Gooding Public Library

It took over five years for Nathaniel Rich to finish his first novel — maybe because he was writing The Mayor's Tongue secretly, first as a college student, and then while writing film criticism during the day.

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The Kindle, the iPhone and other electronic book readers have changed the way many people read — and left some in the publishing industry desperate for new ways to make money. A new venture from the TheDailyBeast.com, will soon upend the traditional publishing model.

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As a child, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe was initially seduced by Joseph Conrad's novella about an Englishman's journey up the Congo. But then he read the book more closely, and he realized that Conrad's portrayal of Africans was not a humane one.

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Scientists sometimes have a hard time communicating new research in a way that makes a more general audience care. In his new book Don't Be Such A Scientist, Randy Olson — a marine biology professor turned filmmaker — shares his hypotheses about why scientists need to communicate their substance with a little more style.

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While most record companies of the 1940s and 1950s made money in one genre, Cincinnati-based King Records spread the love to R & B, rockabilly, bluegrass, western swing and country. Jon Hartley Fox tells the story in his new book King of the Queen City.

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Author Oscar Casares never used to be a reader — until the excitement of The Burning Plain and Other Stories showed him what he had been missing.

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In Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon, journalist Mark Di Vincenzo answers questions about everything from when to defrost your freezer to when to buy a house. He says the most surprising thing he learned is that the best time to ice a burn is "never" — it can cause frostbite.

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The editor in chief of Gourmet joins Terry Gross to discuss the surprise announcement that the venerable magazine will publish its final edition in November. Along with recipes and regrets, she'll talk about her new recipe book, Gourmet Today.

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Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Tad Friend's new memoir Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor.

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In When Everything Changed, Gail Collins outlines the way the women's liberation movement transformed of the lives of women in the United States. Reviewer Glenn Altschuler says Collins takes on topics from the Pill to Sarah Palin.

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When author Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was bombarded with wildly optimistic, inspirational phrases. But a cheerful outlook, she argues, does not cure cancer. In her new book, Bright-Sided, Ehrenreich explores the negative effects of positive thinking.

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Most fantasy baseball books have no plot, no dialogue, no women — which is just fine with Tony Horwitz. But when Horwitz wants a little story with his stats, he picks up Fantasyland, by Sam Walker.

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If a comic book about surviving middle school doesn't sound like a must read to you, think again. Critic Maureen Corrigan says that Jeff Kinney's Dog Days — the latest in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — hits home with any crowd.

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