that students and other faculty and committee members are aware that that the library isn't just a building that that we're here to kind of help in a variety of ways and that includes with just you know calling them in to cool things that are going on and putting on cool things and and showing them different resources.
[00:03:23] And I think I heard speaking of events that there's an event coming right up. Maybe you could tell us about it.
[00:03:28] Yeah absolutely so on Monday since our Earth theme is talking about books today we will be putting on October fest which will be in the library lobby starting at 1:00 pm. And we will have librarians there bookmarks we'll be doing some readers advisory if you need suggestions about books. And also we'll be giving away free root beer so if you just want to grab an A&R or whatever.
[00:03:52] Oh my gosh I love it. And tell me again the time? It'll be 1:00 PM and it will go to 4 p.m. and this next coming Monday which is I think the 14th. Okay cool. So anybody listening live I'm sure it's open to one Come one come all and check it out and get your next book suggestion and some beer and finishing out our introductions. Let's tell everyone who you are and what you do.
[00:04:19] Hi everyone. Thanks for having us. My name is Matt Nickerson. I'm the library director and associate dean of the library and I know what you're going to ask and I want to say it because I'm proud. Yeah. This is my 30th year at Southern Utah University. In fact it's my twenty ninth year because I started at Southern Utah State College.
[00:04:38] Oh my gosh. Well happy anniversary. And for those listening Southern Utah State College was the previous name of the school. So you've seen it through you know where all the secrets are.
[00:04:50] I know a lot of them but of course we started back in the previous centuries. Thirty years may sound like a lot but the university or the college has been around a lot longer than that.
[00:05:00] Well welcome to all of you. I'm. I love to read. I love books. I'm whenever I have friends over we're always talking about what are you reading right now I know and is used to me asking this question to her. I'm always saying what are you reading what are you reading and I just have tons of books but I'm always looking for the next great read or perhaps a favorite that I haven't read. And so we thought we'd do kind of a round robin and maybe start with each of you giving us a suggestion of a favorite book or one you think everybody should read. So and do you have one to start.
[00:05:34] Absolutely. So my fave one of my favorite books or at least a book that has had a really big impact on me as a dog person. It's called Merle's door lesson from a free thinking dog by Ted Kerasote so. And it set it's actually morale really exist that he's a real dog. And it starts when he finds Merle as a stray dog on a river trip. And adopt him and Merle goes on to teach Ted that he has a social life. So I always like you probably we are the social directors of our dogs. We decide when they eat sleep walk and he lives. The author lives in Teton village. OK. In a national park and the dogs there just roam free and they have dog doors. That's Merle's door. And they're just like teenagers one day they just go hang out with a dog next door. And then they decide to go for a swim in the river. It's amazing. And it's it told from the dog's perspective or No it's from the person's perspective and how he's learning from Merle. about how to be social? Yeah. How to be a dog.
[00:06:49] Wow. Well that's. You know we were talking with Julie Castle the CEO of best friends and she was relaying some stories of how people always say oh well you know I got this dog and it taught me this and it saved my life. It taught me that. But this this is kind of unique. It's teaching you about like social behaviors. So did he learn sort of how to hang out with others?
[00:07:13] I think he learns how to give his dog more free rein because they are people too in a way. Yeah. So after reading this book I now have dog I've had a dog ever since. Oh really. So do you worry about bringing him in? No I don't. And they I mean they're trained in the yard but they can at least decide do they want to lie in the sun or do they not you know do to want to stay inside or outside they can do whatever they want.
[00:07:39] And how did you find out about this book?
[00:07:41] That I don't remember. I'll have to think about that.
[00:07:44] That's OK. Well tell us the title and author one more time and we'll make a list of these and put them on the Web site. It's Merle's door: Lessons from a free thinking dog by Ted Kerasote. OK great. Well thank you so much. Do you have a recommendation?
[00:08:01] Yes so one that I'd really like to recommend because it's one that was personally very important to me. And also I think it's just a good example of a piece of science fiction for people who never read science fiction is Light by M. John Harrison. OK. And it's it's a really unusual book to try and describe. But basically it involves three different timelines in the present day and then in the near future and then in the far future and it follows three different characters and and the way that their narratives kind of Intersect out. And it's one of those books that the narrative kind of takes a backseat to the experience of reading it in terms of like the prose and just the imagination of it huh. And also it's important to know that the author of it and John Harrison kind of comes from a background of of the British New Wave science fiction from the 60s was very informed by kind of the anti-establishment politics of the time very much into the social sciences over the hard sciences and using kind of poetic prison stuff. So it's definitely kind of like it evolved from that subgenre.
