"A Thousand Lives" by Julia Scheeres

This week on Realgoodwords I talk with author Julia Scheeres. She has a chilling new book called "A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown". It's a chilling book that doesn't look at Jim Jones exactly; it's about the people who were there. Scheeres has written the book in a unique style - showcasing some of the people, without the reader knowing their outcomes. Reviewers have said "Scheeres captures the humanity within this terrible story, vividly depicting indiviguals trapped in a vortex of hope and fear, faith and loss of faith." Scheeres researched Jonestown and looked through over 50,000 pagest of files from the FBI including some movies that feature the people of the church. It's chilling to watch now. Tune in for my conversation this Wednesday night at 6pm and Sundays at 9am. Or check the archived interviews of Realgoodwords.

This week on Realgoodwords

Check out the video for young adult author Gayle Forman's "Where She Went" - it's been called "achingly satisfying" by Family Circle. Also MN Book Award winner Bonnie J. Rough and her memoir "Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA".

This week on Realgoodwords

Tune in tonight for KAXE's weekly book program, Realgoodwords with Heidi Holtan. She'll talk with author Jael McHenry about her new book "The Kitchen Sister". After the unexpected death of her parents, shy and sheltered Ginny Selvaggio, a young woman with Asperger’s Syndrome, seeks comfort in family recipes. But the rich, peppery scent of her Nonna’s soup draws an unexpected visitor into the kitchen: the ghost of Nonna herself, dead for twenty years, who appears with a cryptic warning—before vanishing like steam from a cooling dish. Also Pulitzer Prize winning writer Geraldine Brooks and her novel "Caleb's Crossing" about the life of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College in 1665. And local author K.L Malmquist drops by to talk about his second novel that's out, "The Unraveling".

Shelter by Sarah Stonich

This week on Realgoodwords!

River Jordan and Juliette Fay

This week on Realgoodwords: River Jordan and "Praying for Strangers" and Juliette Fay's "Deep Down True"... about a woman facing huge change in her life, change that can sometimes send her reeling back to the feeling of middle school.

new books from new voices

This week Jenny Nelson and Danielle Evans join me to talk about their debut works.

Jenny Nelson's novel is called "Georgia's Kitchen" and it's the kind of book I really like. It involves food and by outward appearances it seems "lighter". It's not a throw away book that some might call "chick-lit". Jenny Nelson is deceptive in her writing - she entertains us but in the end there is more to it.

"Georgia's Kitchen" is the story of chef Georgia in New York. She's at the cusp of a great review at her restaurant - only to find out that she's been sacked because of something she didn't do. She also gets sacked by her fiancee. So what's a girl to do? Find a new opportunity in Italy at a new restaurant starting up in Tuscany. In the meantime, Georgia takes the time to figure out what she actually wants out of her life, apart from a dictatorial restaurant owner or romantic partner.

Danielle Evans is a short story writer who Ron Charles of The Washington Post described like this: "I hope Danielle Evans is a very nice person because that might be her only defense against other writers' seething envy". She's already been chosen by Salman Rushdie for the Best American Short Stories 2008 and by Richard Russo for the Best American Short Stories of 2010. Her work is described as being "a bold perspective on the experience of being young and African American in modern-day America. Here's info on a couple of the stories included in "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self".

"Harvest" This is the story of a college student's unexpected pregnancy in the midst of other, white classmates who making extra money selling their eggs to fertility clinics. In the story "Snakes" two cousins are sent to live with their grandmother in the summertime. One is part African-American and is treated very differently than the other one. Unexpected things happen - both then and later in the cousins' lives.

Tune in tonight from 6-7pm for Realgoodwords or Sunday morning from 9-10. Later this week you can find the interviews archived here.

