Special Feature: BBC World Book Club

The other day a friend asked how I decide which books to read. As you can tell from this blog I read in a variety of genres and seem to be fortunate in my selections. So I told her about magazine book review sections and blogs and friends' recommendations and I also told her about this one site that feeds not only my hunger for new books but also my curiosity about the people who write them.
BBC World Book Club is a monthly 53-minute program where celebrated authors answer listeners' questions about their most famous books. You can download the episodes as podcasts and I was thrilled to listen to interviews with authors whose books I've already read, like Toni Morrison and Sara Paretsky, authors whose books are on my TBR list, like Bernard Schlink and Boris Akunin, and authors who are new to me, like Edna O'Brien and Carlos Ruiz Zafon, among others.
It is fascinating to listen to these masters of the craft talk about their writing, about the things that made them want to tell the particular story, about their lives and the effect it has on their work. Not every single book seems appealing enough to make me want to add it to the list but some do and I look forward to reading them and sharing my thoughts with you.
Check out the Club's website here, there are 42 most recent episodes to download or subscribe to if you're an iTunes fan, and there's more in the archives. Hope you make some interesting discoveries, just as I have.