[00:09:15] OK. And what. And so the the act of reading it kind of compels you and sucks you in right away. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:23] And that's what's really great about her son style is he. He's actually written all over the place. He even wrote a really great nature book called climbers just about mountain climbing in the U.K. especially in the Peak District. And so he was actually really renowned for that so. So the science fiction element he kind of takes it in and makes it very surreal and sensory and kind of experiential which is which is not common for. Yeah.
[00:09:49] Right. Right. And would you say that it's kind of one if if anybody's listening and sort of wanted to get into science fiction it's kind of a good one for that or is it more for the the diehard science fiction guru?
[00:10:02] I think it's a I think it's a good entry point for for people who aren't necessarily drawn to science fiction itself just because the characterisation is so good the prose is just really sharp and really interesting and the things he thinks he does with narratives especially making it non-linear are really fascinating. So if you're somebody who like likes like a David Mitchell then you'd be really drawn to it.
[00:10:28] Okay awesome. And do you remember how you found out about it?
[00:10:31] That's a good question and I have no idea.
[00:10:35] That's fine. I mean I'm always just curious. I know remember how I mean I have so many books. Which also begs the question I want to ask you guys at some point is a hard. Copy books or Kindle readers e readers. You know it's sort of this really constantly contentious I guess a little bit you know but we'll get a few more recommendations. Okay.
[00:10:56] Mr. Nickerson what recommendation do you have for when I first got your invitation to talk about what books should people read?
[00:11:06] I maybe went a little different direction and even after talking to my colleagues I was like well mean I've always been different anyway so I'll just stick with my different interpretation. I read that. That's great. I'm thinking instead of instead of asking the question What is the latest book that people should read. Yeah I'm thinking about instead of the latest perhaps the oldest. Yeah so I mean I'm a humanities teacher here at Southern Utah University. And I believe to fully understand all the great books that are coming out now we have to have a better at we we can be benefited by having a better understanding of great books or wonderful fiction or great creativity that was written that way in the past. So instead of starting with the latest let's go back to the very first work of fiction or mythology so I want to suggest to people to go back and read. The Odyssey by Homer. I know another great artist that had just one name.
[00:12:02] Tell me why you think that. Because I agree and I love it. I'm glad that we have such a variety. That's exactly what I was hoping for this conversation.
[00:12:10] So if you if you took a criticism of a modern novel or a modern thinker and you look at their bibliography or their schooling or their education or who they modeled their work after and then you took that previous generation of model what did they model their work after and you kept going back. If you're talking about Western culture and we could talk about the new global culture which we should be more focused on in the 21st century there's a lot more out there than the West and we could talk about that but as long as we're here and I'm a Western European white man myself from all that biases I think it helps us to know where did the biases and the interests and the love and creativity of Western white men come from. If you trace it all the way back it's gonna begin at Homer.
[00:12:54] I want to ask what about people who are a little bit intimidated or afraid how. What do you say to that? Like what if people feel that they can't understand it.
[00:13:04] Well this is what they got to remember is that it was written a long long time ago and it was it's probably the product of oral tradition. But the oldest copies are written in Greek. So if our readers out there in radio land don't read Greek they should remember they're going to be reading it in a modern translation of whatever language. It's been translated into virtually every modern language. So we as you're looking for a translation or you're looking to read Homer test the mountain and find a translation that speaks to I think every translator has that job of trying to capture the original work in the original ideas in the modern language to which they're translating and as long as we're talking about librarians we recognize that a translators work her work is just as important as the original author. And when we are creating really graphic records the translator is a primary author just as much as the first author who wrote the original work. So we recognize as you mentioned the translator is super important. So if you think I'll never understand Homer the ancient Greeks you will find a translator who who translated into your first language. Now test a few out and it's immediately accessible. That's why Homer does a great work. It's immediately accessible to you as it was to the people who read it in the 600 B.C. timeless.
