‘The Book Review’ Podcast Turns 20
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What significant events marked the beginning of the Book Review Podcast?
If you find yourself bewildered by this moment where there's so much reason for despair and so much reason to hope all at the same time, let me say I hear you. I'm Ezra Klein from New York Times Opinion, host of The Ezra Klein Show. And for me, the best way to beat back that bewildered feeling is to talk it out with the people who have ideas and frameworks for making sense of it. There is going to be plenty to talk about. You can find The Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts. 20 years ago this month, the New York Times published its very first podcast.
This is Sam Tannenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review.
And welcome to our podcast, where we huddly tweak on the shores of light and curse the encroaching darkness. Yes, that was the very first episode of the show. Two decades later, hundreds of notable authors and literary personalities have passed through these metaphorical walls. Tony Morrison, Robert Caro, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Franzen, Judy Blume, Stephen King. I could go on and on and on. Even Keith Richards came through, and I was sadly not here for that one. Today, to celebrate this august occasion, we're going to look back at the last 20 years in books. Literary hits... fan favorites, scandals, and scuttlebutt. I'm Gilbert Cruz, and I have the ideal duo to mark the occasion with me, Tina Jordan, who has worked in and around books for 35 years and is now deputy editor of The Book Review.
Tina, welcome. Hi, Gilbert. And Dwight Garner, longtime book critic here at The Times, and appropriately for this episode, the man who came up with the idea for this very podcast in the first place.
How did the Oprah-related controversy impact the publishing industry?
Dwight, it's so great to have you here. Great to be here, Gilbert. So let's go back 20 years to when this podcast first came out. It's 2006. G.W. Bush was president. Twitter had just launched. We did not know the joys that this platform would bring us in the ensuing decades. The iPhone had not been invented yet, thankfully. And just as the year kicked off, the book world was consumed with a scandal.
I don't know what is true, and I don't know what isn't. So first of all, I wanted to start with the smoking gun report, titled The Man Who Conned Oprah. And I want to know where they write
I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate, absolutely. In January of 2006, there was a controversy involving a book called A Million Little Pieces. This was a big deal. Do you remember this? Of course I do. You know, just coming through the door, you felt this book had a bit of electricity. It had this great cover, this hand covered with sort of like the sprinkles on an ice cream cone.
What themes are explored in 'Eat, Pray, Love' and its cultural significance?
And they evoked drugs. It was a bright cover. And you just thought, this looks like something. This was a book by James Fry. It had come out in April 2003. And in September 2005, Oprah selected it as a selection for her book club, which had existed at that point for almost 10 years. It propelled it onto the bestseller list. And then, Tina, what happened? What happened was Oprah had him on the show in October 2005, and something must have ticked off the people at the website called The Smoking Gun. Do you guys remember this website? I remember it only because of this book. Yes. So The Smoking Gun, I believe the last week in December, published a piece called A Million Little Lies. And they took the book apart, like they had found –
His arrest records, you know, basically everything he said had happened. You know, the girlfriend dying, the arrest, none of it had happened. And this was a memoir in which James Fry talked about his addiction to drugs and alcohol and his attempt to rehabilitate himself by going to a clinic. Correct. And interestingly, he had tried to sell this book as a novel, right? And Doubleday, to whom he sold it, said, wait, did all this stuff happen to you?
What made 'The Hunger Games' a defining moment in YA fiction?
Let's publish this as a memoir. So they did, and he actually told the Times later, and I quote, It was written exactly as it was published. So he didn't change a word. And unlike most memoirs at the time, which came with like a little paragraph at the beginning saying, you know, this is how I remember it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What significant events marked the beginning of the Book Review Podcast?
0:00–1:51
2
How did the Oprah-related controversy impact the publishing industry?
1:51–2:53
3
What themes are explored in 'Eat, Pray, Love' and its cultural significance?
2:53–4:15
4
What made 'The Hunger Games' a defining moment in YA fiction?
4:15–5:53
5
How did 'Twilight' influence the fantasy genre and its readership?
5:53–7:12
6
What role did celebrity book clubs play in promoting literature?
7:12–8:24
7
What controversies surrounded the publication of 'American Dirt'?
8:24–9:35
8
How does the quiz at the end reflect on the past 20 years in literature?
9:35–1:06:46
Speakers
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