ABC: The Girl on the Train

Slate critics Dan Kois, Katy Waldman, and Laura Bennett discuss Paula Hawkins' bestselling thriller.

The Audio Book Club on Arcadia

This month, Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois, DoubleX editor Hanna Rosin, and Brow Beat editor David Haglund discuss Lauren Groff’s novel Arcadia, which follows the residents of a 1970s utopian hippie commune into the present day and beyond. The novel’s opening third tells the story of the commune’s heyday and the way it inevitably falls apart, while its ending suggests that in a rapidly degrading future, the ideals that built places like Arcadia might once again make them a refuge.

 

*** all of our episodes are available on itunes...

The Audio Book Club on Behind the Beautiful Forevers

This month, Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois, DoubleX editor Hanna Rosin, and Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon dig into Katherine Boo’s National Book Award-winning Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. Is it really the best book of 2012? How does Boo get the stories she gets? Why do we trust her storytelling even in circumstances where another journalist’s claims might make us pause? Is it OK to call her “Kate”?

*** all of our episodes are available on itunes...

The Audio Book Club on NW

This month, Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois, DoubleX editor Hanna Rosin, and Brow Beat editor David Haglund visit the London of Zadie Smith’s fascinating novel NW. The three discuss the novel’s wild stylistic and tonal shifts; its view of race, class, and fate in the council estates of London; and how it was predicted by Smith’s famous 2008 essay, “Two Paths for the Novel.” And they even Google Map a bunch of the book’s northwest London locations and find them exactly as described in the book—a truly modern novel, as Rosin notes, “meant to be Googled.”

*** all of our episodes are available on itunes...

The Audio Book Club on Cloud Atlas

Our critics discuss David Mitchell’s 500-year puzzle epic. By Emily Bazelon, Dan Kois, and Meghan O'Rourke

*** all of our episodes are available on itunes...

The Audio Book Club on How Should a Person Be?

How should a novel be? Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois, Slate culture critic Meghan O’Rourke, and Slate Brow Beat editor David Haglund discuss Sheila Heti’s “novel from life,” How Should a Person Be? Deliberately messy and featuring unveiled versions of the author’s friends, the novel sharply divided the Audio Book Club. David Haglund defended the book’s innovation and verve; Meghan O’Rourke thought the book was valuable and important despite some problems; and Dan Kois worried he was just another clueless dude who couldn’t get it.

*** all of our episodes are available on itunes...