[00:14:12] I love it. OK. Well that's our first round. We did it. Yay. So I've got a song and I stumbled across.
[00:14:20] I don't even know how I stumbled across this album but me and my obsession for world music and I'm currently people who know me well know I'm completely as obsessed with Irish music. Irish drumming particularly the power on which is a jam I'm really excited about and planning a trip around and all of that. But I have a song here it's called Nemesis and the artist is Katherine Tickell check it out and see what you think you're listening to the A.P.E.X Hour here on KSUU Thunder 91.1.
[00:19:04] All right everyone welcome back. That was Katherine Tickell and the darkening. And that album is called Hollow bone. If you want to check it out it's really cool. It's just a bunch of kind of modern takes on some Irish music and I really like it. This is Lynn Vartan You're listening to the A.P.E.X Hour and we are talking about books today but I also want to mention a little bit about the podcast. If you're listening to this you're probably listening to it from podcasts and we would like to encourage a call to action from everyone to download as many episodes as possible. That's one of the way that we are tracking the success of the podcast here through web services at SUU. And we would love to encourage everyone to support it by of course leaving a reading but also please download the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so we can keep our great radio show going. So welcome back to my librarian friends and I'd love to start by kind of picking up the thread of conversation that we had going on during the break which is how wonderful it is to share books with others and when you're maybe reading in a group and sharing in a group and talking about opinions and all that and I think there's a lot of great book groups going on and I'd love to hear some of your opinions about book groups about book groups and also about which book groups maybe people can find if they're looking for. So Chris do you want to maybe tell us a little bit?
[00:20:37] Yeah I think I'd like to plug the the SUU Book Club actually which is a student run club that I that I supervised for the students and they completely self select the titles they read each semester last semester they basically did a theme of adaptations where they would read the book and then we set it up to where they can watch the movie in our classroom in the evenings. Awesome. And so they did like hidden figures and cool a few others. Yeah so. So that was a lot of fun. And if you're interested in being part of that you can just email me at Christopher Clark one at SMU to eat you and then I can get you organized with that group and on the same page and then is that that's mostly a student group. Yeah that's a student group. So students out there. This one's for you. Yeah. And also I did that. I actually do a lot of group stuff just on Goodreads with some. So there are some fellow fellow faculty members that that I am in communication with on good reads. One of our librarians Rosie is on there and we always kind of swap you know book suggestions and ratings and that's maybe you should tell the audience what good reason keeps people out there don't want it. Oh yeah. So so good reads is basically a an online public forum where you can go and read and write books. And it serves a couple of really good uses when you connect with a lot of good recommendations and book people. And then two it also helps a lot of up and coming authors get reviews and ratings out there to help their works get noticed. And you can have shelves several things you want to read and keep lists and all different kinds of stuff. Oh it is so fascinating because the groups that kind of find each other they can have the oddest subgenres like you can find a whole list of like like Iraqi cyberpunk books you know oral to them.
[00:22:30] Yeah how cool. OK. Are there other opinions about book groups or other book clubs that we should know about?Matt do you have something?
[00:22:40] You asked the question of how can someone get involved in a book group. So one way is as Chris was saying word of mouth. Talk to your friends. But another great way to get involved in a book group is to start a book group. And in our family my wife and I have both are. We're both involved in book groups. She started a book group when we first moved to Cedar City 30 years ago and it's still going today. Hers is a ladies book group Women of all ages get together and they read a book every month and they come to someone's house and they talk about it in their book club is called books in the hood. It originally started as just our neighbors but now it expands to even outside of Cedar City some people from St George drive. No kidding to it. How often do they read one. Once a month I believe. Okay. And then the couples book group that we belong to together we read a book every two months and that book group. We what I like about groups you ask this because the couples are quite diverse that belong to our group and we think that's important for our group so that we the advantage to meet as then I have to read the book before I go to I'll be embarrassed is the right the library director doesn't read the book right and I don't like the books that they read necessarily but I'm forced to read books that are outside of my regular genre outside of my comfort zone. And lo and behold sometimes I actually like a book that I thought I was gonna hate. Yeah so books are good to open our minds to new ideas and a couples group.
