You can listen to today’s episode of Books for Breakfast in two one hour chunks here:

the show went something like this (talking portions in italics, with songs written down as artist-album-song):
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Things started as always with five minutes of the BBC world service, before we played a few wintry wake-up songs.
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One Hundred Dollars – Hold It Together EP – Marbridar
Giant Sand – Blurry Blue Mountain – Erosion
Sharon Van Etten – Epic – Love More
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We then spoke about JD Salinger’s apparent normalcy and the now-published and not-endorsed-by-Salinger piece of fan fiction about an older Holden Caulfield by John David California. What a phony, we say.
We also talked about some new books that have some connection to the US political landscape – one, a novel penned anonymously, called “O”, which fast forwards us to the 2012 election, and takes a look at how elections are shaped. Also, in the week that Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir comes out, Mcsweeney’s will publish their own “Donald“, a novel in which Rumsfeld is faced with an alternate history where he is abducted and held without charges in one of his prisons. That brought us to the way that non-fiction writers can find new life in the fiction vein – James Howard Kunstler‘s name came up.
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Wanda Jackson – The Party Ain’t Over – You Know I’m No Good
The Magic – The Magic – Never Lock the Door
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We talked about the Mark Danielewski book Only Revolutions (this is a pretty cool website for a book, I’ve got to say), a bizarro two sided thing that leapt out of me from the heavy shelves of Macondo Books and left me awestruck, which lead us to a hesitant discussion on the opportunities that can come with e-readers, and the formality of the book format. But we still don’t endorse e-readers, no sir. Maybe the three of us should read it three different ways one of these months. Kelly brought in her newest acquisitions: Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia & The Scriptwriter and Orhan Pamuk’s The Naive and Sentimental Novelist. Kelly just finished reading David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green , a great-sounding novel about a 13 year old boy trying to survive his adolescence.
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Christine Bougie – Aloha Supreme – Aloha Supreme
Jonathan Richman – O Moon Queen of Night on Earth – Winter Afternoon By B.U In Boston
The Skeletones Four – Aaaaahhh!!! – Let It Snow
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We talked about the three new neat sounding books that ted.org is producing as – sadly – e-books only. Find more info on the Ted blog.
Kelly opened up her book of old-timey Canadianisms, and asked us what “Devil Snatchers” are. I guessed a pastry that you can only eat once, Dan suggested that it was something like a voodoo style dream catcher, and it turned out to be dragonfly larvae.

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Braids – Native Speaker – Little Hand
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On Tuesday night the three of us got together to watch Obama deliver his State of the Union address – we had State of the Union bingo cards in hand. Here on the show, we talked about rhetoric through the ages and the way that it took shape in Obama’s recent address.
We also mentioned this neat Word Cloud that NPR put together , collecting viewer’s responses to Obama’s State of the Union address:

The New York Times also put together a set of graphs indicating popularity of certain words through certain administrations…
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John Southworth – Human Cry – Day of the Dead
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We wrapped things up with a reading from Sarah Manguso’s fantastic flash fiction collection, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, before I read a few band names from All Known Metal Bands. Turns out there are a lot of metal bands named Prophecy.
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Christine Bougie – Aloha Supreme – Chet & Chomsky

Thanks for listening! Tune in again next week, and don’t forget to submit a story for our flash fiction contest!

What: Books for Breakfast Presents Its First Flash Fiction Contest!

How: Write a short story or monologue in 500 words or less using the photo and caption prompt provided. Submit your story to Books for Breakfast to win a books prize and have your story read on the air!

Where: Submit flash fiction to cfrubooks@gmail.com. Drop off or mail your story to Books for Breakfast, CFRU 93.3 fm, UC Level 2, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1

When: Submit your story by March 3rd, 2011.

"I woke up in Boone...North Carolina."

Tune into Books for Breakfast every Thursday from 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. on CFRU 93.3 fm in Guelph.

