Take Two's book critic David Kipen, founder of the Boyle Heights based lending library Libros Schmibros, joins the show with his list of literary highlights for the coming month.
David's picks
- Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins, which is this beloved Newbery winning children's book.
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The book is about a young Native American woman marooned on San Nicolas Island off the coast of Southern California in the 18th century. The new edition carries a long introduction by a scholar to inoculate the book against its own slightly dated but fairly harmless connotations.
- Miguel de Cervantes, Exemplary Novels - translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman
Cervantes invented the art of the modern novel, and Edith Grossman translated a bestselling Don Quixote 15 years ago, but this is from Yale University Press with some scholarly commentary, so it's part arts and part humanities.
- The Terranauts, latest of TC Boyle's ever-timelier eco-novels.
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The novel is set in the the old Biosphere II -- where the water may be filtered, but human emotions are anything but.
- Young LA writer anthology Get Lit Rising.
Get Lit Rising brings to life the true story of young writers and poets, it is inspiring and awe inspiring.
- Diana Wagman's novel, Extraordinary October.
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Wagman is a local class act who's written a few good, modest novels. She wouldn't be the first L.A. writer to find the audience she deserves among the under-20 set. See Maile Meloy, Cynthia Kadohata, Tom McNeal -- hell, see Scott O'Dell. It all comes full circle...
David Kipen is the founder of the Boyle Heights based lending library Libros Schmibros