[00:23:55] I don't know why that didn't that hadn't crossed my mind. You know I've thought a book. I've been in book groups five book clubs a lot but I never really thought of a couples book club.
[00:24:04] It's it's you get double your money because as you're reading it with your partner then you're you have a miniature group of only two groups are you talking about it then you can fight or argue or agree when you get there. She can say some more Matt said I don't agree with. He told me this but when I read it and then you get both. All the couples going it's pretty cool. Our book group also has a dinner every night when we as we meet over the years the dinner has become almost as important as the reading. So then the current name of our club is you don't even have to read the book club.
[00:24:35] I'm not sure that really counts then. I don't know.
[00:24:38] But we all still read it. But the food is important. And books bring people together like food bring people together. I think that's cool.
[00:24:44] That's the beautiful part of it. Hundred percent agree with you there. Well let's get to some more recommendations. So am Can we start with you again? Yes.
[00:24:53] So I was just thinking what my first book was that I really that got me into reading. Oh. And that was when I couldn't even read yet. And we were reading this our teacher would read this book to us. It's a Dutch children's book but it's translated into English and in English it is called tow truck pluck and it's about this little guy and he doesn't seem to have any parents but he has to read tow truck and he solves all these kind of environmental problems. How cute is that. It's a really great book. And what is it. Is it a young kids book kids book. it's in the canon of the Netherlands. So it's considered a very important book to our culture.
[00:25:40] Wow. Yeah. And once again the title and author it's pluck a tow truck pluck by the Dutch writer Annie M.G. Schmidt.
[00:25:49] Oh my gosh.
[00:25:51] From 1971. And our teacher would open all the windows and she'd created a song about the book and we'd sing the song. So all our mothers who were at home would hear that we were gonna read that book and we she would read it to us. Yeah. And that was kind of my first book group. Right.
[00:26:10] What a great story. And I'm sure we have some families and parents listening who may maybe looking for something to read and to their children then this sounds like a great suggestion. Thank you so much. All right Chris we're up for your next line. Yes.
[00:26:24] So I think the next recommendation I'll make is actually for a comic book. OK I'm. I'm a very passionate advocate for comic books as literature. And so like if you know the like the history of the novel and how it emerges a very middle class format it's kind of sneered at for a. You know especially in the time you know up until Austin when it kind of became a little more legitimized right as so like pulp pulp fiction and comic books became kind of like the de facto working class genre. And so like growing up in my household we had a lot of comic books around. And one that I would recommend that is available in omnibus farm is the Doom Patrol omnibus and it's by Grant Morrison who is a British comic book writer. And it is just a just fabulous mindblowing piece of work. It's at like twelve hundred pages. Wow. You know in an omnibus farm and it just follows a group of. Surrealist superheroes. As they kind of faced different threats to reality and it's super interesting because Morrison brought in a lot of his background in in the punk scene from Hades and also just to his own kind of like weird esoteric background and the circles he ran and so it becomes like this very interesting work of art even as it also operates as a as a really fun text. There's just a lot of like interesting interesting things in kind of marrying the two. Now you mentioned at omnibus farm I'm not sure I know what though. No that's a great question because that's another thing that's really interesting about the comic book genre is that it's they basically publish issue by issue OK. Right. And over time they'll collect the issues into omnibus. You know an omnibus of one kind of volume. And this kind of represents his run with with that comic book but there have been other writers before in sense. And so it represents like a piece of a greater narrative that is also an enclosed narrative in itself. And so it's it's really interesting in that sense because then other writers subsequently can go in and put their own spin on things and their own interpretations. So it's actually like an incredibly collaborative format which is also really cool. And when you purchase it would you be purchasing that whole amount that twelve hundred pages all at once. That would I. That would be my recommendation. If you can but you can also get them in slimmer volumes that are kind of like it's broken down in two arcs so that you can purchase individually. OK. And again the title. Yes. It's the Doom Patrol Omnibus by Grant Morris Grant Morrison.
[00:29:10] Okay great. And the art that I'm sure is amazing and it sounds like it's a great combination of text and and graphic beauty. Oh my gosh. Just like you sold me on that. That's great. I love it. Well thank you for that recommendation. Okay. Finishing off our next trio of recommendations. Where are you going next?
