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slash ABC. Hello, and welcome to the Slate Audio Book Club for the month of March 2016.

We are finally back after many delays, so thank you so much for your patience and emails.

We really appreciate it.

I'm Katie Waldman, words correspondent at Slate, and today I'm joined by Laura Miller, a Books and Culture columnist for the magazine.

Hey Laura.

Hi, Katie. And also we have Slate Senior Editor Laura Bennett. Hey, Laura. Hi, Katie. There's a lot of Laura's in here. I know. Is there like a collective noun for laurals, a laurel of lauras? Leroy. A lasso of lauras. It should be like a wreath of Loras because it doesn't come from laurel trees or something like that?

Yeah, a wreath of Loras.

We've got a small wreath of Laura's here.

There's a lot of Loras in the slate offices.

That's right.

This should be the topic of our audio book.

Well, today, in addition to the collective noun for Lor's, we will be discussing better living through

criticism, how to think about art, pleasure, beauty, and truth. And this is by the New York

Times film critic A.O. Scott. We probably don't need a spoiler warning now because there is no

plot to spoil. But as always, listeners should know that we will leave no stone

unturned in our discussion of the book. So if you don't want things to be revealed, probably not the

right podcast. Go read the book and come back and we will welcome you with open arms. Anyway,

...