Lynn Neary

What Kids Are Reading, In School And Out

Lynn Neary — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 21:16:00 +0000

Walk into any bookstore or library, and you'll find shelves and shelves of hugely popular novels and book series for kids. But research shows that as young readers get older, they are not moving to more complex books. High-schoolers are reading books written for younger kids, and teachers aren't assigning difficult classics as much as they once did.

At Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., the 11th-grade honors English students are reading The Kite Runner. And students like Megan Bell are reading some heavy-duty books in their spare time.

McCann's 'TransAtlantic' Crosses Fiction And Fact, Ireland And U.S.

Lynn Neary — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:52:00 +0000

About five years ago, Colum McCann stumbled upon a small piece of history he had never known: In 1845, Frederick Douglass, then an escaped slave who was already famous for his anti-slavery writings and speeches, visited Ireland to raise money and support for his cause. McCann says he knew almost immediately that he wanted to turn this historical fact into fiction: "This intersection between history and fiction, between what is real and what is not real, fascinates me," he says.

'The Son': A Texas Saga With Guilt And Gore To Go Around

Lynn Neary — Tue, 28 May 2013 11:59:00 +0000

The American West has always been fertile ground for writers. Now Philipp Meyer steps into that territory with his new novel The Son. It's a family saga that traces the settling of Texas from its days as a wild frontier to the oil boom — with no shortage of violence.

Philipp Meyer first drew attention a few years ago with his debut novel American Rust, set in a dying steel town in Pennsylvania. Meyer says that in his first novel he wanted to explore the decline of the middle class in the industrial northeast.

'Burgess Boys' Author, Like Her Characters, Finds Refuge In New York

Lynn Neary — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Elizabeth Strout, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Olive Kitteridge, sets much of her work in Maine, where her family has lived for eight generations. But Strout herself has lived most of her adult life in New York. In her new novel, The Burgess Boys, she writes for the first time about the city she now calls home.

On a late winter afternoon, Strout visited Parke Slope, the Brooklyn neighborhood where much of the story is set.

Amazon Could Expand Recommendation Services With Goodreads Purchase

Lynn Neary — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 23:55:00 +0000

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Online retailer Amazon has acquired Goodreads. It's a popular site where people who love to read exchange reviews and recommendations about books. As NPR's Lynn Neary reports, Amazon now has a powerful new tool for enhancing its customers' ability to find out about books they might want to buy.

LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: In 2007, Otis and Elizabeth Chandler started Goodreads in their living room. They wanted to create an online community of readers who could talk to each other about books. Now, Goodreads is the world's largest book recommendation site.