[00:29:37] I think I'll just build on what my colleagues have already been saying. But stick with my story which is old art from previous decades or centuries that are still fun to read and still contributing to the overall conversation that is the literature of the West. Love it. And sticking with a translation again. It would be Don Quixote de la Mancha who is written by Cervantes. This. Yes. And so it's important to me also because it's one of the first great works of Western literature. That was not written Greek or Latin so as as the Roman Empire died and the romance languages and the barbarian languages from the North started coming into their own and the Rome broke up into smaller and smaller pieces. Artists began to write literature in these new languages that were formed as the Roman empire broke up and Dante would be one of them. We won't go there today we'll go with state run things who wrote this in the old Spanish language and it's obviously been translated so again readers you have to you can play with several translations if you're going to read it in English. If you are a bank legal or a Spanish person then there's probably many of them in our audience who speak Spanish try reading and in Spanish too it's amazing. And I'd also like to talk about adaptations so if you don't know what I'm talking about you've seen the Broadway musical The Man of La Mancha that's taking a few of the little stories that happen to the hero of the book and they've made it into a Broadway musical which is hugely hugely famous and maybe that's a way you could take your first steps that would invite you in to a great work of Western literature.
[00:31:12] And is it something particularly about this story that you love?
[00:31:19] I like it for lots of reasons but I think again I'm just going into that great arc. If you go back to my original book which was Homer it's a book about a man and then sorry everyone because this is again the ancient patriarchal world we all grew up in. But you can imagine Jane Austen and they did allow women to break out and finally contribute. That was it was sad that we miss them for so long. But this is another story about another European man. But Odysseus in the first book I talked about went on these adventures and it's a story of the history of his adventures and what we can learn about the human experience. And that's what that's what Don Quixote is doing it's the it's his many little adventures and maybe that's one reason why I find them pretty accessible because you can break the story up. Yeah I know and you can put it down and come back and every time you come back there's another small story you're not in this big Tolstoy ask book. Right. Right. So I'm going to I'm going to go with Don Quixote there.
[00:32:09] I love it. OK well I've got one.
[00:32:12] Also people are always asking me about music and since that's kind of one of my little areas of expertise and what I teach here at the university and I've been really enjoying and recommending a book called Year of wonder the author is Clemency Burton Hill. And basically what it is is it's almost like a diary of a year. And so each page is a day. And it talks about a great work of music and it encourages you to listen to that work on that day and gives you a couple little tidbits. But it's kind of like your daily guide to classical music and it's some of his very very famous pieces some of them are not very famous pieces but it's kind of a nice again you can dip in dip out in and check in and go like yeah oh this is recommending a specific Chopin Piano Piece. OK. Let me listen to that today and it's sort of a nice little touch sound. So that's my recommendation for the moment it's A Year of Wonder Clemency Burton Hill but now I've got some more music to play for you.
[00:33:18] I played this band on a live radio show. We actually didn't make a podcast of it at the beginning of the semester and I'm so excited about this band somebody in Australia recommended it to me and it's a band called The Cat Empire an Australian band that mixes all kinds of influences. And this song is called the Hello so check it out. Cat Empire.
[00:37:20] I love how the end of that song is. That song is called Hello and the band is The Cat Empire there an Australian band that I just think is so fun.
[00:37:29] Oh my gosh if you need a pick me up put that song on. We are here today on the A.P.E.X Hour You're listening to KSUU Thunder 91.1 and we are talking about books and reading. So we'd like to do a little bit of some plugs for some events coming up. We know we were talking about that book event on Monday at 1:00 p.m. at the library where you can come and get recommendations and some bookmarks and some root beer but there's some other events coming up too. Chris tell us what else we can find out?
[00:37:58] Yes. So on Tuesday which will be October 15th at 7:00 p.m. on the second floor of the library in the Huntsman reading room we will have what's called the Future poetry. And this will be a discussion between Lee Morissette who is a local best selling science fiction and fantasy writer. He'll be in discussion with Danielle Nebraska who who writes and teaches poetry here on campus and she will be talking about it everything that kind of falls into that theme so expect experimental forms. You know what what qualifies as poetry in the many different like ways it can manifest. And she'll be doing some reading from her work and there'll be a Q and A so if you're a poet or you just love poetry you're here or you're fascinated by it then then it's definitely worth checking out if you don't understand it.