Listen to both hours of today’s episode here:

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Show introduction and BBC world service
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James Blackshaw – All is Falling – Part 6
Igor Boxx – Breslau – Last Party In Breslau
Various Artists – Roots of Chicha 2: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru – El Aguajal (by Las Shapis)
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We opened the show by talking about which books we’ve been buying/borrowing/finding and reading this week, and spoke briefly about flash fiction, Lydia Davis, Karen Armstrong, James Bartleman, Miriam Toews, Susan Sontag, and JD Salinger spinoffs, and the way that school has of keeping books on the shelf.
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Afrosoultet – Afrodesia – Torrid Zone
Braids – Native Speaker – Same Mum
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Kelly quizzed us on a Canadianism from a book of obscure old Canadian terms, asking us what we thought the adjective “muscovadoey” might mean. Dan and I weren’t very close.
We then got down and dirty talking about the new edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huck Finn, which replaces all instances of the word “n*****” with the word “slave”. None of us are very impressed with this move, and we talked about altering works, underestimating the intelligence and compassion of high school students, the faults in calling a period-piece “simple minded”, and Mark Twain’s roots. We also discussed Lorrie Moore’s New York Times article, Send Huck Finn to College (New York Times, Jan 15
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Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra – Hooked Up Classics – Flight of the Bumblebee
Huelepega Sound System – En Los Ojos Todos Somos Ilegales – Four
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We went around the table talking about our sources for book news, and discovered that Peter finds out about books from other books (particularly autobiographies, interviews, letters, and story collections), and also keeps close tabs on the McSweeney’s universe, Kelly entrusts her friends to feed her new books, and Dan keeps up on books through his work at a bookshop and by diligently reading from the following blogs: Moby Lives (by blogger/author Dennis Loy Johnson), Bookninja (by poet George Murray), The Afterword (by National Post’s arts/books editor Mark Medley), and Miette’s Bedtime Podcast (a bedtime story read to you by a woman with a nice accent; lots of fantastic writers here…). Dan then hit us with some news from the book universe, telling us about the suspended operations at small Canadian press Key Porter, and how many books were bought and borrowed in Canada last week.
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Budos Band – III – Black Venom
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Dan read from Sarah Manguso’s flash fiction collection “Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape”, before Kelly introduced our new flash fiction contest! Don’t miss the previous post for more information – the deadline for submissions (under 500 words) is March 3rd. Good prizes, etc. Finally, Peter read a charming little poem about defeating Death from the 26th edition of Guelph’s own Carousel Quarterly.
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Wanda Jackson – This Party Ain’t Over – Nervous Breakdown
Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose – This Old House

With Dan away and at the mercy of the dentist, Kelly and I shared the hosting duties of this early edition of Books for Breakfast.

We played a bunch of good music, read from Karen Houle, Daryl Scroggins (from the Spring/Summer 2010 Alaska Quarterly Review), and Studs Terkel, talked about a vegan lentil soup recipe, and featured an awesome story about fear of the dark told by Julian Koster of The Music Tapes.  I brought in a letter written by a fan to Ray Charles in 1999, and Kelly brought a book of olden-days Canadianisms published in 1967. I failed to correctly guess the meaning of the word “slitheroo”. Finally, I read another section of “All Known Metal Bands”, this time starting at the band called “Hunger”.

You can hear both hours of the show here:

Today’s tracklist (Artist – Album – Song):
Wax Mannequin – Saxon – Pieces of Bird
Giant Sand – Blurry Blue Mountain – No Tellin’
The Michael Parks – The Rejected Michael Parks – Is There Anybody Here Who Wants to Take Me Home Tonight?
Camp Radio – Tribute to Jon Bartlett – Turn up The Jets
The Parliaments – Testify – The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg
Vibrettes – VA: Rare Funk – The Humpty Dump
The Sisters Love – Best Of… – You’ve Got My Mind
Quantic & His Combo Barbaro – Traditions in Transition – Undelivered Letter
Antibalas – Security – Hilo
Jonathan Richman – O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth – These Bodies That Came TO Cavort
Gil Bateman – Mojo: Instant garage – My Daddy Walked In Darkness
The Mekons – The Mekons Rock and Roll – When Darkness Falls
The Hylozoists – L’Ile De Sept Villes – Dark Scene Waltz
Nick Cave – Nocturama – Babe I’m on Fire
Lee Hazelwood – Trouble Is A Lonesome Town – We All Make The Flowers Grow
Doug Paisley – Constant Companion – O Heart
Frederick Squire – March 12 – Theme From A Northern Movie

And some of the books we talked about:

Hey everybody -

As you’ve maybe already heard on CFRU, we are now softly, gently, slowly launching a new radio show about books, called Books for Breakfast. We’re still sort of figuring out what shape the show will take, but have done two banter-fueled episodes of the shows so far and they are available on the internet, here, for you.

Last Thursday, January 6th, we talked about book-giving over the holidays, short stories, rough-cut pages, and we also heard from our favourite weird bookish relative, Aunty Kindle.

You can hear hours one and two of that episode here:

Dan and I got together for the very first episode of the show a couple weeks before that, which you can listen to here:

thanks for listening! tune in again this week.
- Peter