by Cristy Meiners, producer
When preparing Laura Miller’s interviews, I always ask her to share more fiction than nonfiction titles with our listeners, since we cover far more nonfiction books on the show. But I have to admit that after today’s interview, I found myself eager to get my hands on the last book she recommended: Stanford literature professor Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them. While I love Anna Karenina as much as the next bookish person, I have never considered myself obsessed with Russian literature… but after just a few pages of Batuman’s witty memoir/literary analysis/travel narrative/scholar’s journal, I’m already planning for a summer full of Dostoevsky, Chekov, Tolstoy, and others. Here is a list of all the books Laura recommended:
The Surrendered, by Chang-rae Lee
The Privileges, by Jonathan Dee
The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris
The Room and the Chair, by Lorriane Adams
The Genius in All of Us, by David Shenk
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them, by Elif Batuman