[00:38:52] Now first first is just for people who love it. That's why we're doing it at the library and at a university. Yeah. We have free food so please come get Cynthia and then and then also edify yourselves while you're there.
[00:39:07] Awesome. So that's Tuesday next Tuesday at 7 o'clock. And the second floor of the library. Awesome thanks for that. Well I also wanted to ask my question about and it's more just playful than anything else. I keep I think I'm asking because I personally I'm having this existential struggle about e readers versus books in hand. I really love books in hand but then I travel a lot and you know with the e reader I can just have tons. I was just kind of curious. I know it can be a feisty topic at times but what do you guys think actual books are e readers. What are your opinions?
[00:39:44] Real books baby real books baby.
[00:39:49] I love it. But so you all feel pretty strongly 100 percent about that?
[00:39:53] No I don't. Oh well but I. But I'm old. But I own thousands. I have my personal library holds thousands and thousands of books. Yeah. But I like readers. I do like ereaders I when I purchase a book now I make a conscious decision of which way I'm going to go. In many cases and there have been and I'm usually write a book in hand is one that I want to return to again. And then I might want to make notes in one that I want to take with me and hold if it's a quick read and it's more about the plot and more about entertainment sometimes I'll get it on an e reader. There have been a few reader books that after I got started in them I went well I better go buy the quote unquote real thing. But like you said travelling I'm a I'm a person who used to travel for work or for pleasure and my carry would have five books in it. Yeah. And now if I can have a Kindle and have 500 books. That's a big strong selling point for I know that's it.
[00:40:51] Exactly. You guys are both hardcore book?
[00:40:56] Yeah I do come out on the side of hardcover like you know like holding it print copy whenever you can but there but there are some positives to the e-book format.
[00:41:05] And one of those is especially for four older readers you can you know you can modify the font you know right there so you don't have to pay an additional surcharge for a large print book if you even have it available. And also it tends to be you know more eco friendly right. Right. But I think the main concern especially with e-books is that you never really own it in the same sense that you own a print book its license to you. And and there are there's a whole subset of issues in the library are all related to that and yeah access.
[00:41:36] And I think we might want to talk about that just a little bit. Yeah. Because in the library collection we hold tens of thousands of e-books also as part of our library collection and students. We think oh the students of the 21st century are going to flock to the e-books. Right. I don't. Generally speaking they will show them off at the questions desk all these books oh that's an e-book and they don't want to jump to a paper book which is very surprising. So another advantage to students or researchers out there of an e-book is it when you open it as an as an electronic file on your tablet or on your computer or your phone you can search by a word. Yeah try doing that in your twelve hundred page paper book. Right. And just trying to find where do they talk about whatever your topic is as a research tool. Electronic. Looks can be super powerful. Yeah. Interesting thing. I just wanted to give a shout out to people who are doing research or students who or anybody in the in the community can use the issue library and if you run to an e-book give it a try and try to learn what the plus sides of it. If you already think you know the negative sides.
[00:42:31] Well I love asking you about this topic. I just think it's kind of interesting everybody's different takes and all that but let's get some more recommendations so we're gonna come back to you. I'm already starting with you. That is one thing though that I do use electronically and those are the audio books.
[00:42:48] Oh you like audio but I do. Yeah. Because you can kind of read as you're doing your dishes or walking your dog or whatever. My nice so I do listen to a lot of audiobooks. If you go to the public library you can get a free library card and download the Libby app and you can download a lot of audio books and actually e-books too.
[00:43:12] OK cool I'll have to put a plug in for audio books again. OK.
[00:43:16] All right let's hear it. When you're listening to my podcast of course you know.
[00:43:21] You can also listen to the podcast on the same listening device. But say you like audio books I listen to e-books when I'm working now also and again it's that quality and do I want to hold on to it. Do I want to own it. Yeah right. Or just license it. So there's been a case when I've been listening to an e-book can go no gotta have the real thing.
[00:43:38] I like it. OK cool.
