Hello and welcome to Slate's Audio Book Club.

I'm Megan O'Rourke, Slate's Culture Critic, and joining me today are Troy Patterson, Slate's

TV critic and a regular on the audiobook club.

Howdy?

Howdy?

And a special guest star, Michael Agar, a Sl slate editor and a columnist author of the browser column. Welcome, Michael. Hello.

So today we are talking about Nicholson Baker's new novel, The Anthologist, which I'm very excited to talk about. But before we get to this very exciting new discussion that we're going to have, Troy is going to bring us a word from our sponsors.

Indeed. And that sponsor is audible.com, which carries more than 50,000 audiobooks, which you can download right to the same device you have playing at this very moment.

And it's a special deal for book club listeners. If you sign up for a one book a month membership, you'll get a free book as a thank

you.

You might even choose, let's see, the one Nicholson-Baker book they have on there is a piece

of nonfiction called Human Smoke, which I have not read, but which is apparently the

sort of pacifist reconsideration

of the lead up to World War II.

It actually didn't get very strong reviews, so maybe you want to skip that one and just

read some poems instead.

Although Charles Simic recommends it highly in the latest New York review of books, I will just note.

Ah, okay.

Noted.

Dolly noted.

So the address to visit then is

www.

...