Sunday 16:00-16:30, repeated Thursday 16:00-16:30, except first Sunday in the month when it is replaced by Book Club.
Open Book spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces.
This week
Sunday 12 November 2006
Spanish novelist Javier Cercas on his new book "The Speed of Light"; Mark Cocker and Martin Wainwright talk about nature writing; and Jim Perrin, M. John Harrison and Martin Wainwright talk about what makes writing about mountaineering so thrilling.
Javier Cercas Award winning writer of "Soldiers of Salamis" talks about his new novel "The Speed of Light" which explores the process of writing itself as it charts the friendship between a young aspiring Spanish writer and a Vietnam veteran who meet at an American university in the Mid West.
'The Speed of Light' by Javier Cercas Publisher: Bloomsbury ISBN: 074758382X
Nature Writing Mark Cocker, author of Birds Britannica talks about his new book Tiger In The Sand with Martin Wainwright editor of "A Gleaming Landscape - A Hundred Years of the Guardian country diary". In the week that Planet Earth returns to our tv screens, can words rival pictures in creating spell binding images of nature and just why is nature writing so popular?
A Tiger in the Sand, Selected Writings on Nature by Mark Cocker Publisher: Jonathan Cape ISBN: 0224078828
A Gleaming Landscape by Martin Wainwright Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd ISBN: 1845131827
Reading Clinic - miserable books Another in our occasional series The Reading Clinic, writer and broadcaster Francis Spufford provides a selection of miserable books, both classic and contemporary and considers how misery differs from tragedy.
The Nether World by George Gissing Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192837672
Tis by Frank McCourt Publisher: HarperPerennial ISBN: 0007205244
Mountain Writing As the Boardman Tasker prize winner is announced at the Kendal Mountain Book festival next week, Open Book talks to two shortlisted writers, Jim Perrin and Arlene Blum and a former winner, M John Harrison about what makes writing about mountaineering such a thrilling exploration of life, death and what it means to be a human being.
Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life by Arlene Blum Publisher: Scribner ISBN: 978-0-7432-5846-3
Climbers: A Novel by M.John Harrison Publisher: Phoenix ISBN: 0 75381 955 4
Jim Perrin: The Climbing Essays Publisher: The In Pinn Press ISBN: 1 903238 471