[00:43:40] All right. What's your next recommendation. Right. So Matt just mentioned the human experience of the white male anyway. One of my favorite authors. So in general is Ann Patchett. Oh yeah. And she has a whole series of fabulous books. I just think she really understands. The human experience and what it means to be us. And she's also very cool because she was really worried that the independent bookstores were going away. And you know so that you have the big Barnes and Noble and all the local bookstores were just going away and people just order on Amazon. So she started her own bookstore in Nashville Tennessee and I've been to it and it's fantastic. Wow. Another nice feature there's dogs in this store like her dogs in the store and other people who work there all the dogs are just wandering around. I love it. But yeah it's a great bookstore. And with it with a fantastic selection because that's nice about the independent bookstores they don't just have the big commercial titles they have stuff that's good and interesting to read as well.
[00:44:51] I didn't know that about her at all. She's fascinating. Cool. And she just has a new book out it's called the Dutch house and it's nothing to do with Holland. I haven't read that one yet. But I read the previous one commonwealth. Fantastic. OK.
[00:45:12] What's Commonwealth about?
[00:45:13] It's about these two families that are merging because their parents are divorced and get together and all the problems relationship problems and the sibling issues. Fascinating. OK and then from a music perspective her book Bel Canto.
[00:45:30] Oh yes. Yeah. It's a really fun. Yeah. OK. Ann Patchett in Bel Canto and Commonwealth are two recommendations. Thank you for those. All right.
[00:45:40] Chris your next recommendation?
[00:45:41] So I think the next one I'll recommend is actually a book of short stories because I think short stories are the farm I'm really passionate about and I would like to see people reading more of it. And this is a recent recently translated collection. The author is Marianna Enriquez and the collection in English is called Things We Lost in the fire and it's actually really great October reading because it features a lot of ghost stories and a lot of kind of like ghoulish shiver inducing stories but also what makes it interesting is she's very much writing from the perspective of being a lower class woman growing up in Argentina. So it's very much informed by South American politics from the 70s up to the present day. And it's really fascinating sometimes it's very harrowing but it's also kind of blended with the fantastical right because she's also writing in the tradition of Marquez it's the magical realist. So yeah it's a really great book.
[00:46:46] Oh that sounds great. Yeah. And remind me the title and author again things we lost in the fire. Mariana Enrique's OK. She's Argentinean. Oh that sounds exciting. Cool thanks for that one. All right.
[00:46:59] Back to you now. I think I will just quickly recommend for reading one of the great works of Western literature one of the first great works in Western literature in English so you won't have to read it in translation if you are an English speaker and if you're not an English speaker. I would just have to apologize because I still I still believe translations no matter how good they are and translators are amazing in the work they do. It's very difficult and I would say impossible to truly bring the spirit and the soul of artistic work through through the translation process and it would be Milton's Paradise Lost which is which if you want to start with the with a work that's written in English that's had a huge impact not only in literature Western philosophy but actually to the world. Try. Paradise Lost. Of the three I've mentioned it might be the hardest to to get into. But I'm still going to recommend it. I just kind of that case that if especially for an English speaker and you're part of the Western tradition I think you owe it to yourself to least give it a try and try to find out of a great work written in the native language if you can't do that then you can move on to Shakespeare and then that'll do you for.
[00:48:08] Okay. I've never read that I've never read it actually I think I absolutely should probably dig and give it a try. Listen I know I will. I'm in but you haven't read into that.
[00:48:18] Okay. Well maybe we should start a book club and begin with that.
[00:48:28] You think it'll be popular. Let's see. All right. Well I along with short stories I have a recommendation that actually one of our past guests recommended to me and it is a group of stories. The title is called Americana and the author is Hampton Sides who's just the fantastic author and you know it it really just kind of took me because it's an incredible story is written so so well all about random small moments in Americana. So it starts out with the tour story of a skateboarding empire and then it talks about this sort of island community where men go for holiday and super private and super elite and about sort of breaking into that. And then there's there's some stories that have to do with Utah. There's just all different kinds. And they're really interesting topics and really interesting stories and that's Americana by Hampton side. So that's my recommendation. We are almost out of time but what I'd love to do is go around maybe one more time really quickly and do one more either of a book that you have read or maybe one that's up next for you as well one that you're excited OK. Matt just like seems so excited so let's start with you.