And check out the Washington Post's Ron Charles funny video review here.

barefoot running and Christopher McDougall on Realgoodwords

Ch

Christopher McDougall is on Realgoodwords this week - talking about how the industry of running shoes has it all wrong. He happened upon a tribe of people in Mexico that take great joy in running all the time and at great lengths, with either flat homemade sandals or barefoot. His book has been wildly successful and more and more people are picking up the ideas of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico's Copper Canyons. Check out Chris' video from the New York Times here. If you missed my conversation with him, you can hear it on the Realgoodwords archive here.

Chris will be in Wayzata, MN next week at the Bookcase talking about his book on Sept. 15th at 6:30pm.

This week on Realgoodwords: An author whose dream came true

This week on Realgoodwords: Love and Love gone wrong

what would you do if you knew?

If you knew that your time here was fleeting. Not just that you might have an illness or a disease, but that your mind was slipping. Your knowledge of your own life would be gone in a matter of months really.

I'd like to think that I'd do everything that I'd always meant to do. That's the cliche, isn't it? Skydive? Run a marathon? Run the chainsaw on my own? But actually, I'd just like to savor what I already have....maybe slow down a little. Definitely spend more time with family. With friends. And a lot of time in coffeeshops with my notebook. And I'd eat only things that I absolutely loved.

It's a scary thought and one that most of us don't want to even contemplate. We can chalk Alzheimer's up as an "old person' disease" but that wouldn't be the truth. About 4 million people are living with Alzheimer's disease and 5% of them develop symptoms before age 60.

In Lisa Genova's novel "Still Alice" we come to know what it would actually be like to be diagnosed at 50 and live with the disease. If you knew the end would come and by then you wouldn't realize it, would you take the steps to do something? Lisa Genova has a PhD in neuroscience and in her research of people with early onset Alzheimer's disease ALL of the people she talked with had contemplated ending their own lives before it became too late. She found that staggering. I think I understand it, don't you?

Lisa is my guest this week on Realgoodwords. Check out this video on "Still Alice"....

From last week's show....Zippora Karz & Sandra Harper

Zippora Karz was my guest - talking about her book "Sugarless Plum - A Ballerina's Triumph Over Diabetes" Check out her video here:


I also talked with novelist and playwright Sandra Harper about her new book with a holiday setting, "Over the Holidays". If you missed the conversations, check out the Realgoodwords archive. And as long as we're doing videos, check out this one with Sandra Harper.

You gotta see this guy's you tube stuff!

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life--dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues--and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

Besides his novel, I had the chance to look into John's "web presence", and what a present it was! (okay, kinda lame, forgive me)

One of the things John is known for is the video letters to his brother Hank. They are called the nerdfighters, and you should totally check it out.

Kids these days!

On this week's Realgoodwords I'll talk with young adult author Jay Asher. His book, "Thirteen Reasons Why" is a bestseller. The title refers to the 13 reasons why Hannah Baker killed herself. Controversial? Hell yes. Kids though, can't get enough of it. So the question is: books about teen suicide, teen pregnancy, teen drug abuse, eating disorders....teen YOU NAME IT... does it lead to MORE of the "problem"? What appeals to young adults about the darker themes like these? Earlier this year I talked with bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson about her book "Wintergirls" which had to do with eating disorders. I asked her if there was any worry on her part that her theme/subject matter would actually ENTICE an eating disorder. She told me that if you are prone to an eating disorder - EVERYTHING would spur it on - TV, magazines, Internet....all of these things exist and a book that delves into the issue doesn't mean it is glorifying the problem. Or does it?

We are not living in the days of Nancy Drew and her boyfriend Ned Nickerson anymore. These tough issues that face teens aren't going away.... and some people think that kids need to know it's okay to read REAL stories and communicate about them.

What do you think?

cool video from MN author Scott Muskin

Another author video

Here's a video from an author I will be interviewing soon....

Author Videos - the latest trend

This week's guest on Realgoodwords, Philip Smith, has a video that explains his new memoir "Walking Through Walls". There's been a few authors I've interviewed in the last year who have done this, and I find it intriguing. What do you think?