Do you devour 'think pieces' online? Or perhaps you read essays the old-fashioned way: in books. Either way, you're participating in the timeless art of making sense of the world through words. Today, the Bibliofiles discuss the latest trends of long-form literary journalism and recommend their favorite works in the genre.
Jeffrey Ann Goudie, freelance journalist and book critic:
- Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
- We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- "Street Haunting" by Virginia Woolf
- Sharp: The Women Who Made An Art of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean
Mark Luce, teacher, The Barstow School
- "Consider the Lobster" and "Federer as Religious Experience" by David Foster Wallace
- "Torch Song" by Charles Bowden
- "The Pain Scale" by Eula Biss
- "The White Album, Why I Write" by Joan Didion
- "Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin
- "One Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails" by Donald Hall
- "Total Eclipse" by Annie Dillard
- "The Fourth State of Matter" by Jo Ann Beard
Kaite Stover, Director of Readers' Services, Kansas City Public Library
- Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America
- The Best American Essays 2017
- The Best American Sports Writing 2017
- Dear Fahrenheit 451: A Librarian’s Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life by Annie Spence
- Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver
- "The Really Big One" by Kathryn Schulz
- "Los Angeles Notebook" by Joan Didion
- "Awake in the Dark" by Roger Ebert
- "Holidays on Ice" by David Sedaris
- "How to Write A Rotten Poem With Almost No Effort" by Richard Howey
- "How it Was in America a Week Ago Tuesday" by Kathryn Schulz
- "We Do Abortions Here" by Sally Tisdale
KCUR staff recommendations:
Gina Kaufmann
- On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
CJ Janovy
- "Poor Teeth" by Sarah Smarsh
- "Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop and Rap"
- "When Women Became Men at Wellesley" by Ruth Padawer
- "Saying Goodbye to the First good Ol' Boy of American Pop" by David Cantwell
Sam Zeff
- "Investigators Are Scrutinizing Newly Uncovered Payments By The Russian Embassy" an article on BuzzFeed
Dan Margolies
- Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by Jesse Eisenger
Peggy Lowe
- The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Erica Hunzinger
- "A Kingdom From Dust" by Mark Arax
- "Notes to Self: Lincoln's Private Thoughts on Fate, Failure, Slavery and Belief" by Ronald C. White
- "When Winter Never Ends" by Wright Thompson
Frank Morris
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Listener recommendations:
Lindsay from Prairie Village
- "Federer as Religious Experience" by David Foster Wallace
Chris from Prairie Village
- "A Sense of Where You Are" and Oranges by John McPhee
Judy from Lawrence
- "When Twenty-Six Thousand Stinkbugs Invade Your Home" by Kathryn Schulz
Robert from Lawrence
- "I Wants to go to Prose" by Suzanne B. Jordan