Last week, NPR launched a new feature on its website: “What We’re Reading,” which describes itself as “Staff picks of standout books.” The first installment included Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, Philip Roth’s The Humbling, and Paul Auster’s Invisible.
My favorite part of this column, though, is that NPR reporters and hosts chime in with their reactions. Here’s what All Things Considered host Guy Raz had to say about Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals:
It’s part memoir, part investigative journalism — a departure from what Foer’s done in the past. But he still uses a novelist’s pen. It’s very well-researched; for every four pages I think there’s one page of footnotes. Foer studied philosophy, so there’s a philosophical tone — a kind of conversation with himself in which the reader is a fly on the wall. But it’s not preachy. It didn’t turn me into a vegetarian, but it certainly made me think about it.
I already suspected that everyone at NPR is a giant book nerd; now I have proof. If, like me, you are a reader and a regular NPR listener, go ahead and geek out.
