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Code Switch

Battle Of The Books

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.614.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2020

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Code Switch team has been mired in a months-long debate that we're attempting to settle once and for all: What kind of books are best to read during this pandemic? Books that connect you to our current reality? Or ones that help you escape it?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey fam, we have a favorite ask. Do you identify as Latino, Latina, Latinex, Hispanic?

0:06.5

Are you about to turn 18? We want to talk to you about the upcoming election. Please send us an

0:12.1

email at codeswitch at npr.org with the subject line Latinex 18. That's Latinex 1-8. Thank you so

0:22.5

much now onto the show. You're listening to codeswitch from npr. I'm Shireen Madisal Miraji

0:30.0

and I'm Karen Guix-Veat sitting in Virginia this week. Karen, I wish I could say you were here for

0:35.8

a happy reason but the reality is you're here because our team needs to settle a score.

0:43.2

That's right. This is serious business because today on the show we're settling

0:48.2

once and for all a question that we've been debating for months and a question in fact that a lot

0:53.2

of people have been debating. What kind of books are best to read during this pandemic? Books that

0:58.5

connect you to current reality or books that help you escape it? I've heard a lot of people talking

1:07.7

about reading everything they can about plagues and pandemics, anything involving the end of the

1:13.9

world. We're talking histories of the Spanish flu, yellow fever, the bubonic plague, anything

1:20.3

with a dystopian future in it. And of course, you know, people are also scooping up books just as

1:26.4

fast as they can about racism and anti-racism and white fragility, etc., etc., really trying to

1:32.9

contextualize this moment as we've come to call it, this moment. But there are just as many people

1:41.1

who are staying as far from all of that as possible and sinking into the soothing comfort of books

1:47.2

that take place in happier times and places and have happier beginnings, happy middles, and most

1:52.8

importantly, happy endings. Those books exist with all that happy beginnings, happy middles, happy

1:58.7

endings, sign me. They do. They do. I wonder if people can guess where you stand on this debate.

2:06.1

Oh, it's no secret that although I am a hardened cynic, I am team escapism right now. Tell us

2:13.2

why. Why not? Have you looked at the news lately? We are so saturated with grim reality,

2:19.2

political, medical, economic, and most recently the loss of RBG, all of it. I needed an escape.

...

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