[00:49:50] Oh it's a weird. I'm really excited about this because I've just been going on and on about the value of understanding the evolution of thought and literature in Western culture. But I've recognized in myself a huge liquid a huge bias and so I've started reading one of the great works of literature of China and that's called it's called the dream of the Red Chamber the dream of the red chamber and it's already it's already amazing and captivating but even through translation I already feel that constant discombobulating that this is not Western is it is awesome. Is it a modern work or is this one of the 18th century. OK. So it's not ancient Egypt but I'll move back. I thought I wanted to read something. It's considered one of the four great Chinese works of literature and I didn't want to go to Egypt for my first little dabble OK. Eighteenth century the my translation is called The Dream of the Red Chamber.
[00:50:48] OK. Love it. You sound so excited about it that I check it out just based on that alone.
[00:50:54] And I'm only I haven't got foreign a federal but enough to know it's gonna be it's going to be awesome.
[00:50:58] Okay perfect. Well back to you we'll go we'll go reverse direction so Chris either another recommendation or one that you're excited about getting to in the coming weeks.
[00:51:08] Oh gosh. There's something on the TBR pile I'm not sure where to go but I think I I would like to recommend Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon just because it's one of those like difficult daunting books that I try and recommend as many people as possible. OK. With the caveat that the first time I read it I got about halfway through and I've never come so close to throwing a book against a wall. So frustrated really. And then a few weeks passed and I couldn't get it out of my head so I just decided to pick it back up again and I read it in a couple of days loved it and would just I think it's brilliant as well. OK. So this is not a story that I know Gravity's Rainbow. Can you tell me a little. Yes. So go desert Boas is probably pension's best known work. He wrote it in 1970 2 or 3 am trying to remember and it won the National Book Award and it's kind of following the same style as Moby Dick. And he he has established theme and he has written like eight hundred pages variations on that theme following the madcap adventures of this private in the Army. And it slips him between so many different genres. Like it starts out as a comedy. Then it becomes like a war drama and then it becomes a science fiction story and then it just becomes a whole slew of bizarre other things including religious allegory fable. But what made you so frustrated with it the first time round. Well in and this is an experience that I think a lot of people might experience is that sometimes a story doesn't do the thing you expect it doesn't follow the narrative like rhythms they expect it to follow and that can be frustrating because we we expected to do a certain thing and it doesn't. But if you stick with it sometimes it can be immensely rewarding and cool.
[00:52:52] All right. Well thank you for that. I'm going to check it out. All right. And you're going to close this out here.
[00:52:56] All right so in my I'm in a book group too. And it has a lot of faculty members on it and retired faculty members from SUU you. And the next thing we're going to read is so I haven't read this at all. OK. It's called This Land. How cowboys capitalism and corruption are ruining the American West. Whoa that's intense. By Christopher Ketcham OK. And this. So in my book club we take turns recommending books. So this book was recommended by Dr. Kelly Goonan from outdoor recreation. Yeah.
[00:53:32] I know her well. And so is it is it fiction is it nonfiction journal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great. All right non-fiction. Well you're going to have to report back to us on that one. This land and the author again is Christopher Ketcham. OK.
[00:53:48] I enter a library loan it. So our library doesn't have it. I mean it's from the Davis County Library. Christopher was sitting next to me and orders for English thinks he may order us a coffee.
[00:54:01] Yeah I actually didn't see that that title come up and it sounded real interesting sir. OK. Right. Well I just want to take a moment and say thank you guys so much for being here and sharing all of these great recommendations. I love it. I've gotten a whole bunch of new titles to put on my list. And again we want to make sure to remember that great events that are happening on campus next Monday 1:00 p.m. at the library next Tuesday at 7:30pm. And just to take advantage of reading and maybe we'll have you back and talk about how to make reading more a part of our life because I know that was something we even wanted to get to and didn't get to. But for now everybody find a book get reading read for fun broaden your mind broaden your horizons and with that we will say goodbye from the A.P.E.X Hour and we'll see you next week. Thanks everyone.
[00:54:57] Thanks so much for listening to the A.P.E.X Hour here on KSUU Thunder 91.1. Come find us again next Thursday at 3 p.m. for more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University. And new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime we would love to see you at our events on campus to find out more. Check out suu.edu/apex until next week. This is Lynn Vartan saying goodbye from the A.P.E.X Hour. Here on Thunder 91.1.
